With $750,000 in additional funding, the OpenGov Foundation plans to expand its footprint into the world of lawmaking tools for citizens and governments.
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Read More… from Startup Money Will Provides Easy-to-Use Open-Government Tools to Cities and States
The Florida Supreme Court stood unanimously on the side of good government Thursday when it ruled that the public has a right to see documents a Republican consultant created in connection with the Legislature's once-a-decade redistricting process. Now, barring an ill-advised rehearing request by the document owner, Floridians will be able to judge for themselves what role outsiders played in the controversial 2012 redistricting process. The court has reaffirmed its commitment and the state Constitution's requirement to open government.
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In another action brought by John Paff, a “self-proclaimed open government activist” who has pursued litigation to secure government documents pursuant to the Open Public Record Acts (“OPRA”) in several instances, a Superior Court judge held that Paff was entitled to the documents he sought as well as attorneys’ fees associated with the action.
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Read More… from Open Government Activist Seeks New Jersey Government Records
Seventy-eight thousand, six hundred and fifty dollars may not be a huge sum in the budget of a town like Wallingford, but why should the town be granting that amount of taxpayer money annually to a “private, nonprofit organization” that doesn’t think those taxpayers are entitled to know what goes on at its meetings?
That’s one question raised by the complaint Town Councilor Craig Fishbein has filed with the Freedom of Information Commission against Wallingford Center Inc. There are others.
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Read More… from Editorial: Wallingford Center Inc. needs transparency if it wants public funds
I've written multiple times over the years about the importance of freedom of information laws, and the need to help the public understand that access to information about government is a right for all citizens, not just journalists.
Too often, people think (or they're erroneously told by government officials) that they can't obtain certain information unless they're a reporter.
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Read More… from Opinion: Keep PR officials out of Freedom of Information Act requests
The task of fulfilling Freedom of Information Act requests has dogged requestors and the government workers who respond to them since the law was passed in 1966. But a new site under construction could help make the process easier for requesters and lighten the load for government.
Announced in September, the alpha foia.gov is an open source site built by 18F, the digital services group within the General Services Administration charged with helping agencies meet their mission by developing digital and web services.
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An advocate for open records and open meetings in Tennessee said Tuesday that state and local agencies often broaden protections that don’t apply to them, and citizens and the media should keep them accountable.
Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, spoke to local media and East Tennessee State University journalism students on the issue of open records and open meetings laws as part of the agency’s educational program.
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Read More… from Can’t get a public record? Advocate says, ‘Write about it.’
Open government advocates are blasting a move by the Walker administration to withhold the names of some 40 parties who toured the Hill Farms site last month in advance of a sale and redevelopment of the 21-acre property.
“Is the state contending that the parties seeking a slice of this multi-million dollar pie will lose their appetite if their identities are revealed prior to the completion of negotiations?” says Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.
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Read More… from Open records expert: State wrong on Hill Farms case
NASA has been an open data operation since the passage of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, in the very earliest days of the Space Race after Sputnik. The agency has always published untold volumes of scientific data.
Yet the kind of standardized, machine-readable data demanded by the Obama Administration's Open Government Initiative remains a challenge.
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One of the core values of the American experiment is the idea of transparency.
Citizens have a right to know what their government is up to – how tax dollars are being spent, what public servants do while on the job, and why certain decisions are made that affect our communities.
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Read More… from Opinion: 10 times the government stonewalled requests for information
