Europe: Commission calls for action to unlock public sector information re-use

Commission calls for action to unlock public sector information re-use
<http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/itemdetail.cfm?item_id=4891>

(07/05/2009) European citizens use products and services based on the vast
amounts of information produced, collected and shared by public sector bodies,
such as car navigation systems, weather forecasts and financial and insurance
services, on a daily basis. But despite its economic value, estimated at €27
billion, much of Europe's public sector information, from statistics to
traffic information, is however still not re-used. EU rules making it easier
to re-use public sector information have had a positive impact on the public
sector information market, the Commission said today. However, it also noted
that the sector has not yet generated its full potential for the European
economy. It called on EU Member States to implement practical measures such as
making it easier to get a license to re-use public sector information, to put
an end to exclusive agreements, to identify information that could be reused
and make it easily available, to ensure that EU rules have a positive impact
on the economy.

The Commission today reported on the impact of common EU rules on the re-use
of public sector information (the PSI Directive) put in place in 2003
(IP/02/814). The Directive sets out how public sector bodies should make their
information available for re-use in order to remove barriers such as
discriminatory practices, monopoly markets and a lack of transparency. It says
that commercial re-use of public sector information is now being encouraged by
Member States, exclusive agreements in some Member States have been ended and
charges for re-use have been lowered.

The Commission's review confirmed the positive impact of the PSI Directive in
different sectors across the EU: in the geographical sector, the volume of
information, such as cadastral or environmental information or maps,
downloaded from public sector bodies has grown by about 350% since 2002. For
example, the popular personal navigation systems are based on maps produced by
the public sector, and their sale worldwide is expected to grow from 30.7
million units in 2007 to 68 million units in 2012. National meteorological
offices have reported a 70% increase in data downloads from 2002 to 2007, and
the EU meteorological market was estimated in 2006 at €530 million, a 60%
increase since 1998. This type of public sector information is used by
broadcasting companies, the tourist industry, agriculture and insurance companies.

However, the Commission warned that to realise the full potential of public
sector information for the EU economy Member States must remove remaining
barriers to re-use: discrimination between potential users, high charges for
public sector information and complex licensing policies. It also highlighted
practical problems such as lack of awareness on what public sector information
is available, and public sector bodies failing to realise the economic
potential of their data.

This can be done by ending exclusive agreements, avoiding unfair competition
and making public sector information resources easily identifiable and
available to businesses and the public, lowering costs for disseminating
information and setting up quick and inexpensive conflict resolution mechanisms.

The Commission will review whether this has been done by 2012, when more
evidence on the impact, effects and application of EU rules on public sector
information will be available. Until then, the Commission will closely monitor
implementation and application of the PSI Directive in the Member States,
particularly exclusive agreements, and encourage authorities to take measures
that facilitate the re-use of public sector information.

Background:

The EU adopted the PSI Directive in 2003 to overcome the barriers that limit
cross-border re-use of public sector information following a Commission
proposal (IP/02/814).
<http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/02/814&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=nl>

The Commission's review
<http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/>

Examples of commercial products and services that use public sector information
<http://www.epsiplus.net/products>

CPJ Report: 10 Worst Countries to be a Blogger

10 Worst Countries to be a Blogger
<http://www.cpj.org/reports/2009/04/10-worst-countries-to-be-a-blogger.php>

CPJ names the worst online oppressors. Booming online cultures in many Asian
and Middle Eastern nations have led to aggressive government repression. Burma
leads the dishonor roll.

New York, April 30, 2009—With a military government that severely restricts
Internet access and imprisons people for years for posting critical material,
Burma is the worst place in the world to be a blogger, the Committee to
Protect Journalists says in a new report. CPJ's "10 Worst Countries to be a
Blogger" also identifies a number of countries in the Middle East and Asia
where Internet penetration has blossomed and government repression has grown
in response.

"Bloggers are at the vanguard of the information revolution and their numbers
are expanding rapidly," said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. "But
governments are quickly learning how to turn technology against bloggers by
censoring and filtering the Internet, restricting online access and mining
personal data. When all else fails, the authorities simply jail a few bloggers
to intimidate the rest of the online community into silence or self-censorship."

