Canada: Canada’s Information Commissioners call on their respective governments to require public entities to document their deliberations, actions and decisions. In a joint resolution, information commissioners expressed concerns about the trend towards no records responses to access to information requests. “Access to information rights depend on public agencies documenting their key activities and decisions,” according to a press release.
United Kingdom: “Ministers are retreating from efforts to weaken freedom of information legislation after strong opposition made it likely they would lose a legislative battle to enact the changes,” according to an article by Financial Times reporters Kate Allen and Jim Pickard. Transcripts and video of the oral hearings of the Independent Commission on Freedom of Information on Jan. 20 and 25 are on the commission website.
India: Indian Law Watch analyzes the recent Supreme Court decision applying the RTI Act to the Reserve Bank of India.
Russia: Infometer examines regional OpenData projects in Russia to collect information on their developers and regional specificities, to perform usability testing, and to form a rating of the applications. Their findings describe 120 open data application functioning in Russia.
Mexico: The National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI) issues a book “10 years of the right of access to information in Mexico: New paradigms for guarantee.”
Transparency Research: Read articles in the Institute of Development Studies Bulletin about “Opening Governance.” Editors Rosie McGee and Duncan Edwards conclude an introductory chapter with:
The ambiguity around the ‘open’ in governance today might be helpful in that its very breadth brings into the fold actors who would otherwise be unlikely adherents, and they end up committing themselves beyond what they initially envisaged. But if the fuzzier idea of ‘open government’ or the low-hanging allure of ‘open data’ displace the Herculean task of clear transparency, hard accountability (Fox 2007) and fairer distribution of power as what this is all about, then what started as an inspired movement of governance visionaries may end up merely putting a more open face on an unjust and unaccountable status quo.
The issue includes an article by the Carter Center’s Laura Neuman, “The Right of Access to Information: Exploring Gender Inequities.” She writes:
Overall, the findings from the women and access to information studies demonstrate the hypothesis that women are not able to access information with the same facility as men.
Open Data: GovLab issues a report: “Open Data’s Impact,” Saying “Open data is improving government, primarily by tackling corruption and increasing transparency, and enhancing public services and resource allocation.”
United States: The Atlantic magazine’s Kaveh Waddell writes about whether the government will disclose message sent on the Slack messaging system.
United States: The U.S. FOIA Ombudsman invites federal agencies to participate in a new FOIA self-assessment program—a 27-question online survey—“designed to help agency FOIA programs identify areas for improvement and give FOIA leaders information they need to address issues and develop and launch strategies to strengthen and improve their FOIA programs.”
United States: Jonathan Anderson, chair of the Society for Professional Journalists’ Freedom of Information Committee, writes, “Troubling legislation in four states would seriously undermine the public’s right to know and ability to hold government officials accountable.”
United States: The state of Delaware governor issues an open data policy.
United States: In the state of Kansas, a new coalition called Open Kansas asks lawmakers to sign a “transparency pledge,” the Kansas City Star reports.
United States: Media coverage of Hillary Clinton’s use of personal email to conduct official business as secretary of state has obscured “the larger – and more complicated – problems of poor, outdated email management and government-wide overclassification,” writes Lauren Harper in the Unredacted blog, published by the National Security Archive.
United States: The Knight Foundation issues a grant for FOIA Mapper, a project led by Max Galka, “Making it easier for people to find public data and make Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by creating an open source `FOIA map,’ including a catalog of government information systems, descriptions of the records they contain, and documentation of the language needed to request them.”
My Society: There’s an updated look and feel to the latest version of Alaveteli, according to the UK group that creates the request software.
Scientific Research: Physics Today writes about whether academic scientists should have protections from FOI laws and Paul D. Thacker’s commentary in the New York Times, “Scientists, give up your emails.”
Transparency Research: Tiago Piexoto with the World Bank and Jonathan Fox at American University collaborated on a background paper released alongside the World Bank’s Digital Dividend report. Their study reviews 23 ICT projects designed to raise citizen voices in governance. Among the conclusions:
Transparency Research: “Managing Opacity: Information Visibility and the Paradox of Transparency in the Digital Age,” by Cynthia Stohl, Michael Stohl and Paul Leonardi “surfaces a phenomenon we call the `transparency paradox,’ in which high levels of visibility decrease transparency and produce opacity.” Main bits: “important pieces of information become inadvertently hidden in the detritus of information made visible.” And, “Actors who wish to keep certain information hidden from view but who are bound by transparency regulations or norms can produce opacity by strategically increasing the availability, approval, and accessibility of information.”
Diamonds: Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor John Mangudya says the country is losing a lot of potential income due to lack of transparency in the diamond sector, The Herald reports.
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