Reports measuring the "progress, or regress" two prisons in Erie County, N.Y., have made since a 2011 settlement with the Justice Department face disclosure, the 2nd Circuit ruled Monday.
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Read More… from N.Y. Court Casts Sunlight on Prison Reform Reports
Wisconsin open records advocates and municipal leaders have brokered a truce in a fight over police record redactions, creating a request form that allows the public to get clean copies if they reveal who they are and why they want the documents.
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Read More… from Wisconsin media, cities compromise on open records
In part one of my interview with Pia Mancini, a political activist, I investigated the technologies and background of DemocracyOS, a project aiming to become the operating system of choice for government workers. In part two of my interview with Mancini, she discusses the challenges DemocracyOS faces and how her organization, Democracia en Red, is working to overcome them.
Interview with Pia Mancini, part 2
What have been some of the challenges in developing DemocracyOS and getting governments and groups to adopt it?
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Read More… from DemocracyOS promotes civic engagement on both sides
After promising not to withhold government information over "speculative or abstract fears," the Obama administration has concluded it will not publicly disclose federal records that could shed light on the security of the government's health care website because doing so could "potentially" allow hackers to break in.
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Read More… from US Won’t Reveal Records on Health Website Security
All governments share a common temptation: to use their power to evade accountability. Several police officers proved it again last week in Ferguson, Missouri.
In the middle of heated demonstrations over the shooting of Michael Brown, two reporters – one from the Washington Post – got roughed up and arrested without cause by officers at a McDonald’s restaurant. The officers may have been set off by Post reporter’s refusal to stop filming them with a video camera. They were certainly set off by the journalists’ presence.
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Read More… from Editorial: Open government: The battle never ends
What's your dragon attack plan?
Freedom of Information Acts are a powerful transparency tool between governments and constituents. But they can also yield to some pretty freaky inquiries–as we found out Saturday when an organization of local governments representing more than 350 councils in England and Wales released a list of the most unusual requests they had received so far this year
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Read More… from These Are Some of the Weirdest FOIA Requests Fielded This Year in the UK
Now — from the minister who saved the government $15 billion without telling Parliament what he cut; the policy-maker who eliminated Canada's information-laden census and chopped Statistics Canada's budget by $30 million; the MP who siphoned $50 million out of a border security fund to build band shells and gazebos in his riding — comes Tony Clement's latest initiative: a "new action plan on open government."
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A conservative legal group on Monday plans to file a lawsuit alleging that the White House’s tight control over document requests has led to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) violations by 12 federal agencies.
Cause of Action said the agencies have not handed over documents that the organization asked for up to 14 months ago and that the requests appear to be under White House review, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by The Washington Post. The group plans to file its lawsuit with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
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Read More… from Lawsuit claims White House hindering FOIA requests
