Government watchdogs are celebrating this month the 40th anniversary of the Kentucky Open Records Act. It has withstood the test of time as an indispensable tool for a variety of individuals and interest groups seeking to hold public officials accountable.
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Read More… from Kentucky’s Open Records Law: Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Open Government
Five years ago, when a Bangor area man wanted copies of videos from his daughter's school bus so he could expose bullying, the state told him the recordings were off-limits to the public.
That might not be the case anymore. Continue…
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Read More… from Pennsylvania: School bus videos are public records, state says
The city of Topeka has been selected to join a national initiative that will enhance its distribution and use of data.
Operated by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the What Works Cities initiative has helped 39 cities in 25 states analyze their data and make it more readily available for citizens’ consumption. Continue…
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Read More… from City of Topeka selected by What Works Cities initiative for open data
The New Jersey Foundation for Open Government (NJFOG) secured a court consent order on May 31 against the Little Egg Harbor Fire District #3 that requires the Board of Fire Commissioners to follow provisions of the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA).
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Read More… from New Jersey: Little Egg Harbor Fire Co. agrees to adhere to Meetings Act
You might call it a recipe for transparency.
Want to know when the president signs a bill into law? When congress votes on a bill? When a new legislator is representing you? Since 2014, The Sunlight Foundation has been connecting its massive trove of government data to IFTTT, the popular web service that connects things on the internet to other things. Continue…
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Read More… from The Sunlight Foundation is using IFTTT to make the government more open
The Maine court system reversed itself on sealing some court records after pressure from media groups, officials said Wednesday.
Dismissed criminal cases that had been ordered sealed will remain public records as they have in the past, according to a spokeswoman for the Maine court system. Continue…
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Read More… from Maine courts unseal documents after media challenge
Yesterday, Secretary of State John Kerry ordered the State Department to investigate the State Department’s intentional deletion of a 2013 briefing where its spokesperson admitted that the Obama Administration misled the American people about the Iran nuclear deal.
This comes as the ACLJ expects a response later this week to our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on this matter (something the State Department is legally required to comply with). Continue…
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Read More… from Sec. Kerry Orders State Department to Investigate Cover-Up
The D.C. high court ruled June 9 that an obscure law doesn’t work as an almost total exemption for the D.C. Council from the broad public access requirements of the District’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), extended by the Council to cover itself in 2000.
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Read More… from D.C. Council Can’t Claim FOIA “Speech or Debate” Exemption
A plan to make police body camera footage more accessible cleared a House committee Tuesday afternoon, but some legislators and open-government groups say the bill doesn’t go far enough.
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Read More… from North Carolina legislators debate who should get access to police body camera videos
As The Washington Post reported this week, the FBI wants to exempt its growing database of fingerprints and photographs from Privacy Act rules. The Privacy Act of 1974, which was enacted as a way to ensure that federal agencies protected the expanding amount of private information that federal agencies held about the American people from inadvertent exposure, includes provisions that require agencies to tell individuals if their information is in a system and empower citizens to ensure that that information is correct.
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