30 JANUARY 2008 JAPAN - Tokyo Court: Foreign Ministry's Failure to Provide Documents on 1965 Japan-Korea Normalization Pact Illegal On December 26, Tokyo District Court ruled that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs violated Japan's information disclosure law by failing to respond in a timely manner to a request to release documents on the Japan-Korea Normalization Pact, including efforts to settle claims by the Korean government and its people for compensation for injuries suffered during the era of Japanese rule. Although the court stopped short of ordering disclosure of the material, it established an important precedent by holding that excessive delay violates the law.More
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9 MAY 2007 China Adopts First Nationwide Open
Government Information Regulations
The
Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Open Government
Information (OGI Regulations) published on April 24, 2007,
and effective one year later on May 1, 2008, mark a turning
point away from the deeply ingrained culture of government
secrecy toward making Chinese government operations and
information more transparent. More
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28
SEPTEMBER 2006
International Right to Know
Day 2006 Celebrating
Freedom of Information Around the World Find
out what's happening around the world on the 4th International
Right to Know Day, a yearly opportunity to raise awareness
of every individual's right of access to government-held
information.More
>>
27
JUNE 2006 CASE
STUDY: Two Steps Forward, One Step Backwards:
The Access to Information Campaign in Argentina Which
is preferable, a severely flawed national access to information
law, or no law at all? Freedom of information activists
in Argentina had the "luxury" of debating that
unfortunate question until November 30, 2005, when the Argentine
access to information bill lost parliamentary status, sending
the campaign one humongous step backwards. More
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22
MARCH 2006 Freedom
of Information Laws Added to the Development Agenda With
research and case studies increasingly identifying transparency
as a key tool in fighting corruption and facilitating development,
IFIs are paying more attention to the existence of FOI laws
in the context of development. More
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22
MARCH 2006 freedominfo.org
Kicks Off Legislative Transparency Project Maria
Baron, freedominfo.org editorial board member and transparency
advocate in Argentina, has embarked on a project to
study parliamentary transparency in 20 countries around
the world, to determine its essential elements as well as
to document the diverse approaches to transparency in the
countries selected. As part of its re-launch, freedominfo.org
has posted the full legislative
transparency reports for three countries (Argentina,
Chile, and Sweden). More
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16
NOVEMBER 2005 ANALYSIS: How to Measure Openness? Towards
an International Index International freedom of information advocates face
a daunting challenge in quantifying and evaluating government
openness and access to information in different nations.
A wide range of researchers have pioneered the development
of indexes for measuring and assessing openness around the
globe. By laying out some of the options that are now available
to tackle this important problem, freedominfo.org hopes
to begin a conversation that can lead to productive contributions
and an ultimate consensus on quantifying the successes and
failures of freedom of information around the world. More
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9
MAY 2005 REPORT: Article 19 on Freedom of
Information in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia A
report from London-based NGO Article 19 on freedom of information
legislation and its impact on the news media in Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia, finds that problems with implementation,
state secrets legislation, and a Soviet-style predilection
for excessive secrecy have created "the environment
for arbitrary refusals, manipulation of information, and,
in extreme cases, even release of false information by officials."
More >>
15
APRIL 2005 CASE STUDY: Teaching Institute or
Dance Bar? Putting Local Freedom of Information Legislation to Use
in Argentina A
leading openness advocate in Argentina shares her personal
experience in using a local access to information law to
shake up licensing procedures for bars in Buenos Aires.
More >>
7
APRIL 2005 CASE STUDY: FOIA Law Discloses British
Farm Subsidies For the first time the British Freedom of Information Act
forced the disclosure of the amounts and recipients of UK
farm subsidies on March 22, revealing over £1,000,000
in payments to the British royal family. A request filed
with the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) by the Guardian newspaper produced a pair of Microsoft
Excel spreadsheets, now available on the freedominfo.org
Web site. More >>
9
FEBRUARY 2005 CASE STUDY: On-line networking solves
potential secrecy problem in Slovakia - elapsed time four
hours Freedom of information advocates in 10 countries plus the
U.S. state of New York today combined forces on-line within
an elapsed time of four hours to help Slovakian openness
reformers refute a governmental secrecy claim, according
to a case study of the on-line networking posted today by
freedominfo.org. More
>>
30
JUNE 2004 CASE STUDY: The Right to Know is
the Right to Live Profile of a Remarkable Peoples' Movement in India that
Links Information to Livelihood The
pioneering right-to-information work of the Mazdoor Kisan
Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) in India has won remarkable victories
in the struggle against corruption, both at the village
and national levels, according to the latest case study
posted today by the freedominfo.org. More
>>
16
JUNE 2004 - UPDATE CASE STUDY: Bulgaria - The Access
to Information Program Fighting for Transparency during the Democratic Transition
Changes
in the information regime in Bulgaria have been slow and
incremental since the fall of the communists in 1989. But
the work of the Access to Information Programme, an NGO
that has been at the forefront of the freedom of information
movement in that country, has succeeded in opening up what
was once one of the most secretive and authoritarian states
in Eastern Europe. More >>
13
APRIL 2004 CASE STUDY: The Transparency Labyrinth
in Argentina A
leader of Argentina's openness movement, María Baron
of the Centro de Implementacion de Politicas Publicas Para
la Equidad y la Crecimiento, describes for freedominfo.org
the reasons why President Nestor Kirchner decreed access
to information rights in December 2003 (while Congress stalled
any legislative proposals), and the challenges facing the
decree's implementation. More
>>
14
OCTOBER 2003 CASE
STUDY: The Freedom of Information Campaign in Argentina Buenos
Aires-based journalist Martha Farmelo reports for freedominfo.org
on Argentina's current campaign for a freedom of information
law, which was passed in May 2003 by the lower house of
the national congress and is now pending in the senate.
