The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Posts Tagged ‘Transparency Watch’
Journalism organizations call for greater transparency
Last week, The Association of Health Care Journalists, along with IRE and five other journalism and open-government groups, sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture calling for the release of public information about the country’s food stamp program. From the AHCJ blog: Currently, the USDA refuses to reveal how much money individual retailers…
Read MoreFear drives lack of public access in Maine
By Judy Meyer Maine is moving in the wrong direction when it comes to public access. Blame technology. The very computer systems and databases created to improve the flow of information and ease public access are now being held up, by lawmakers, as troublesome portals to be sealed shut in the interest of personal privacy.…
Read MoreWhat journalists can learn from this year’s Sunshine Week
Journalists don’t need more reason to celebrate public records, but Sunshine Week provides a time for swapping tips and tricks, successes and horror stories. The EditorialMatters blog in Iowa spent the week posting tips like advice on requesting records, finding stories in those records, and avoiding all-too-common mistakes. Watchdog Wire shared their own tips on…
Read MoreDraft bill would create single portal for records requests
Bloomberg reports today that two lawmakers in the U.S. House plan to release a draft bill that would create a single portal for federal records requests. According to draft legislation obtained by Bloomberg, the bill would put the burden on the fedreal government to prove why information should be withheld if requested under the Freedom of…
Read MoreMuch judicial secrecy in Consumer Protection Safety Commission case
Two years ago, the federal Consumer Protection Safety Commission launched saferproducts.gov, an online tool for consumers to review complaints and warnings about hazardous products. Since it launched, Fair Warning reports, the first lawsuit by a business attempting to conceal a complaint is “blazing new trails in judicial secrecy.” “Thanks to closed-door hearings, sealed records and…
Read MorePublic records in Arlington County, Va., come at high price
The Arlington Gazette Packet reports that public records in Arlington come at a high price compared to neighboring areas in northern Virginia. Throughout Virginia, access to open records remains spotty. The State Integrity project, which ranks states based on their level of transparency, placed Virginia 47 and gave it a failing grade. Now, Michael Lee…
Read MoreUsing DocumentCloud, FOIA Project to track requests, responses by agency
The FOIA Project has documented more evidence of what its staff calls apparent failure of the Obama administration to fulfill transparency promises, and an upcoming expansion of the project could be a step toward establishing definitive evidence regarding the administration’s level of transparency. At the end of December, the DocumentCloud-powered venture from the Transactional…
Read MoreSan Antonio withholds employee identifiers, with backing from Attorney General
By Joe Yerardi Back in September, I filed a public records request with the City of San Antonio asking for their last five years of payroll data. When I received the responsive records earlier this month, I was surprised to find that the data did not include employee identification numbers. As any data journalist worth…
Read MoreCourt dismisses FOIA lawsuit, upholds secrecy in drone killings of U.S. citizens
A federal court in Manhattan yesterday dismissed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit involving both The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union, who each sued the United States Department of Justice over records regarding the targeted drone killing of U.S. citizens Anwar Al-Awlaki and Samir Khan and Al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Abdulrahman in the…
Read MoreIn Pennsylvania, culture of secrecy, Right to Know Law remain work in progress
Pennsylvania’s records laws were for many years among the most restrictive in the country, and though the letter of the law has since improved drastically, freedom of information advocates say the spirit of the law has lagged. Pennsylvania overhaul of its Right to Know Law four years ago was a major victory for government transparency,…
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