The Open Government Partnership Forum last week marked a step forward in its goal of encouraging transparency and accountability efforts among governments around the world.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the OGP as a support network for leaders and citizens committed to improving transparency in countries worldwide, according to an article from the Brookings Institution.

The program’s emphasis on multilateral cooperation is key, as it will take efforts from all levels of power and influence to achieve its goal.

Civil society organizations were mentioned during the forum as important factors in encouraging open government.

The OGP has a tough road ahead – promoting transparency on a global scale is a tall order to fill. But starting a discussion on these issues is an important first step, and the forum last week succeeded in that respect.

– Morgan Watkins

Morgan Watkins is SPJ’s summer Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern and a University of Florida student. Reach her by email (mwatkins@spj.org) or connect with her on Twitter (@morganwatkins26).

“OG Pod,” a new open-government podcast focused on transparency issues in Washington, is available for listeners to access online.

The program provides advice for people searching for certain public records or planning to attend various government meetings. It will include rundowns on developments in the courts, legislature and media regarding transparency issues.

For those who need advice on the nitty gritty details of the Open Public Meetings Act or Public Records Act, this podcast will dish out plenty of helpful tips.

The Freedom Foundation and Greg Overstreet of Allied Law Group, which specializes in open government legal matters, host OG Pod. Its author is Michael Reitz, who serves as General Counsel of the Freedom Foundation and is the director of its Constitutional Law Center.

Listeners can access the podcasts from iTunes and Facebook as well.

– Morgan Watkins

Morgan Watkins is SPJ’s summer Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern and a University of Florida student. Reach her by email (mwatkins@spj.org) or connect with her on Twitter (@morganwatkins26).

Good news: Florida records to cost a little less

Florida Gov. Rick Scott is making it a little cheaper to access public records, easing the costs his open records policy originally required.

The state won’t charge people for public records work that takes less than 30 minutes to complete, according to a post by the Orlando Sentinel’s Central Florida Political Pulse blog. It also won’t charge requesters for the first 30-minute period of work that follows if the search takes longer than the initial half-hour time span.

The hourly rate that requesters will be charged for the time personnel spend on their request will also be changed. The rate was previously based on the salary of the specific person handling the records request, but people will now be charged $19.43 – an administrative assistant’s hourly rate.

Ohioans call for transparent redistricting process

Ohio residents gathered at the statehouse Wednesday to promote the need for transparency in the state’s congressional redistricting process.

People advocated in the first of five planned legislative hearings for representatives to improve the transparency of redistricting by disclosing proposed maps for public feedback prior to voting and to encourage public input in the process.

State lawmakers have until December 7 to approve a new map of the redrawn congressional districts, according to an Associated Press article.

The Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting is running an online political contest where state residents can create maps that can then be voted upon by various users.

– Morgan Watkins

Morgan Watkins is SPJ’s summer Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern and a University of Florida student. Reach her by email (mwatkins@spj.org) or connect with her on Twitter (@morganwatkins26).

Joseph Duncan, a convicted child killer, was ordered back into court by the 9^th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals because of secrecy problems in his previous trial.

The federal judge who presided over the previous court proceedings had two mental evaluations of Duncan but never held a competency hearing before he permitted the man to waive his chance to appeal the death sentence he received, according to a July 11 Spokesman-Review article.

The high court has determined that there must be a “retrospective” competency hearing, which will evaluate whether Duncan was in fact competent when he waived his appeal in November 2008.

Duncan was convicted of the 2005 kidnapping, torture and murder of a boy from North Idaho, and if he is considered competent after this hearing his death sentence will continue.

If he is found not to have been competent, there will be another hearing to find out whether he was competent when he decided to represent himself in court. If the court decides he wasn’t, it would lead to another penalty phase hearing in which he would be better represented.

Previous courts have decided that Duncan was competent during their proceedings.

Secrecy was a staple of Duncan’s previous trial in Idaho, where U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge kept his mental evaluations secret by failing to hold a hearing in court and sealed various records from public view.

Some of the secrecy was due to the fact that the case involved the murdered 9-year-old boy’s younger sister, who survived the attack. In addition to killing the boy, Duncan also killed three other members of the household in order to kidnap and molest the brother and sister.

His triple death sentences are for his torture and murder of the boy.

Although some secrecy in such a case can be considered appropriate, the appeals  court deemed the judge’s decision not to hold a mental competency hearing unacceptable.

