[okfn-br] Fwd: [OKFN-Local-Coord] Global South Local Groups: Help save a vital piece of transparency and open data legislation

[Everton Zanella Alvarenga]

Pessoal,

vou colocar as respostas ao longo da semana nesse pad <
https://pad.okfn.org/p/globalwitiness>. Se alguém quiser dar uma mão, dê um
toque. Vou tentar terminar antes de sexta. Abraços,

Tom
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Christian Villum <christian.villum em okfn.org>
Date: 2014-10-20 8:47 GMT-02:00
Subject: [OKFN-Local-Coord] Global South Local Groups: Help save a vital
piece of transparency and open data legislation
To: Open Knowledge Foundation Local Coordinators Mailing List <
okfn-local-coord em lists.okfn.org>
Cc: Sam Leon <sam.leon em okfn.org>


Dear Local Group coords,


To groups based in the Global South: we need your help to save a vital
piece of legislation. Take five minutes to answer these questions and play
your part in holding oil companies to account.

One of Open Knowledge’s partners, Global Witness <http://globalwitness.org>,
is reaching out to local groups and chapters from the Global South to help
save a vital piece of transparency and open data legislation in the United
States that is under threat.

The legislation concerns the disclosure of payments made by extractives
companies to governments. The aim of the legislation is to bring much
needed accountability to a sector that has the potential to be a vital
source of revenue for many countries across the globe, but which suffers
from corruption that too often diverts funds away from citizens and into
the pockets of corrupt officials, or sees huge profits going to
international oil companies. See for instance the OPL 245 scandal
<http://www.globalwitness.org/shellagm/> that Global Witness exposed last
year. More background on the legislation can be found below for those
interested.

Global Witness, on behalf of the Publish What You Pay
<http://www.publishwhatyoupay.org/> coalition, is appealing to civil
society organisations and Open Knowledge local groups from the Global South
to answer a set of questions that will help strengthen the case against oil
companies seeking to weaken this vital piece of transparency legislation.
The idea is to collate responses from civil society to send to the
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US who are responsible for
implementing this legislation.

If you or members of your group are able to answer these questions, please
fill in this form <http://bit.ly/1FpQXgp> [1]. We will not collate any of
your responses or share any of your details until we have sent a follow-up
email. If you have any questions about this campaign, do not hesitate to
get in touch with sam.leon em okfn.org.

This is a real opportunity to help make open data count, we look forward to
hearing from you!

[1] Questions form <http://bit.ly/1FpQXgp>


-Christian

---

Background

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is currently developing the
implementing rules for Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Act.  The rules will
require all US-listed oil, gas and mining companies to publish details
about their revenue payments to governments in every country they operate
in across the world.

The rules are designed to provide civil society organisations (CSOs) with
data on the amounts of revenues companies pay to governments, such as
taxes, royalties, bonuses and licence fees, from each and every project the
companies’ operate.

For example, communities living near mines or oil fields will be able to
monitor all the revenues that are generated by a local extraction project
and track them into the budget, and hold their government to account for
how the money is used.

It is hoped that this information will be useful to CSOs who want to ensure
that the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenues generated by natural
resources are used to benefit citizens, and to prevent corruption.

However, some oil companies are lobbying to weaken the US rules in two key
ways:

1)    The oil companies want the payment data reports to be anonymous –
companies’ names would not be made public, so that it would not be possible
to trace any payments back to a specific company.

2)    The payment data would not be disclosed at the project level.
Instead, data from many different projects in a geographical area would be
aggregated together. For example, taxes from all the oil projects in a
country could be lumped together and reported as one payment – they would
not be reported on a project-by-project basis.

To help ensure the SEC introduces strong transparency rules, the Publish
What You Pay coalition is encouraging CSOs to write letters to the SEC that
highlight historical case studies of CSOs using financial data or similar
information to successfully affect changes to government or company
policies in the past, in the extractive sector or any other sector. The
letters should also indicate that CSOs are likely to find the data from the
US extractives transparency rules to be useful in future. Publish What You
Pay can provide help to CSOs to produce these letters, which do not need to
be long or technical.

To counter the oil companies’ proposal for weak US extractive sector
transparency rules, it is vital that any evidence given to the SEC shows
that CSOs would benefit from using specifically company-level data and
project-level data to hold the extractive industry and governments to
account.

-- 

Christian Villum
International Community Manager

skype: christianvillum  |  @villum <http://www.twitter.com/villum>
Open Knowledge <http://okfn.org/>
* - See how data can change the world*http://okfn.org/ | @okfn
<http://twitter.com/OKFN>   Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/OKFNetwork>
 | Blog <http://blog.okfn.org/>


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-- 
Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom)
Open Knowledge Brasil - Rede pelo Conhecimento Livre
http://br.okfn.org
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