OGP: The schedule for the end of October summit in Mexico City includes several FOI-related panels. One is titled “Building Bridges Between the access to Information and Open Government Data Communities.” Another one is “Access to Information and Improving Policing: Results of a Multi-Country Study and Other OGP Efforts.” Also, “Access to Information as a Critical Link to Fulfilling National OGP Commitments.”
The Building Bridges session is being organized by the Open Data Working Group (OGD WG), the OGP Access to Information Working Group (ATI WG) and facilitated by Silvana Fumega. Speakers will include Laura Neuman of the ATI WG and the Carter Center and Mark Levene of the OGD WG and Director, Engagement, Governance and Renewal in Information Management (Gestion de l’information), Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Two others have not been selected.
The ATI Working Group is organizing the “critical link” session and speakers will include Maria Jose Montiel Cuatlayol, director, Mexican Federal Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Data Protection; Marcos Mendiburu, Senior Social Development Specialist, World Bank and a few of the successful applicants for the four grants provided by the OGP working group. (See previous FreedomInfo.org.)
India: Shailesh Gandhi, an RTI activist and former Central Information Commissioner, writes in The Wire that the RTI law is being amended by the Supreme Court without any reasoning and that, unless reversed, the law could slowly be emasculated.
Transparency Research: A blog post by Jonathan Fox describes research by how international multi-stakeholder initiatives are contributing to public governance. Many conclusions, but bottom line: “The links in the chain that connect information disclosure to public accountability are still uncertain.” Brandon Brockmyer, an independent researcher and PhD candidate at the School of International Service at American University, and Fox, professor in the School of International Service at American University, conducted research for the Transparency and Accountability Initiative on five initiatives: the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), the Open Government Partnership (OGP), the Constructive Sector Transparency Initiative (CoST), the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT), and the Open Contracting Partnership (OCP).
Private Sector/United Kingdom: Academic blogger Ben Worthy looks at the many faces of openness in the private sector in an article detailing “a growing collection of laws, regulations and technological innovations have gradually shone a light on the private sector too.”
OGP: The OGP announces winners of six mini-grants to study on cross-thematic or cross-country trends within OGP, explore correlations between progress on OGP and other development indicators, or provide new ways of thinking about how we can evaluate impact.
United States: Ralph Nader discussed FOI in a Huffington Post column. He wrote: “The use of the FOIA by citizens, journalists, and others to expose scandals is essential to ensure honest scientific inquiry and is critical to developing protective public health and environmental standards. Scientific research should not be contaminated by the inevitable biases and secrecy that come with corporate contracts at public universities.”
Mexico: The Federal Electricity Commission signs a collaboration agreement with the National Institute for Access to Information to strengthen the mechanisms of transparency, access to information, data protection and accountability of the state enterprise.
Australia: Johan Lidberg, Senior Lecturer, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University, writes about transparency in Australia.
Malawi: The Media Institute of South Africa calls on public bodies to be more transparent and respect citizen’s right to know, according to a MISA statement. MISA Malawi chairperson Thom Khanje reports that a study showed that only 3 out of 10 public institutions responded to test requests for information. Khanje said most public institutions also do not proactively provide information to Malawians.
Transparency Research: The Faculty of Humanities, Institute for Philosophy at Leiden University in the Netherlands is looking for PhD candidate for a project to explore the legitimacy of secrecy in democratic politics funded by the European Research Council. “The starting hypothesis of the project is that secrecy is not always inimical to democratic governance as conventional wisdom has it. For more information about the project please contact the project leader, D.M. Mokrosinska at d.m.mokrosinska@phil.leidenuniv.nl.
United States: The FOIA Ombudsman publishes a blog on the 107 unique markings and over 130 different labeling or handling processes and procedures for documents that are unclassified, but are considered sensitive.
Secrecy: An interdisciplinary symposium at King’s College London in 2015 gathered experts to discuss the place and implications of secrecy for contemporary cultural politics. “Recordings from the event have been hidden across some of the darkest corners of the world wide web and will be revealed through a series of leaks and revelations,” according to a mysterious announcement. “If you would like to participate in this experiment in opacity and secretion, visit http://immersivestorylab.com/secret/ and follow the instructions. Please share this secret with anyone you trust …”
OGP: “Participation in the Next Frontier for OGP,” by Juan Pablo Guerrero (Network Director, Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency) and Warren Krafchik (Executive Director, International Budget Partnership).
India: The India Times reports on seven funny or odd RTI requests including one from a man demanded to know the number of eligible females in the government department for marriage because he really wanted to get married to a government employee.
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