– Morgan Watkins

Morgan Watkins is SPJ’s summer Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern and a University of Florida student. Reach her by email (mwatkins@spj.org) or connect with her on Twitter (@morganwatkins26).

Congress considering extension of judiciary redaction abilities

The House Judiciary Committee approved H.R. 1059 Wednesday, which if approved by Congress and signed into law would indefinitely extend the ability of the Judicial Conference to redact information from reports on judicial financial disclosures.

Information that can be redacted includes any sensitive or personal data that would impact the people who filed the reports or their families. If Congress doesn’t extend the redaction privilege, it would expire on December 31.

The Administrative Office of the Courts submits a yearly report on how the Judicial Conference uses its redaction abilities, which helps the Senate and House Judiciary Committees evaluate if they have been improperly applied.

The Sunlight Foundation said in a blog post that these reports should be released online so the public is able to keep an eye on these redaction practices.

Gov to release more information on information technology investments

The Office of Management and Budget released new requirements this week that federal agencies will be expected to publish more detailed data online regarding their information technology investments.

This is supposed to give citizens a better idea of how government departments spend taxpayer dollars on IT services.

The new requirement is part of the IT reform plan that was released in December 2010 by federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, according to an InformationWeek article.

– Morgan Watkins

Morgan Watkins is SPJ’s summer Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern and a University of Florida student. Reach her by email (mwatkins@spj.org) or connect with her on Twitter (@morganwatkins26).

NSA whistleblower goes free

After the prosecution of National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake collapsed from felony-level charges to a plea bargain for a misdemeanor, Drake was sentenced to one year probation and 240 hours of community service July 15.

Judge Richard D. Bennett criticized the Justice Department for dragging out its investigation of Drake for years before dropping the bulk of the charges just days before the trial was to begin.

For a detailed account of Drake’s sentencing, check out this New York Times article.

The Government Accountability Project has also published a transcript of Drake’s statement to the press following his sentencing.

British Columbia first provincial gov to start open-data site

The government of British Columbia made almost 2,500 datasets publicly available Tuesday when it launched its open-data website.

Although much of the information was already previously available, the website makes it easier to access, according to a Vancouver Sun article.

British Columbia has also adopted an open-data license that will allow programmers to use government information without fear of being sued.

The province will also start posting FOI-requested data online here after the requester has had a minimum of four days to review the information beforehand – a caveat that will let reporters cover stories before others can gain access to the data.

For more information on this open government initiative, see this article from the Globe and Mail.

– Morgan Watkins

Morgan Watkins is SPJ’s summer Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern and a University of Florida student. Reach her by email (mwatkins@spj.org) or connect with her on Twitter (@morganwatkins26)

Whistleblower sues for info on Army investigation

Army Lt. Col. Michael Holmes, who opposed what he felt were illegal actions while serving in Afghanistan, has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit with fellow solider Laural Levine to gain the release of an Army investigation’s results.

The investigation was launched in response to a Rolling Stone article that detailed how Holmes had spoken out against an Army general’s alleged orders for information operations specialists to employ “psychological operations” on congressional representatives visiting Afghanistan.

These operations are generally used on insurgents, according to the Project on Government Oversight.

Holmes enlisted the help of a military lawyer to ensure that the activities he was to take part in were modified because he felt they would otherwise have been illegal for him to perform.

He and Levine worked closely together in Afghanistan and felt they were later subjected to an Army investigation in retaliation.

For more details on Holmes’ story, check out the Rolling Stone article.

Rumsfeld releases 2005 memos revealing his rhetoric on secrecy

In a November 2005 memorandum then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the system of government secrecy was, quite frankly, a failure.

He wrote that the government was unable to keep a secret and that policies should reflect that fact.

Another Rumsfeld memo from August 2005 raised the idea of reducing the amount of information that is classified – a goal that is being evaluated by the Obama-ordered Fundamental Classification Guidance Review.

While these memos don’t appear to have had any major effect on policy, they do raise interesting points about government secrecy. The documents were posted on Rumsfeld’s website on July 12 with more than 500 other memos that had been previously undisclosed.

For commentary on the memos and their implications, read this Secrecy News blog post.

– Morgan Watkins

Morgan Watkins is SPJ’s summer Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern and a University of Florida student. Reach her by email (mwatkins@spj.org) or connect with her on Twitter (@morganwatkins26).