Relying on a mix of detentions, regulations, and intimidation, authorities in
Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Egypt have emerged as the leading
online oppressors in the Middle East and North Africa. China and Vietnam,
where burgeoning blogging cultures have encountered extensive monitoring and
restriction, are among Asia's worst blogging nations. Cuba and Turkmenistan,
nations where Internet access is heavily restricted, round out the dishonor roll.

"The governments on the list are trying to roll back the information
revolution, and, for now, they are having success," Simon added. "Freedom of
expression groups, concerned governments, the online community, and technology
companies need to come together to defend the rights of bloggers around the
world."

CPJ issued its report to mark World Press Freedom Day, May 3, and to call
attention to online repression, a great emerging threat to press freedom
worldwide. CPJ considers bloggers whose work is reportorial or fact-based
commentary to be journalists. In 2008, CPJ found, bloggers and other online
journalists were the single largest professional group in prison, overtaking
print and broadcast journalists for the first time.

In compiling this list, CPJ studied conditions for bloggers in countries
around the world. CPJ staff consulted with Internet experts to develop eight
criteria that included governments' use of filtering, monitoring, and
regulation; authorities' use of imprisonments and other forms of legal
harassment to deter critical blogging; and the extent and openness of Internet
access. For further explanation of CPJ's methodology, click here.
<http://www.cpj.org/reports/2009/04/10-worst-countries-to-be-a-blogger.php#method>

--snip--

UK 5th in "The Electronic Police State: 2008 National Rankings"

The Electronic Police State: 2008 National Rankings
<https://secure.cryptohippie.com/pubs/EPS-2008.pdf>

Most of us are aware that our governments monitor nearly every form of
electronic communication. We are also aware of private companies doing
the same. This strikes most of us as slightly troubling, but very few of us
say or do much about it. There are two primary reasons for this:

1. We really don't see how it is going to hurt us. Mass surveillance is
certainly a new, odd, and perhaps an ominous thing, but we just
don't see a complete picture or a smoking gun.

2. We are constantly surrounded with messages that say, "Only crazy
people complain about the government."

However, the biggest obstacle to our understanding is this:

The usual image of a "police state" includes secret police dragging people
out of their homes at night, with scenes out of Nazi Germany or Stalin's
USSR. The problem with these images is that they are horribly outdated.
That's how things worked during your grandfather's war – that is not how
things work now.

An electronic police state is quiet, even unseen. All of its legal actions are
supported by abundant evidence. It looks pristine.

An electronic police state is characterized by this:

State use of electronic technologies to record, organize,
search and distribute forensic evidence against its
citizens.

The two crucial facts about the information gathered under an electronic
police state are these:

1. It is criminal evidence, ready for use in a trial.

2. It is gathered universally and silently, and only later organized for
use in prosecutions.

In an Electronic Police State, every surveillance camera recording, every
email you send, every Internet site you surf, every post you make, every
check you write, every credit card swipe, every cell phone ping… are all
criminal evidence, and they are held in searchable databases, for a long,
long time. Whoever holds this evidence can make you look very, very bad
whenever they care enough to do so. You can be prosecuted whenever
they feel like it – the evidence is already in their database.
Perhaps you trust that your ruler will only use his evidence archives to
hurt bad people. Will you also trust his successor? Do you also trust all of
his subordinates, every government worker and every policeman?
And, if some leader behaves badly, will you really stand up to oppose him
or her? Would you still do it if he had all the emails you sent when you
were depressed? Or if she has records of every porn site you've ever
surfed? Or if he knows every phone call you've ever made? Or if she
knows everyone you've ever sent money to? Such a person would have all
of this and more – in the form of court-ready evidence – sitting in a
database, waiting to be organized at the touch of a button.

This system hasn't yet reached its full shape, but all of the basics are in
place and it is not far from complete in some places. It is too late to
prevent this – it is here. Our purpose in producing this report is to let
people know that their liberty is in jeopardy and to help them understand
how it is being undermined.

