World FOI title up for grabs?

UK Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude speaks about a discussion paper on improving Freedom of Information legislation

 "The UK government is determined to have the most ambitious open data agenda of any government in the world. But we want to embed this approach throughout the public service and we want to hear from people about how they think we should do this." "It is an incredibly brave step for any government to become this open, but this is the approach we want to take in order to create public accountability and efficiency in our services and to drive economic and social growth."

While a couple of the changes for consideration sound somewhat old hat from an Australian perspective, there's always room for reflection:

Aiyaiyayai!

I'm in San Francisco gearing up for the flight home early next week, but a week ago spent a little time in Acapulco Mexico, a micro Gold Coast, where apart from the sparkling beach, the most enduring image is of a lot of guys in uniform standing around with machine guns. Not looking for sympathy mind you, but last Friday while I was there seven people died and five vehicles were burned, including four taxis, during clashes between gang members. On Saturday four died and two were hurt after they were apparently involved in a shootout. On Sunday police found a dismembered body in a residential area, five burned vehicles and the body of a 17-year-old boy on the road leading to a beach resort. By Tuesday I was a long way away when the police found three bodies, one decapitated, in the boot of a  taxi stolen from its driver.  Oh and the Mexican Tennis Open was on there at the same time.

Travel broadens the mind they say. Something close to normal transmission should resume here late next week.

The view from Mexico

I'm in Mexico after brief stops in Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica. Mexico's freedom of information law rated very highly in Toby Rendell's 2008 survey, but implementation generally has been hard going with some backsliding as explained by Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive, who I saw when I was in Washington recently.

Two years ago I noted these features of Mexico's law that didn't then have a place in our system:

• right to information included in the constitution
• applies to all public bodies including the legislature
• the principle of transparency must be favoured in the interpretation of the law
• failure to decide an application within the time limit is a deemed acceptance of the request and the information must be provided within 10 days for free, unless the independent review authority decides otherwise
• fees limited to the costs of reproduction - searching for documents and decision making not charged
• requests for information and responses themselves must be published
• duty to publish electronically as a matter of routine 17 categories of information including subsidy programs, contracts entered into, and reports completed
• civil servants who fail to comply or fully support the law are subject to administrative sanctions.

We've made a little progress on some but not all since.