N.J. court requires public officials to reveal cell phone call locations

Location, location, location.

That can’t stay secret when it comes to cell phone records, according to a New Jersey court ruling.

Public officials using taxpayer-funded cell phones must disclose the destination of the calls they make because such information is helpful to the public interest, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

The court case, Livecchia v. Borough of Mount Arlington, arose after after the borough redacted the locations of calls made by public officials when it filled resident Gayle Ann Livecchia’s records request.

Livecchia and other citizens can use the phone call locations, which must now be disclosed, to find out whether government employees are improperly using their work cells.

Federal task force to evaluate gov websites

Federal CIO Vivek Kundra revealed the names of 17 people who will comprise a .gov task force that will slim down government websites and evaluate potential policy adjustments for running such Web properties in the future.

Those appointed include IT professionals from various federal offices, according to a Government Tech blog post.

This task force complements President Obama’s “Campaign to Cut Waste,” which aims to cut unnecessary expenditures.

This includes paring down the 2,000-plus federal URLs in use.

Here’s a list of 1,759 top Web domains for the executive branch, as well as a Q&A page on the project that includes a list of all task force members.

Gov demands ACLU return classified doc

The federal government wants a judge to order the American Civil Liberties Union to return a classified document that was released to the organization detailing how employees decide which Afghanistan detainees are Enduring Security Threats.

The ACLU must respond to the government’s court filings by July 29, according to the Washington Post’s Checkpoint Washington blog.

The ACLU wants to post the document, which it says was improperly classified, to its website.

The Pentagon gave the organization the document, along with several others, in compliance with a court order requiring their release. The ACLU notified the government about the Afghanistan detainee document on May 25.

– Morgan Watkins

Morgan Watkins is SPJ’s summer Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern and a University of Florida student. Reach her by email (mwatkins@spj.org) or connect with her on Twitter (@morganwatkins26).

Although President Obama issued an executive order in November 2010 calling for agencies to narrow their use of labels like “Controlled Unclassified Information” and “for official use only,” the Defense Department is trying to impose even more restrictions.

The Pentagon proposed a rule in June that would permit new safeguard requirements for designations such as “Sensitive But Unclassified” that protect unclassified information from disclosure, according to Secrecy News.

The rule also requires protection of any unclassified information that hasn’t been specifically authorized for public disclosure.

This action, if implemented, would permit the further use of safeguarding labels. As a result, much unclassified information would continue to be kept from the public despite the Obama administration’s stated goal of putting more data into citizens’ hands.

– Morgan Watkins

Morgan Watkins is SPJ’s summer Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern and a University of Florida student. Reach her by email (mwatkins@spj.org) or connect with her on Twitter (@morganwatkins26).

ESPN suing Ohio State for records withholding

ESPN has sued The Ohio State University for withholding records regarding an NCAA investigation into its football program.

The suit, filed Monday, accuses the university of breaking state public records law, according to The Associated Press. ESPN wants the Ohio Supreme Court to force OSU to release the requested public records and cover court fees.

The university allegedly cited a federal student-records privacy law, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, that wasn’t applicable in this situation when it denied ESPN access to various records.

Requested records included emails between former Buckeyes coach Jim Tressel, who resigned in May, and a mentor to former OSU quarterback Terrelle Pryor, according to the Columbus Post-Dispatch’s buckeyeXtra.com.

FERPA is designed to ensure student educational records remain confidential, but it is often misused to wrongfully keep records private. SPJ’s online Reporter’s Guide to FERPA has more information on dealing with records roadblocks and related issues.

Vivek Kundra lays out his key points on open government

Vivek Kundra, the Federal Chief Information Officer, testified before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Thursday on government transparency issues.

In his testimony, Kundra mentioned 10 key principles for transparency that he said would serve as helpful guidelines in assessing the federal government’s $3.7 trillion budget.

Kundra’s major points included the importance of using common data standards and ensuring equal access to data.

For more, read Kundra’s entire testimony. You can also see his 10 principles listed without the extra information in this Sunlight Foundation blog post.

Kundra plans to leave his government position in August for a Harvard University Fellowship.

– Morgan Watkins

Morgan Watkins is SPJ’s summer Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern and a University of Florida student. Reach her by email (mwatkins@spj.org) or connect with her on Twitter (@morganwatkins26).