It’s a long-standing principle that people should be able to read the laws that govern them. But many technical rules and standards are hard to find and access, even for lawyers or court officials.
Police see some difficult scenes; body cameras can record those and make them public.
Tony Webster via Flickr
Police body cameras have the potential to make private details about people’s lives, including some of the most stressful experiences of their lives, public and easily accessible online
By looking at the evolving history of the open government data movement, scientists can see both limitations to current approaches and identify ways to move forward from them.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration said it would reject all freedom of information requests – and then reversed itself after public outcry.
AP/Teresa Crawford
One more casualty of the coronavirus pandemic: open government. Since the crisis began, local, state and federal officials throughout the United States have locked down information from the public.
Open data offers great promise, but also some risk.
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During Sunshine Week, three scholars of government transparency look at a potential collision between the old freedom of information movement and the new open government movement. Is there room for both?
Communicative and responsive leaders could well be the main ingredient for citizens to participate.
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Fajri Siregar, Centre for Innovation Policy and Governance
Complaint systems, such as the government initiative LAPOR!, will fail to build trust if bureaucracies are unresponsive.
The future of citizenship is more distributed, interactive and local than dealing with central government through new technology. That may be sad news for those who wish to interact with the likes of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in virtual reality if not in person.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz)
The disruptive impact of intelligent machines and new social movements will force us to remake citizenship into a more personal pursuit over the next 150 years.
Can the president block people from seeing his tweets?
AP Photo/J. David Ake
South Africa’s end of term report at the helm of the Open Government Partnership shows that it failed to meet key targets it set for itself. But it also shows improvements in some areas.
In the wake of the Arab Spring the international community lauded Tunisia’s political transition to democracy. But a plethora of challenges may threaten democratic consolidation in the country.
Fear dominates political conversations and slowly strengthens the acceptability of secrecy in 21st-century governments.
Ben Eenhoorn
The UK government has been ranked first in the world for its transparency and the ease of accessing government information by the World Wide Web Foundation’s OpenData barometer. The report echoes the Open…
Many countries still need to clean up their act on anti-corruption and whistleblowing protections.
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Despite the adoption of a third two-year G20 Anti-Corruption Action Plan, corruption received only a few lines in the latest G20 leaders’ communique. The credibility of the G20 as a whole now rests on…