OUR RANKINGS

Firstly, we are not measuring government censorship of Internet traffic or
police abuses, as legitimate as these issues may be. And, we are not
including evidence gathering by traditional, honest police work in any of
the categories below. (That is, searches pursuant to honestly obtained
warrants – issued by an independent judge, and only after the careful
examination of evidence.)


Our raw data may be downloaded here.
<https://secure.cryptohippie.com/pubs/EPS-2008-data.xls>

Here are the 52 states and their rankings:

1. China
2. North Korea
3. Belarus
4. Russia
5. United Kingdom: England & Wales
6. United States of America
7. Singapore
8. Israel
9. France
10.Germany

--snip--

UN Human Rights Council: ARTICLE 19 and CIHRS Call on States to Protect Mandate of Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression

 

---

From: ARTICLE 19 [mailto:press@article19.org]
Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 1:35 AM
To: lists@markperkins.info
Subject: UN Human Rights Council: ARTICLE 19 and CIHRS Call on States to Protect Mandate of Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression

                                 

For immediate release – 3 June 2009

UN Human Rights Council: ARTICLE 19 and CIHRS Call on States to Protect Mandate of Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Frank La Rue, has come under extraordinary attack while presenting his first annual report to the eleventh session of the Human Rights Committee in Geneva on 2 June 2009. ARTICLE 19 and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) condemn these attacks and express our support for the work of the Special Rapporteur.

ARTICLE 19 and CIHRS express our deep concern about the comments of certain states during the interactive dialogue on the first annual report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Mr Frank La Rue, which was presented on 2 June. We are alarmed by the nature of the responses of Egypt (on behalf of the African Group), United Arab Emirates (on behalf of the Arab Group), Pakistan (on behalf of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference), and individual delegations such as Algeria, Egypt, Malaysia, Sudan and Yemen to the Rapporteur’s report.

These states attacked the Special Rapporteur and his report on the grounds that the content of the report deviates from the Special Rapporteur’s mandate and violates the Code of Conduct for special procedure mandate-holders. In particular, these states opposed the Special Rapporteur’s conclusion that the concept of “defamation of religions does not accord with international standards on freedom of expression,” as well as his reference to a joint declaration of the holders of similar mandates of other regional human rights bodies which expresses the same conclusion.

Many of these states concluded their statements on the report of the Special Rapporteur by threatening to have Mr La Rue stripped of his position as a Special Rapporteur, unless he conforms to their interpretation of his mandate. We view this attack on the Special Rapporteur by these states as an attempt to intimidate the mandate-holder from exercising his independence and his own right to freedom of expression. We also view it as part of a larger attempt to use the Code of Conduct of Special Procedures to erode the independence of all Special Procedures mandate holders at the Human Rights Council.

ARTICLE 19 and CIHRS support the opinion expressed by many delegations reminding Human Rights Council member states that, under the Code of Conduct for Special Procedures Mandate-Holders, Special Rapporteurs must be independent in carrying out their mandate. Such independence must include the freedom to comment upon the subject of resolutions previously adopted by UN human rights bodies which, in their view, are contrary to established principles of international human rights law.

We strongly urge Human Rights Council member states to support the work of the Special Rapporteur, Frank La Rue, and the independence of Special Procedures mechanisms more generally.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

• For more information: please contact Sejal Parmar, Senior Legal Officer, ARTICLE 19 at sejal@article19.org or +44 207 278 9292, or Jeremie Smith, Director of Geneva Office, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies at jsmith@cihrs.org or +41 (0) 22 791 6448.
• CIHRS is an independent, regional NGO based in Cairo, Egypt, with offices in Paris and Geneva. CIHRS attempts to analyse and address the legal and cultural challenges to implementing universal human rights standards throughout the Arab region.

