Russia exits in OGP first

Toby McIntosh in Washington reports Russia has withdrawn from the Open Government Partnership.

"An official communication that it would drop out was received May 17, although it had signaled its intention several months ago and did not attend the ministerial meeting in London last month, according to OGP-connected sources. Russia’s letter of intent to join is dated April 17, 2012, but is the only document on the OGP website. A draft national action plan was prepared, but was never completed or submitted. Most other members who joined around that time have completed their plans. Russia’s withdrawal brings OGP membership to 57 countries. Russia is the only country to join and then leave."

(Update: See this analysis of the up and downside by Alexander Howard published at Global integrity.)

There's still plenty of good company there folks.

Serious need to know more

I guess you would expect some important Freedom of Information applications to follow when you open up vaults tightly locked for years and full of dark secrets. Writing in the Kyiv Post Jed Sunden's interest in the Holodomor (the death by starvation of between two and 10 million Ukrainians during a famine in the 1930s that Soviet authorities denied through the 1980's) led him to the FOI Act, and now to apply for documents about why the State Security Service declared him persona non grata from Ukraine in 2000. All a touch more important even than ministers' expenses....

While in that part of the world the Russian Duma passed the Freedom of Information Act last week. More details here.

New and old Russia.

Not inspired by Obama, but good news nevertheless from today's Moscow Times:

"The State Duma on Wednesday is to consider in a third and final reading a bill spelling out citizens' right to gain access to government documents and outlining punishments for officials who do not comply."

The legislation doesn't sound leading edge in some respects, but it's progress. Up to five years in the slammer for officials withholding information in some circumstances might sound extreme, but hard to argue with the example given of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, when Soviet authorities waited several days to release the news of the explosion at the nuclear power plant, exposing people to radiation.

All this would have sounded more encouraging if we hadn't heard out of Moscow the same day that a prominent human rights lawyer and a journalist were shot dead in the street after the lawyer held a news conference to protest early release of an army colonel convicted of killing a woman in Chechnya.

Open government a risky business in Russia

Just to keep our own FOI problems in perspective......

In "The Defender of a Lesser-Known Guarantee in Russia" the New York Times last week told a story of Ivan Pavlov of the Institute for Information Freedom Development, who is trying to hold the Government to a constitutional right to non secret information.

Pavlov was bashed and hospitalised recently, apparently as a result of this work which includes trying to convince government agencies that information in their possession - manufacturing and sanitary standards, court records, licenses, fire codes, public tenders, administrative decrees, agency phone directories - should be publicly available. It's hardly revolutionary, but still a battle there.

Pavlov says that the main problem in Russia (apart from getting bashed for his trouble), in the 'new era' after the end of Soviet policies of secrecy is that information is withheld by government insiders who want to sell it, not give it away for free.

Thanks to Charles Davis of FOIA blog for the lead.