international – National Freedom of Information Coalition

Youth are Promoting Open and Responsive Governments!

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I learned many things last Tuesday. A young gentleman proudly told me of a youth-led initiative in Cameroon supporting government reforms by leading regulatory trainings for public healthcare providers. A young woman shared with me her desire to learn how to analyze the budget data her government recently made available. And another gentleman currently working at an NGO in India shared with me how social media has revolutionized the way local governments are responding and enhancing their service delivery.

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OAS Launches Virtual Course on Open Government for Public Officials in the Americas

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The Organization of American States (OAS) will launch, on Tuesday, August 26, the virtual course "Strategies for Open Government in the Americas" for 217 officials from the region, in order to enable them to implement strategies for the consolidation of more participatory, transparent and open government.

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DemocracyOS promotes civic engagement on both sides

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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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More than economics: The social impact of open data

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The national governments of the US, the UK, and other G7 nations have been focusing more attention on the economic value of open data, as opposed to broader societal benefits.

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Op-Ed: Transparency, legitimacy and trust

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The Open Government movement has captured the imagination of many around the world as a way of increasing transparency, participation, and accountability. In the US, many of the federal, state, and local Open Government initiatives have been demonstrated to achieve positive results for citizens here and abroad. In fact, the White House’s science advisors released a refreshed Open Government plan in early June.

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What Did My Government Do When I Was Taken Hostage In Iran?

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Google’s big privacy dilemma in Europe

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Google and other internet companies find themselves in a quandary over how to strike a balance between privacy and freedom of information as the top world search engine took a first step towards upholding an EU privacy ruling.

Google moved overnight to put up an online form that will allow European citizens to request that links to obsolete information be taken down — its first response to the ruling by Europe's top court on "the right to be forgotten".

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Supreme Court of Canada: limits on government disclosure include policy options

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The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) has issued a unanimous decision in John Doe v Ontario (Finance) 2014 SCC 36 that outlines the parameters on the ability of the public to access information under Ontario’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) that is prepared for the purposes of informing the deliberative processes of government bodies.

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InfoSec 2014: 17 Percent Of All Thefts In The UK Threaten Victim Privacy

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Seventeen percent of all thefts in the UK involve digital devices which are likely to contain sensitive information, suggest numbers obtained by Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and regional Police forces in the UK by communications firm ViaSat.

The findings were presented at the InfoSec 2014 conference in London, where it was revealed that the number of data breaches reported to the ICO has increased by ten percent in 2104, but the the regulator is only half as likely to issue monetary fines as last year.

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Open Gov Local Gov – Open Government Guide

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From participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre to social audits in Andra Pradesh to tracking snow ploughs in Chicago, many of the most iconic examples of open government innovation have been created not by national governments, but by cities, states or provinces. This is perhaps not surprising, since local authorities are often responsible for the tangible public services, from road maintenance to education, and sanitation to policing, that form the most immediate relationships between government and citizens.

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