ARTICLE 19

ARTICLE 19 is an independent human rights organisation that works globally to protect and promote the right to freedom of expression. It takes its name from Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees free speech. For more information on ARTICLE 19 please visit www.article19.org

6-8 Amwell Street London EC1R 1UQ United Kingdom
Tel: +44 20 7278 9292 - Fax: +44 20 7278 7660 - info@article19.org - www.article19.org

 
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USA: Attempted Censorship by U.S. Attorney, A Book to Watch

 

---

From: plgnet-l-bounces@lists.sjsu.edu [mailto:plgnet-l-bounces@lists.sjsu.edu] On Behalf Of Ann Sparanese
Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 2:45 AM
To: PLG Discussion List; SRRT List
Subject: [plgnet-l] Attempted Censorship by U.S. Attorney, A Book to Watch

Attempted Censorship by U.S. Attorney—A Book to Watch!

 

On June 16, the paperback edition of Triple Cross: How Bin Laden’s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets and the FBI by Peter Lance will be released by HarperCollins. This is happening despite a prominent U.S. Attorney’s best efforts to stop it.

 

Since this book was first published in hardcover in 2006, Patrick Fitzgerald, US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago (the same Patrick Fitzgerald of the Valerie Plame investigation) has repeatedly attempted to have the publisher bury the book, and to prevent publication of the paperback edition. Lance, who is a five-time Emmy-winning investigative reporter with other books on terrorism under his belt, spent four years compiling “evidence that the best and the brightest in the two bin Laden offices of origin…had committed multiple acts of negligence in the 12 years leading up to 9/11 in their failure to stop the al Qaeda cell, trained by Ali Mohamed.”

 

U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald sent three threatening letters to the publisher charging libel, and held up the publication of the paperback edition for 18 months. (see http://www.peterlance.com/Fitzgerald_Libel_Claim_Letters_HCP_Response.pdf to read the letters.  Initially, HarperCollins did not react to the threats, calling the book “an important work of investigative journalism,” but when Fitzgerald continued to protest, using U.S. Attorney Chicago letterhead, the publisher decided to re-vet the entire book, which took a year. When finished, only a couple of inconsequential sentences were rewritten or corrected, leaving the essential arguments, evidence and documentation completely intact.  This is an instance of a publisher standing up to one of the most powerful government officials in the U.S., but it is also an example of the chilling effect of censorship attempts,  because for over a year Lance could do no other work than re-vetting every sentence of his book. Not a great situation for any author but perhaps the most responsible action by HCP in this case because now the situation is clear: though Fitzgerald’s name no longer appears in the title, Lance’s book remains intact and contains some new material, including a section on Fitzgerald’s attempts to kill the book.

 

I’ve been in communication with this author, and I really believe his is a book and an issue to watch. Until this new edition of Triple Cross hits the stands on June 16, it is still in jeopardy.  The first edition of Triple Cross received no major reviews, and most likely you do not have a copy in your library. I have a feeling the publisher does not intend to make a big splash of it!  Please read about it on Lance’s website (www.peterlance.com) and order it to make sure your library users have access to this information:  ISBN 978-0-06-118941-8. 

 

Whether or not you are totally convinced by the arguments in this book (meticulously researched material, definitely NOT conspiracy theories) what is important is that Triple Cross holds high level government officials accountable for negligence in their dealings with known terrorist operatives during the period  leading up to the 9/11 attacks.  It is unacceptable that this particular high-level government official has acted so aggressively to stop a book because it is critical of him – this must be the case, since nothing libelous was written.  If anything, we need more genuine investigative journalism and discussion of this kind.

 

And there is something else: For me, as someone who fought, along with many of you in ALA and other organizations, against the USA PATRIOT Act, illegal surveillance, torture policies, and other violations of civil liberties that have been foisted upon us in the name of the “War on Terror,” Triple Cross is important because it makes a clear and compelling case that official negligence, misplaced priorities, turf wars, and arrogance – not lack of the appropriate laws and methods  to fight terrorism – contributed greatly to the debacles that have since befallen the American and, indeed, the people of the world. And not one person high in the chain of command has been held accountable for any of it!  So (1) tell HarperCollins you appreciate them standing behind this book and (2) please purchase it for your library. Don’t let it be buried. Let it lead to more public examination and discussion of ongoing U.S. policies and priorities.

