[open-government] Question about Freedom of Information Act

[Steven Clift]

In Minnesota since the 1970s we have had the Minnesota Data Practices Act
instead of calling in FOI. Bad branding, but the idea is that any element of
information is open to request, inspection, copying in any format in which
it exists

What tends to still be missing is affirmative obligation to publish data
publicly for all - either specifically or in general.

The biggest countervailing concern is that government has databases with
enormous amount of legally public information on individuals. Since in the
U.S. there is no standard privacy regulation of public data on individuals
(in Sweden and other places I've heard terms like "public register" that
come with reuse regulation) there is a serious concern that the easy
aggregated combination of this data (like knowing who has a deer hunting
permit, a teaching license, a registered pet, etc.) will erode individual
privacy through government complusory power.

Steven Clift
On Dec 6, 2010 6:58 AM, "Javier Ruiz Diaz" <javier at openrightsgroup.org>
wrote:
> 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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>
>
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