An Open Government Symposium this Friday in Valdosta will be hosted by the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners.
Valdosta Daily Times Editor Jim Zachary, director of the Transparency Project of Georgia, will be joined by Hollie Manheimer, executive director of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, for the open government training event.
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The other day, a local woman approached a Gazette editor and regaled him with tales of her experience trying to get information from a local government.
She complained that her request for information wasn't honored in a timely manner, that government officials kept pushing back the date of when they said the information would be available, and then threatened her if she continued to badger them.
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Our recent election was exciting on both the local and national levels. I was honored to be re-elected to serve District 120. Running unopposed does take some of the anxiety out of the electoral process, but it doesn’t diminish my appreciation for all the congratulatory notes and calls from friends and supporters.
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Read More… from FOIA reform, infrastructure on table for next session
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is looking to industry to fund its open data initiatives in partnerships intended to meet its unfunded mandates while also spurring innovation in the private sector.
NOAA creates and gathers terabytes of information each day, much of which could be highly valuable if utilized within its window of usefulness. The agency wants to get the data to the people but doesn’t have the resources to make that happen, according to David McClure, lead analyst for NOAA’s Open Government Data Services.
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Read More… from NOAA asks industry to fund open data program
A group that claims to be a champion of transparency has been filing a slew of lawsuits against Florida's government agencies, ostensibly to force the agencies to comply with public records laws. But just how much money has the group won? They're not willing to say.
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The importance of the Freedom of Information Act is clearly written in West Virginia Code.
The “declaration of policy” is as follows:
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Watchdog group Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Obama Administration in October, in order to obtain records relating to media monitoring plan records.
More specifically, the FOIA is against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and relates to a “Critical Information Needs” (CIN) pilot study conducted by the government agency. The study revolved around how media outlets make editorial decisions when covering stories.
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Read More… from JUDICIAL WATCH SUES FEDS TO OBTAIN MEDIA MONITORING RECORDS
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission does not have to release records about its supervision of Wall Street's arbitration process to a group of investors' lawyers, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday.
The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ends, at least for now, a long-running battle about the public's right of access to documents about the SEC's oversight over the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's arbitration system.
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Read More… from U.S. court affirms SEC stance on withholding Wall St arbitration records
Today marks the seven-month anniversary of my oldest outstanding public records request, so please indulge me in some ventilation. Back on April 14, before the snow of last winter melted, I made a Freedom of Information Act request to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Today, snow once more whitens the ground, and I'm still waiting.
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Investments in open data initiatives are rising at all levels of government, especially in counties and cities, where decision-makers expect to increase funding in the next six months, according to a new survey.
Seattle-based Socrata, which specializes in democratizing access to government data, surveyed 961 federal, state and local government employees. Eighty percent said they would invest money and resources in open data initiatives. Of those, 28 percent said they would invest more money, and 52 percent said funding would remain the same.
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Read More… from Counties, Cities to Boost Open Data Investments