 

Peter Lance will be holding a press conference to detail the attempted book-banning on June 16th in the John Peter Zenger Room of The National Press Club. You can learn more about Triple Cross and get updates on Lance’s anti-censorship campaign at http://www.peterlance.com.  If you want more information about how Lance’s critical coverage of Fitzgerald might have led to Fitzgerald’s attempts to bury the book, you can read his attached article, “The Chilling Effect.”

 

Ann Sparanese, MLS

Head, Adult & YA Services

Englewood Public Library

Englewood, NJ

sparanese@yahoo.com

 

(Feel free to forward to others who may be interested.)

USA: Openness Ombudsman: Lucy Dalglish on the OGIS and FOIA - An interview with=?ISO-8859-1?Q?_the_RCFP=92s_execut?=ive director

Openness Ombudsman: Lucy Dalglish on the OGIS and FOIA: An interview with the
RCFP's executive director
<http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/openness_ombudsman_lucy_dalgli.php>
By Clint Hendler


Lucy Dalglish is the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom
of the Press. Earlier this year, CJR spoke with Dalglish about the successful
effort to establish the Office of Government Information Services at the
National Archives and Records Administration, a new office charged with acting
as an ombudsman for the Freedom of Information Act process.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giwsCOSZiS0>

USA: Objections to some books are on the rise

Objections to some books are on the rise
<http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009905310305>

Libraries try to balance parents' rights to challenge books with others'
rights to read what they wish

By Claudia Pinto
THE TENNESSEAN

The box of books Diane Chen stumbled onto at John F. Kennedy Middle School's
library was simply labeled, "Inappropriate to Shelf."

The school's new librarian wondered, " 'Are they worn out? Is there something
wrong with them? Are they potentially hazardous chemical journals for
would-be-terrorists?' "

The answer was none of the above. Scared that the books — such as The American
Heritage Dictionary 3rd edition, The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allen Poe,
and The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger — could trigger a book challenge,
a former employee had pulled them off the shelves.

Chen put all 50 of them back up.

Book challenges — written complaints, filed with a public or school library,
requesting that materials be removed or restricted — increased nationally from
420 in 2007 to 513 in 2008. The Library Association of America recently
released its list of the 10 most-challenged books of 2008, which includes New
York Times best-seller The Kite Runner and the teen drama series-turned-TV
show Gossip Girl.

--snip--

USA: Mine Safety and Health Administration Provides Test of Obama's FOIA Policies

MSHA Provides Test of Obama's FOIA Policies

  <http://www.ombwatch.org/node/10067/>

Despite the Obama administration's consistent theme of creating a new, more open government, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) has yet to prove it will comply with the administration's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) policies. In its response to a 2008 FOIA request, MSHA refused to release information that has been consistently released in the past. An appeal of that response provides a test of the administration's approach to implementing its openness policies.

On his first full day in office, President Barack Obama issued a memorandum about the use of FOIA, writing that the presumption regarding government disclosure should be: "In the face of doubt, openness prevails." Subsequently, Attorney General Eric Holder issued a memo to executive branch department and agency heads implementing Obama's directive. The Holder memo states, "The Department of Justice will defend a denial of a FOIA request only if (1) the agency reasonably foresees that disclosure would harm an interest protected by one of the statutory exemptions, or (2) disclosure is prohibited by law."

The memo further states, "[A]n agency should not withhold information simply because it may do so legally. I strongly encourage agencies to make discretionary disclosures of information. An agency should not withhold records merely because it can demonstrate, as a technical matter, that the record falls within the scope of a FOIA exemption."

According to an article in Mine Safety and Health News (subscription), a mine safety attorney, Tony Oppegard, filed a FOIA request Oct. 28, 2008, to MSHA for a client's investigation file, including witness statements. He had filed 135 such requests in similar cases, and MSHA had supplied witness statements. In its Nov. 24, 2008, reply, however, MSHA withheld every witness statement under the FOIA exemption related to law enforcement purposes and cited fear of disclosing confidential sources.

