An Interesting Symposium Article on Access...

This is a nice summation of the current law of access as it applies to environmental issues, and a call for reform...

A glance at the piece reveals some nice arguments:

Where does this leave us? In my view, there is now a significant and growing dissonance between the promises made by our federal right-to-know laws and their performance. Part of the problem, of course, is entrenched resistance by government officials (of both political parties) to giving the public the ability to stand over their shoulders while they do their jobs. People do not want to do their work in a fishbowl. Legislation cannot change human nature. Nor can legislation safeguard access-to-information laws from subversion by administrations hostile to the ideal of openness. But there is much that legislation could do to recalibrate the way our right-toknow laws work in practice. In my view, it is time to overhaul our nation's right-to-know laws in three important ways:First, right-to-know laws should place an affirmative duty on the government to make environmental information available to the public.

The article is here.

North Carolina Access: A Report Card

Good to see state-based evaluations of transparency like this report from North Carolina's John Locke Foundation -- thanks to Mark Tapscott for the heads up...

Seven state agencies earn failing grades, when it comes to making budget and spending information available online. Twenty of 22 agencies studied earned no better than a D-plus grade, according to a new John Locke Foundation Spotlight report.

The report assigns F’s to the departments of Commerce, Correction, Environment and Natural Resources, Insurance, Justice, Transportation, and the State Treasurer. The only state agencies to escape a D or F grade were the Clean Water Management Trust Fund, with a C, and the Department of Public Instruction, C-minus.

Those poor grades are not unique to state agencies. The JLF Transparency Report Card 2008 highlights transparency problems at all levels of North Carolina government, said report co-author Chad Adams, JLF Vice President for Development and director of the Center for Local Innovation. “The average grade for a state agency covered in this report is a D-minus,” he said. “No North Carolina city or school system in this report earns better than a C grade, and no county earns more than a C-minus.”

The report card is designed to spur improvement within state and local governments, Adams said. “This state, home to national banks that update their customers’ accounts instantly anywhere around the world, woefully lags in making spending transparent at every level,” he said. “North Carolina and its local governments need to do more.”

Adams and JLF Fiscal Policy Analyst Joseph Coletti evaluated the Web sites of 22 state agencies, North Carolina’s 10 largest cities, 10 largest counties, and 10 highest-spending school districts. Each earned a letter grade from A to F based on the “degree of difficulty” presented to citizens hoping to find line-item budgets, annual financial reports, and information about government contracts, grants to non-profit groups, and personnel data.

As a group, the cities earned the highest marks with an overall grade of C-minus. Counties earned an average D-plus grade; local school districts, D; and state agencies, D-minus.

The report noted some bright spots. The Department of Public Instruction, Community College system, and University of North Carolina system all earned B grades for presenting school enrollment and graduation rate information. The Clean Water Management Trust Fund earned a B for documenting its grants to nonprofits. The clean water fund, departments of Labor and Revenue, and the Office of State Budget and Management all earned B’s for presenting detailed budget information.

But 10 agencies earned more F’s than passing grades. The departments of Justice and Transportation earned F grades in every category.

More here.

World Press Freedom Study...

The study itself is here...

A new worldwide poll finds widespread support for freedom of the press and strong opposition to government restrictions on Internet access. Although most publics surveyed believe the media in their countries should have more freedom, those polled in Russia and many Muslim countries think their leaders should be able to regulate news coverage they consider politically destabilizing.

WorldPublicOpinion.org is releasing the new 20-country poll in advance of World Press Freedom Day on May 3. The survey, which includes 18,122 respondents, is one of a series conducted by WPO this year to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19 of the declaration states that everyone has the right to “receive and impart information and ideas through any media.”

WorldPublicOpinion.org is a collaborative project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland that involves research centers around the world. The countries studied represent about 59 percent of the world’s population and include China, the United States, Russia and India. Not all questions were asked in every country.

Majorities in all but two of the countries polled say “people should have the right to read whatever is on the Internet.” This includes seven out of ten in China, where the government has imposed restrictions on Internet access. Overall, 60 percent of those polled favor the right to full access.

Only a third of those polled around the world (32%) say the government “should have the right to prevent people from having access to some things on the Internet.” Jordan is the only country where a majority (63%) favors such restrictions, though a plurality of Iranians agree by a margin of 44 percent to 32 percent.

The broader principle of press freedom gets even wider support. Majorities in all countries polled consider it important for the “media to be free to publish news and ideas without government control.” An average of 82 percent say this is important, including 53 percent who consider it very important. Similarly majorities in all of the countries or an overall average of 79 percent say that people in their country should “have the right to read publications from all other countries including those that might be considered enemies.”

“The principle that the media should be free of government control receives robust support from all corners of the world,” said Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org. “With few exceptions, people think that the Internet should be free of government control as well.”

Majorities in ten nations polled think that the media in their country should have more freedom: Mexico (75%), Nigeria (70%), China (66%), South Korea (65%), Egypt (64%), the Palestinian Territories (62%), Azerbaijan (57%), Jordan (56%), Indonesia (53%) and Peru (51%). In no country does more than one in three favor giving the media less freedom. On average across all nations polled, 50 percent say they would like their media to have more freedom, 14 percent less freedom and 31 percent the same amount.

The biggest area of controversy is over whether the government should have the “right to prevent the media from publishing information that it thinks will be politically destabilizing.” In the majority of countries the dominant view is that it should not and on average 55 percent have this view.

However, in six-majority Muslim countries plus Russia substantial numbers think the government should have the right to restrict politically sensitive information. Majorities favor government controls in Jordan (66%), the Palestinian Territories (59%), and Indonesia (56%) while a plurality does in Iran (a plurality (45 to 31%). Views are evenly divided in Egypt, Turkey and Russia.

But this does not mean that these publics favor greater government regulation. In four of these countries, majorities think the media should have more freedom: Egypt (64%), the Palestinian Territories (62%), Jordan (56%) and Indonesia (53%). In the others, most want the media to have the same amount or more freedom, with only small minorities saying it should have less: Iran (9%), Russia (17%), Turkey (30%) and India (32%).

The countries included in this study are China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Britain, Egypt, France, Iran, Jordan, Mexico, Peru, Poland, South Korea, Turkey, Ukraine, and the Palestinian Territories. Polling was conducted between January 10 and March 20, 2008.