[open-government] Question about Freedom of Information Act

Mon Dec 6 12:58:06 UTC 2010

Ola Daniela

in UK the government has just announced their intention to amend the Freedom of Information Act to include a "right to data". We are trying to figure out what they mean by this. Although they seem to be following quite closely the advice from the hacker community here in terms of data catalogues, etc., when it comes to legislation we don't know how they will behave.

When we raised this in the OGD camp in London some people were critical of the need for a specific right to data as separate from information. We agreed we would carry on discussions on this important topic. For us it is very important as we need to engage with this in the coming year and also find little examples.

Do you have any links to the texts for the Brazilian law? 

best, Javier

On 5 Dec 2010, at 03:10, Daniela B. Silva wrote:

> Hi, everyone!
> 
> Hope you are all very happy with hacks and projects that came/are coming out from the Hackathon today :)
> 
> During our São Paulo event, there is a group of people working on a letter to present to our senators, asking them to promptly vote for a bill that corresponds to our Freedom of Information Act (or Access to Information Law). 
> 
> Yes, believe me, we still don't have one of those in Brazil. A bill was presented by our executive government in 2003, delayed until 2009 and voted by our House of Representatives earlier this year. Than we had elections in the middle of the process... and now we are waiting.
> 
> The sad thing is, since the bill got to brazilian Senate, every possible "trick" that can be used to delay it has been used, so we are almost sure there is no chance it will be voted this year or not even during early 2011.. But the good thing is, before it was voted on the House of Representatives, we (hackers and open data advocates from the "Transparência Hacker" community) were consulted about the text, so we could adapt it to the open data principles – I mean, if the law passes, not only people will have an instrument to ask for public data, as governments will be enforced by law to publish data actively, timely and in open and machine readable formats. 
> 
> What we are trying to do on this letter is to demand that the bill is listed on the Senate's agenda as soon as possible. And also to signalize to our senators that, if this bill passes the way it is, with no amendments or exclusions of open data policies, we will have a democratic instrument that is not only essential, but also powerful and up to date – but maybe we need some comparisons for that.
> 
> So, my question is: does anybody there know of countries that have open data principles (or maybe other sort of relevant openness principles) expressed on its Freedom of Information Act, or at a law that has this sort of federal impact? We know more about great achievements that came from memorandums, motions, directives and local regulations... But we couldn't recall any federal laws or anything comparable for open data that can be cited. 
> 
> We don't even know if this sort of comparison makes sense. Just brainstorming here after many hours of event! So let us know if you have any insights that can help :)
> 
> Daniela
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