[open-government] Question about Freedom of Information Act

[Daniela B. Silva]

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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