Open Data Charter: An effort to create an Open Data Charter is announced. The focus of this global consultation “will be the collaborative development of an International Open Data Charter consisting of a set of foundational principles for open data, as well as associated tools and guidelines to enable delivery.” The initiative was developed at a meeting on the margins of the International Open Data Conference. There will be rolling launch of the International Open Data Charter through the latter part of 2015, with key events planned in September at the United Nations General Assembly in New York and in October at the OGP Annual Summit in Mexico. In advance of the launch, stewards of the International Open Data Charter will be conducting a transparent, inclusive global consultation process to develop and finalize the International Open Data Charter Principles from June 1 to July 31th, 2015. Send comments on the draft Charter to opendatacharter.net. For any questions contact info@opendata.org.
Right to Be Forgotten: About 70 international scholars ask Google for data about its handling of requests following to decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union allowing persons to ask that for certain personal information be removed from the search results when this is “inappropriate, irrelevant and outdated” and provided there is no public interest. See explanatory post in Spanish and English by Eduardo Bertoni, Director del Centro de Estudios en Libertad de Expresión y Acceso a la Información (CELE) de la Facultad de Derecho e la Universidad de Palermo.
The request seeks:
Aggregate data about how Google is responding to the more than 250,000 requests to delist links, thought to contravene data protection laws, from name search results. We should know if the anecdotal evidence of Google’s process is representative: What sort of information typically gets delisted (e.g., personal health) and what sort typically does not (e.g., about a public figure), in what proportions and in what countries?
Open Government Partnership: OGP Explorer is a new tool that makes it easier to find, filter and analyze the OGP data, both on commitments and process. See a “somewhat funny video.” Also, Sonia Khan and Joseph Foti take a closer look at OGP commitments in open data.
FOI Implementation: ”10 Things Practitioners Hate the Most,” by UK blogger Paul Gibbins.
Commentary: “Why Technology Hasn’t Delivered More Democracy,” an article with answers from a variety of experts. FP boils it down to this:
The contributors’ answers to the puzzle of why the advance of new communication technologies in the past fifteen years has not produced any overall advance of democracy in the world boil down to three different lines: First, it’s too soon to see the full effects. Second, the positive potential effects are being partially outweighed or limited by other factors, including some larger countervailing trends on the international political stage for democracy, the ability of authoritarian governments to use the same technologies for their own anti-democratic purposes, and the only partial reach of these technologies in many countries. And third, technology does not solve some basic challenges of democracy building, above all, stirring citizens to engage in collective action and the establishment of effective representative institutions.
Related article, “The Nation-State; Not Dead Yet,” by Alasdair Roberts in The Wilson Quarterly, which says in part: “In some respects, the new millennium is a golden age for nation-states, precisely because of technologies that were expected to undermine them.”
Trade Transparency: WikiLeaks discloses 17 secret documents from the Trade in Services Agreement negotiations.
United States: The House Oversight and Government Information Committee held oversight hearings on FOIA June 2 and June 3. See testimony and video.
European Union: European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly welcomed the Commission’s agreement to improve its system of expert groups in response to her proposals. The Commission said that it will develop a new conflict of interest policy for experts appointed in a personal capacity and that the selection procedure will be more transparent. She said the Commission still needs to do more, especially to publish detailed minutes of their work. The Commission’s opinion is available here.
Germany: A Netzpolitik article (in German) about punitive fees charged by German federal agencies for providing information under the FOI law.
Aid Transparency: Publish What You Fund issues its 2015 EU Aid Transparency Review. One finding: “nine out of 16 key EU donors and institutions are still not publishing their data on time and in detail, leaving recipient countries in the dark about expected funding.”
Civic Space Research: “CIVICUS is taking a new approach to tracking the quality of civic space in real time. We intend to do this by combining analysis of externally available data sources with our own, internally generated, real-time information from civil society on the ground.” See It also reports on a pilot study of 16 African countries.
Development Transparency: The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) has published a new report which takes a comprehensive look at what the data revolution means for sustainable development.
Slovakia: TI Slovakia publishes a report about the contract transparency regime. Also see article on this, “Once Riddled with Corruption, Slovakia Sets a New Standard for Transparency,” by Gabriel Sipos.