Farmelo describes the workings of pioneer access laws in
the city of Buenos Aires, the constructive role of the city
ombudsman and the national Anti-Corruption Office, and lessons
learned from the continuing campaign effort. More
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5
OCTOBER 2003 REPORT: Fiji Debates Freedom of Information
Proposal Citizens' Group Launches Draft Law The
Citizens' Constitutional Forum in Fiji has launched a public
debate in the South Pacific nation over the unfulfilled
requirement in the Fiji Constitution for a freedom of information
law. Together with the University of the South Pacific Journalism
Programme in Suva, the CCF held a public FOI workshop on
September 30, 2004 and released a new draft law--based on
the model law worked out by Article 19 and the Commonwealth
Human Rights Initiative--as well as an extended discussion
paper on Fiji's need for freedom of information. More
>>
22
SEPTEMBER 2003 REPORT: Freedom of Information in
Ireland Five Years On The
leading freedom of information expert in Ireland, Maeve
McDonagh of University College Cork, reviews the first five
years of the Irish law, passed in 1997 and implemented in
1998, and deconstructs the latest amendments, from April
2003, that roll back parts of the law. In addition to a
penetrating analysis of the statute, Professor McDonagh
provides striking examples of public disclosures resulting
from Ireland’s access to government information. More
>>
8
SEPTEMBER 2003 REPORT: The Birth of the Freedom
of Information Act in Japan Kanagawa 1982 In
a new posting on freedominfo.org, Lawrence Repeta of the
Information Clearinghouse Japan board of directors reports
on the 20-year experience with freedom of information in
Kanagawa prefecture -- the most influential early Japanese
access law, passed in 1982, two decades before the national
FOI law. More >>
17
JANUARY 2003 CASE STUDY: The Philippines A Liberal Information Regime Even Without an Information
Law The
Philippines has no freedom of information law, but Filipinos
hardly lag behind citizens of democratic states that have
statutes providing access to information held by the State.
The Philippines in fact can boast of having the most liberal
information regime in Southeast Asia. More
>>
30
SEPTEMBER 2002 CASE STUDY: Secrecy and Openness
in the European Union The Ongoing Struggle for Freedom of Information This
project looks at the struggle for openness and freedom of
information in the European Union over the past decade.
It starts with the Code of access to EU documents introduced
in December 1993 and the first challenges in the courts
and to the European Ombudsman. Despite their public commitment
to openness, EU institutions - especially the Council of
the European Union (the 15 EU governments) and the European
Commission wanted to control which documents were released
and which were not. More
>>
27
JULY 2002 CASE STUDY: Japan - Breaking Down
the Walls of Secrecy The Story of the Citizen's Movement for an Information
Disclosure Law A new national disclosure law took effect in Japan in April
2001. This essay by Information Clearinghouse Japan shows
how citizen's groups, opposition parties and freedom of
information advocates had lobbied for such an act for 20
years. While local governments had passed access laws since
the 1980s, efforts to enact similar legislation at the national
level were frustrated by a powerful professional bureaucracy
and a parliament that had been dominated by a single political
party for 40 years. The new law still faces some problems,
but nearly 50,000 information requests were made in the
first year of its implementation. More
>>
17
JULY 2002 REPORT: A Landmark Law Opens Up Post-Apartheid
South Africa Throughout
the apartheid era, South Africa's minority government suppressed
access to information-on social, economic, and security
matters-in an effort to stifle opposition to its policies
of racial supremacy. Security operations were shrouded in
secrecy. Government officials frequently responded to queries
either with hostility or with misinformation. Press freedom
was habitually compromised, either through prior censorship
of stories or through the banning and confiscation of publications.
Information became a crucial resource for the country's
liberation forces and their allies in international solidarity
movements as they sought to expose the brutality of the
apartheid regime and hasten its collapse. More
>>
9
JULY 2002 REPORT:
In Mexico, a New Law Guarantees the Right to Know Mexico
is a country where a powerful executive branch has historically
overshadowed a weak Congress, a dysfunctional judicial system
and a malleable press ... For the longest time, the Mexican
public has had no access to information about the most fundamental
ways in which government affects daily life. More
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5
JULY 2002 ANALYSIS: Japanese Government Information:
New Rules for Access The 2001 Information Disclosure Law, and a Comparison
with the U.S. FOIA Japan's
national Information Disclosure Law came into effect on
April 1, 2001. This law creates for the first time a legally
enforceable right of access to Japanese national government
files. Two experts provide a brief legislative history of
the law followed by an analysis and comparison of its key
provisions with analogous provisions of the U.S. FOIA. More
>>
