“Africa Rising” was the theme of the 2012 Highway Africa Conference, held in Grahamstown, South Africa in September 2012. The Highway Africa Conference has been held for the past 16 years as a way to bring journalists together from across the globe to share new ideas and to reflect critically on journalism, media, technology and…
Why do the citizens of some countries make far fewer requests under Freedom of Information (FOI) laws than others? In a fascinating new paper, Sarah Holsen and Martial Pasquier from the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP) set out to address this puzzle. Because many FOI laws are similar, we might assume that public…
Meet our Connectors. They are anti-corruption and transparency experts, social entrepreneurs, and journalists based around the world – Seattle, Buenos Aires, Guatemala City, Lagos, Manila, and Karachi –helping us to get the word out about TESTING 123. Beyond efforts to encourage their own networks to develop new and testable ideas for greater transparency and accountability,…
Recently the Government of Croatia hosted the Second Open Government Partnership (OGP) European Outreach and Support Meeting in Dubrovnik, Croatia. We kicked off the two-day event with a networking session to connect representatives from 16 governments in the region to nine access to information experts registered with the Networking Mechanism. This was the first in…
As an organization working on transparency and accountability issues worldwide, we received with great concern the news of a new rule proposed on May 23, 2012 by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NFMS), a sub-agency of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). According to NOAA, the fisheries industry generates more than $183 billion per…
In dealing with a butler who leaked documents about corruption inside corruption -among other issues- to a journalist, the Holy See decided to adopt what spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi called “unprecedented transparency,” bringing the case to public trial and allowing a small number of journalists to be present. The leaked documents revealed, for example, that…