Welcome to the new website of the Global Network on Transparency Research!

FOI News, Research and Updates

FOI update by Ben Worthy - January 28th 2025 (find previous updates here)

Research

There’s some very interesting reflections on FOI and wider areas, including lobbying….

Wagner, A. J. (2024). Editor’s Note: FOI Research More Important Than Ever. The Journal of Civic Information, 6(4), i-ii https://journals.flvc.org/civic/article/view/137909

Chari, R. New perspectives on lobbying regulation and reform: two generations of research. Int Groups Adv 13, 381–395 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41309-024-00227-5

Worthy, B., & Waugh, M. (2024). More open, more democratic or better at hiding? Two decades of local government transparency in the UK. Local Government Studies, 1-12. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03003930.2024.2417222

Just to flag, this new piece is an interesting attempt to work out when and why politicians support openness

Martinsson, J. (2025), Political Judgment Above Transparency? Results From a Mixed Method Study About Politicians' Close Cooperation With Interest Organizations. Governance, 38: e12912. https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12912

Data, Data Everywhere

Openness is often focused on laws but, of course, it is as much about platforms. Here’s a few famous ones to dig into…

·         Mexico’s famous and world leading FOI site: National Institute For Transparency, Access To Information And Personal Data Protection site https://micrositios.inai.org.mx/gobiernoabierto/en/ 

·         For the EU, here’s the quite vast and interesting lobbying portal https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/#:~:text=Welcome%20to%20LobbyFacts%20%2D%20exposing%20lobbying,the%20EU%20level%20over%20time.

·         And finally, for fun, a UK based visualization of the connections between Tory politicians and companies being awarded government contracts during the pandemic based on a wide range of investigative reporting, which I am passing along because (i) it is amazing (ii) it has amazing name https://www.sophie-e-hill.com/post/my-little-crony/

What to read?

·         Some thoughts from the Nieman Lab on what a second Trump administration might mean for FOIA https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/11/what-will-a-second-trump-term-mean-for-the-freedom-of-information-act/

 Classic Reading-something to dig into in these winter nights…a sometimes overlooked thinker on secrecy, who also wrote a companion book on lying in politics

·         Bok, S. (1983). The limits of confidentiality. Hastings Center Report, 24-31on JSTOR here  (taken from her great book Bok, S. (2011). Secrets: On the ethics of concealment and revelation. Vintage).