MSHA withheld the witness statements under Exemption 7 (information compiled for law enforcement purposes), and specifically under section 7(C) (an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy) and section 7(D) (disclosure of the identity of a confidential source).

The Department of Justice's Office of Information Policy (OIP) issued guidance to the agencies about implementing the new administration's presumption of openness. The guidance offers specific examples to agencies of how they should apply their discretion in releasing information. It states that discretionary releases are reasonable under Exemption 7. "Documents protected by the remaining Exemptions, Exemptions 2, 5, 7, 8, and 9, can all be subjects of discretionary release," the guidance notes. In addition, the guidance addresses sections C and D of Exemption 7 specifically and notes that discretionary releases are possible under both.

In Oppegard's April 16 appeal letter to Mark Malecki, MSHA's counsel for trial litigation, Oppegard called MSHA's position on withholding the witness statements "the most disappointing response to a FOIA request regarding a safety discrimination case that I have ever received." He called MSHA's decision to withhold the information under the two reasons cited in MSHA's letter "utter rubbish."

"Miners can only hope – and trust – that when the new Assistant Secretary takes office, he will put a quick end to the agency's blatant attempts to protect operators who have been charged with discrimination by miners," Oppegard wrote. He asked Malecki to review, under the Obama administration's new FOIA policies, MSHA's decision to withhold the information that the agency had routinely provided for the past 25 years.

Mine Safety and Health News (MSHN) reports that it, too, has had difficulty extracting information from MSHA through FOIA requests and largely placed the blame on the Bush administration's approach to FOIA. An editorial in the same issue of its newsletter notes, "MSHA is offering ridiculous redactions and refusing to divulge information which, previous to 2002, was openly shared with the public."

In one instance, MSHN requested the tape of a one-day training seminar MSHA held on the use of FOIA. The request was made four years ago and has never been answered. In another instance, MSHN asked for information regarding how MSHA made a legal determination of what constituted a haul road. MSHA supplied a response heavily redacted based on a FOIA exemption regarding trade secrets.

Lastly, MSHN has appealed another FOIA response from MSHA because of heavy redactions. In the appeal for a full report issued by the agency's inspector general, MSHN received another heavily redacted version, but this time, some of the redactions were made based on different FOIA exemptions. In its editorial, MSHN writes, "Regarding FOIA, MSHA is spewing red tape and accomplishing nothing, except alienating the American people – miners, their families, industry and the press."

According to the Department of Labor's (DOL) website, initial FOIA requests to MSHA are handled by the agency's district offices, and appeals are centralized in DOL's Office of the Solicitor in Washington, DC.

As OMB Watch noted in a May 5 article, agencies have been slow to implement the administration's openness policies. The change in the mindset of agencies will have to come from the president, OIP, and agency FOIA officers who have the responsibility for changing the kind of secrecy-first approach that MSHA and other agencies display.

( 06/02/09)

Sierra Leone: ARTICLE 19 recommends improvements to draft information law

ARTICLE 19 recommends improvements to draft information law
<http://www.ifex.org/sierra_leone/2009/05/29/draft_information_law/>

(ARTICLE 19/IFEX) - 28 May 2009 - ARTICLE 19 has prepared a note on the draft
Sierra Leonean Right to Access Information Bill 2008, prepared through a
collaborative effort of local NGOs and the authorities. The draft Bill is, for
the most part, a progressive piece of legislation which draws on better
international and comparative practice. At the same time, the regime of
exceptions in the draft is overbroad and fails to provide for disclosure in
the overall public interest.

ARTICLE 19 very much welcomes moves in Sierra Leone to adopt a law recognising
the right to access information held by public authorities. This is a key
piece of democratic legislation, as reflected in the more than 80 right to
information laws which have been adopted by countries around the world.

The draft Bill is generally in line with international standards and better
international practice. At the same time, there are still areas where it could
be further improved. Some of ARTICLE 19's key recommendations are:

- The law should include a minimum list of proactive publication obligations.

