[open-government] Question about Freedom of Information Act

Andrew Ecclestone andrew at ecclestone.net
Mon Dec 6 18:33:27 UTC 2010


Hi Daniela,

You might want to take a look at the 2006 re-write of the Norwegian Freedom of Information Act, an English translation of which I have attached.

I haven't studied it in detail yet, but it does have provisions on re-use, which refer to the EC Directive on this subject.

Historically, Norway's law has (like Sweden's) been an 'access to finalised documents' law, rather than an access to information law.  Since I've not got into the detail yet, or spoken to any Norwegian colleagues about it, I'm not sure to what extent this new law moves from being 'access to documents' to 'access to information'.  But there are provisions which distinguish re-use of information generated by government from that in which a third party has the copyright, which shows some awareness of one of the key issues.

It's possible that someone in the Norwegian Embassy in Brasilia might be able to provide advice.  If not, maybe there's someone on this list who is familiar with the law and who can provide more information on how it is working in practice.  This would be particularly useful, as there's a lot in the law that is left to subsidiary regulations, which I don't have a copy of.

Cheers,


Andrew


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On 5 Dec 2010, at 4:10 PM, 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 S?o 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 "Transpar?ncia 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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