Latest Features
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25 June 2015
Book Review: Sharma Writes History of Indian RTI Act
By Gaia von Hatzfeldt The author obtained her PhD in social anthropology from the University of Edinburgh, where she did research on anti-corruption social movements in India. Sharma, Prashant (2015). Democracy and Transparency in the Indian State: The making of the Right to Information Act. Routledge: Abingdon (225 pages). Access to information around the world […]
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24 June 2015
FOI laws: fixing the chilling effect on frank advice
By Stephen Easton The author is a journalist at The Mandarin based in Canberra. This article appeared June 18 in The Mandarin. Reprinted with permission. Those who want more limitations on transparency are regaining ground in the freedom of information tug-of-war. If the government thumbs its nose at disclosure and public servants are all too happy to follow […]
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17 June 2015
Ten years of RTI: what do we know?
By Prashant Sharma The writer is a Fellow of the Open Society Foundations, New York and Visiting Research Fellow at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), Geneva. He is the author of Democracy and Transparency in the Indian State: The Making of the Right to Information Act. He can be reached at prashantx@gmail.com […]
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21 May 2015
RTI and the Indian Official Secrets Act
By Venkatesh Nayak The author is Coordinator of the Access to Information Programme at the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. This post first appeared May 15 in The Hoot. Last week, upon being requested by a section of the family of the leader of the Indian movement for independence, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, to make the […]
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21 May 2015
What if we disclosed everything?
By Marcus Siqueira The author is an expert in public-private partnerships (PPPs) in Brazil, with a multidisciplinary background and more than 10 years of practical experience screening, preparing and managing PPP transactions. This post appeared in a World Bank blog. One day in 2012, when I was the head of a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Unit […]
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14 May 2015
A FOIA for Italy Could Be a Weak One
By Claudio Cesarano The author is the Communication and Research Intern at Access Info Europe. A draft freedom of information law currently pending before the Italian parliament would not significantly improve the right to information in Italy. Right to information specialists at Access Info Europe have given the draft law a score of 68 points […]
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12 May 2015
The RTI Act-Present Status
By Shailesh Ghandhi The author is a right to information activist and a former commissioner of the Indian Central Information Commission. This statement was issued May 11. The RTI Act has caught the imagination of people and the way it has spread is being appreciated and admired around the world. A great change has come […]
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6 May 2015
Amendments May Make Slovakia’s FOIA Act Most Liberal in Europe
By Andrej Školkay The author is head of the School of Communication and Mass Media in Bratislava, Slovakia. His post first appeared on the LSE Media Policy Project blog. After two years of preparation, the Slovak Parliament is going to discuss an amendment to the law on freedom of information (FOIA) . However, considering the many objections and specifications raised by a published draft, it […]
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30 April 2015
Access to Information in Kenya
By Ruth Nzioka The author is a Legal Researcher at the Institute for Law and Environmental Governance (ILEG) and first appeared on the ILEG blog. The views expressed here are purely her own and do not necessarily reflect ILEG’s position. “You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help […]
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29 April 2015
Notes of the Mexican Transparency System reform.
By Ana Cristina Ruelas Serna and David Mora The authors work at ARTICLE 19, Mexico and Central America. On April 16th, the Mexican Congress finally approved the General Transparency Law, making progress in adjusting the current legal framework to the standards ordered by the Constitutional reform approved in February 2014. The final text did not include […]
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16 April 2015
Clinton Emails Raise Questions About Agency Record Obligations
By Harry Hammit Hammit is editor and publisher of Access Reports, a bi-monthly report on U.S. and Canadian freedom of information legal developments. The recent revelation that Hillary Clinton used her personal email account to conduct government business while she was Secretary of State, retained custody of those emails on a personal server at her home in […]
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18 March 2015
Proposed Changes to Mexican FOIA Law Still Worrying
By David Mora The author works for Article 19 in Mexico. On Feb. 19, Ana Cristina Ruelas of Article 19 wrote here on the contradiction of Mexico holding Open Government Partnership’s lead chair while the Mexican President pressed the Senate for regressive regulations in the General Transparency Law currently on discussion. In that entry, we […]
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12 March 2015
Department of State Email Preservation Rate Hovers under 0.000061%
By Lauren Harper and Nate Jones This column appeared March 11 in Unredacted, a blog from the National Security Archive, the publisher of FreedomInfo.org. Harper and Jones are Archive staff members. Today’s Department of State Office of Inspector General report has some scary numbers on the number of emails the Department actually preserves. Hillary Clinton […]
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11 March 2015
Government is Open in Rhetoric and Secret in Reality
By Umar Cheema The author is an investigative reporter for the Pakistani newspaper The News, where this article first appeared March 10. ISLAMABAD: The PML-N government is determined to promote transparency in rhetoric but has been found building walls of secrecy in reality. The Ministry of Law, Justice and Human Rights has denied the citizens’ […]
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5 March 2015
The Hillary Emails; and a Suggested Fix
By Lauren Harper and Nate Jones The National Security Archive and other groups recently proposed an amendment to the House FOIA Reform bill that would allow all FOIA processors access to all electronic records systems for the processing of FOIA requests. This fix would have gone a long way in allowing State Department FOIA processors and […]
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5 March 2015
Sri Lanka’s RTI Bill – Misconceptions and Recommendations
By Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena and Venkatesh Nayak This article appeared Feb. 28 in The Sri Lanka Guardian. Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena is a Colombo based civil liberties advocate, the editorial (legal) consultant/columnist for the Sunday Times and a legal consultant for the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICwS) Sri Lanka media law initiative based at the University of London, […]
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5 March 2015
The Perils and Paradoxes of FOI in Canada
By Ken Rubin The author is an Ottawa-based investigative researcher and citizens’ advocate. This article first appeared in J-Source, March 3. This article is a condensed and edited version of “Tales from the front line: Canada’s FOI Warrior”, Rubin’s chapter in FOI 10 Years On: Freedom Fighting or Lazy Journalism?, just published by Abramis in […]
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5 March 2015
The Power of a Question in El Salvador
By Max Heywood This article first appeared March 2 on the Transparency International blog. Heywood is Programme Coordinator in the Americas Department of Transparency International. Read this in Spanish here. Transparency laws mean nothing if they are not applied, and it sometimes takes brave citizens and active civil society organisations to make sure that they are. […]
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26 February 2015
Cambodia Needs to Prioritise Access to Information Law
By Chak Sopheap The author is the executive director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights. This article first appeared Feb. 18 in the Phnom Penh Post Over the past few weeks, the government has repeatedly asserted its intention to introduce a state secrets law in Cambodia. In a country that has not yet adopted […]
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26 February 2015
Mexico’s Transparency Bill: Is There Too Much at Stake?
By Joel Salas Suárez The author is a commissioner of the autonomous Federal Institute for Access to Information and Data Protection (IFAI) in Mexico. This article first appeared in the blog of the Open Government Partnership. (Spanish version) Mexico´s upper chamber is currently discussing the Transparency and Access to Information bill, following a Constitutional amendment […]