- More detailed fee rules should be set out in the primary legislation.

- The right to information law should override secrecy laws in case of conflict.

- The minister should not have the power to issue certificates rendering
information secret on national security grounds.

- The scope of some exceptions should be narrowed, while other exceptions,
including in favour of privacy, should be added.

- A rule mandating disclosure in the overall public interest should be added.

ARTICLE 19 encourages civil society and the authorities to continue to work
towards the adoption of a strong right to information law for Sierra Leone. We
would be happy to provide any assistance we can in this effort.


Click here for:
ARTICLE 19's Submission in English
<http://www.article19.org/pdfs/analysis/sierra-leone-article-19-analysis-of-information-bill.pdf>

N/A

ARTICLE 19 submits comments to World Bank Information Policy Review
<http://www.ifex.org/international/2009/05/29/world_bank_review/>

(ARTICLE 19/IFEX) - 27 May 2009 - The Global Transparency Initiative, of
which ARTICLE 19 is a founding member, provided two submissions on 22 May 2009
to the World Bank's formal review of its information disclosure policy. One is
the GTI's Model World Bank Policy on Disclosure of Information, our statement
of what an ideal Bank disclosure policy should look like. The other is our
Comments on the World Bank's Approach Paper, Toward Greater Transparency:
Rethinking the World Bank's Disclosure Policy.

ARTICLE 19 and the GTI welcome efforts by the World Bank to review their
Policy on Disclosure of Information, which currently fails to conform to best
practice at other International Financial Institutions (IFIs), as well as
international standards on openness, as encapsulated in the GTI's Transparency
Charter for International Financial Institutions: Claiming our Right to Know.

The GTI was founded in 2004 with a mandate to promote openness at the IFIs,
which we believe is essential to holding these institutions to account, to
improving development effectiveness and limiting potential negative impact,
and to building local ownership and control.

We particularly welcome the Bank's call for a "paradigm shift" in access to
Bank-held information, and its commitment to move to a true presumption of
openness, whereby all Bank information is accessible, subject only to a list
of narrow and clearly defined exceptions.

Our analysis of the Approach Paper, however, as detailed in our Comments,
indicates that the Bank's concrete proposals fail to implement this stated
commitment in practice. Some of the GTI's key criticisms of the proposals are:

- The lack of a clear vision on the links between openness, poverty reduction
and the Bank's overarching "empowerment" mandate.

- An overly broad regime of exceptions which grants third parties a veto over
disclosure and which are not harm-based.

- The absence of a proper test for disclosure in the overall public interest.

- The failure to provide for an independent appeals body.

- The lack of clear progress on timely access to information for participation
in decision-making, in particular for project affected peoples.

ARTICLE 19 and the GTI recognise that it is easier to criticise that to
create. The Model World Bank Policy is our positive statement of the approach
which we believe an IFI disclosure policy should take. It provides a strong
statement of the right to information, alongside practical provisions to give
effect to this right, including:

- A commitment to the automatic disclosure of a wide range of information,
including to facilitate participation in decision-making.

- Clear and progressive rules on the processing of requests.

- A narrow regime of exceptions (constraints) based on a clear risk of harm to
protected interests and a public interest override.

- A broad right to appeal refusals to disclose information to the Inspection
Panel, an oversight body which is independent of Bank management.

- A strong and yet practical set of promotional measures to ensure fulsome
implementation of the policy.

We urge the Bank to take both our criticisms and our vision, as set out in the
Model Policy, into account when preparing its draft information disclosure
policy. We also call on the Bank to release a draft policy in a timely fashion
to allow for public comment and input before a revised policy is sent to the
Board for approval.

Click here for:
ARTICLE 19's Model Policy
<http://www.article19.org/pdfs/analysis/world-bank-model-world-bank-policy-on-disclosure-of-information.pdf>

Click here for:
ARTICLE 19's Comments
<http://www.article19.org/pdfs/analysis/world-bank-article-19-and-gti-joint-analysis-on-world-bank-s-information-dis.pdf>