FOI Administration: “Electronic discovery technologies present a means to improve the working relationship between records management and the FOIA,” according to Chris Knox, Leader of the Government Discovery Sector at Deloitte Transactions and Business Analytics, LLC, in an interview on the Exterro E-Discovery and Information Governance Blog.
Open Data: A census of currently available open datasets about police interactions with citizens in the US, including Use of Force, Officer-Involved Shootings, and Complaints Against Police.
Open Government Partnership: “Enhancing Accountability through Open Government? Learning about and Leveraging OGP,” by Brendan Halloran. He writes:
In sum, OGP still faces critical questions about whether it is contributing to real accountability. In seeking answers to these questions, we should link learning meaningfully to practice and support pro-reform actors to analyze, reflect, strategize, coordinate and make their own judgements about how to best leverage OGP processes…and whether engaging with OGP is worth the risks and costs. Having a seat at the table by itself does not constitute real participation, much less influence, and civil society actors are increasingly clear about the tradeoffs involved.
United States: “Federal agencies are lurching toward a Dec. 31, 2016, deadline for managing e-mail traffic electronically, but with no additional funding and until now little attention, it is unlikely they will all make it, stakeholders both inside and outside the government told Bloomberg BNA,” http://www.bna.com/agencies-shuffling-toward-n17179927129/ writes Cheryl Bolen.
Environmental Transparency: A Special Issue on Data Information and Knowledge for Water Governance in the Networked Society that has just been published in the journal Water Alternatives. “The issue includes seven contributions from five continents and is, to our knowledge, the first research covering the interplay between the open movement and water politics.”
Open Data: “How is open data making governments more accountable?” a guest post from Duncan Edwards from the Making All Voices Count Research and Evidence Team.
Open Data: Reflecting on the Open Data Conference, Michael Canares asks “Is there a need to reframe the open data discourse?” Another blog post focuses on a discussion of open data standards.
United States: A judge sets a schedule for the release of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, according to an article in Politico. Some material in early releases of the Clinton emails have been blocked using the “interagency or intra-agency communication” exemption, according to Lauren Harper in the Unredacted blog and a report in The Weekly Standard.
Australia: Open and Shut blogger Peter Timmins writes: “Shadow Attorney General Mark Dreyfus speaking in the Adjournment debate in the House of Representatives last night on the government attempt to abolish the Office of Australian Information Commissioner, a decision announced in last year’s budget, but stuck since October in the Senate without majority support.” Also see related post on inconsistencies between government rhetoric and actions on FOIA.
United States: Kevin Bogardus, E&E reporter, writes about new documents obtained through FOIA that “shed light on a quiet campaign by federal agencies to shape legislation that would strengthen the Freedom of Information Act.”
Canada: A CBC report and a follow-up report says a former government official in the province of British Columbia alleged that more than a dozen emails were deleted in November 2014 following a freedom of information request relating to the Highway of Tears, a stretch of road notorious for cases of missing and murdered women. Also, read a critical commentary on BCFOIA by Charlie Smith.
India: The Hyderabad Cricket Association is resisting an order from the Andhra Pradesh Information Commission stating that the association falls under the ambit of the RTI Act, The Times of India reports.
United States: South Carolina creates a Fiscal Transparency Website at www.cg.sc.gov.
India: An interview in The Hindu with Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey about the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan experience and their campaign for citizen-centric accountability.
Alavateli Conference: Another report on the conference, from Muckrock.
Unusual Research: Former Scottish Information Commissioner Kevin Dunion compares the Eurovision song contest results and the Centre for Law and Democracy’s rating of RTI laws. Results show:
– The country combining the best song and RTI rank is Russia (2nd best song/5th best in RTI rank order),
– The country combining the worst song and worst RTI rank is Austria (song 27th/RTI rank 26th)
?- The country with the highest ranked song and lowest ranked RTI law is Italy (song 3rd /RTI law 24th)
?- The country with the highest ranked RTI law and lowest votes for song is United Kingdom ( RTI rank 4th /song 24th)
?- Only two countries , Albania and Greece have the same Eurovision result and RTI rank order (17th and 19th respectively)
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