During the legislative session that begins Thursday, Connecticut’s General Assembly will consider whether to uphold, repeal, scale back or expand exemptions to the state’s Freedom of Information Act that the Assembly recklessly passed las ...

Continuing a recent trend of embracing innovation and open government, Los Angeles shored up its reputation even more by appointing the city’s first Chief Innovation Officer this week. Peter Marx, appointed by Mayor Eric Garcetti, will be taske ...

In honor of Data Innovation Day the city of Philadelphia released a guidebook to provide advice and information to city departments and agencies on releasing open data. The city’s Open Data Guidebook offers suggestions on reviewing data for com ...

From 9News (Denver):  Colorado parents want to know their children's daycare centers are safe, but that got a lot harder after a state website crash last fall. 9Wants to Know has learned the Child Care Facility Search function failed in September, and a state-contracted computer programming company couldn't fully fix it for four months. The company, Colorado Interactive, has a contract worth $2.5 million per year to design and maintain www.Colorado.gov, the statewide government internet portal. The Child Care Facility Search is one of 400 applications maintained by Colorado Interactive. Users can input their address into the search function, which ...

Time for open government in the post-2015 debate read more ...

From the Daily Camera (Boulder): Former University of Colorado philosophy chairman Graeme Forbes warned faculty last November not to say a word about an outside report detailing pervasive sexual harassment within the department, saying he feared campus administrators would dissolve the department should the findings be made public. Forbes issued those instructions in a Nov. 20 email to members of the philosophy department that was provided to the Daily Camera this week by a faculty member. "Be aware that if this report leaks beyond the department and becomes a local, or worse, national, scandal, the continued existence of this department ...

A San Diego watchdog group is suing the city attorney, saying he is using his personal email account to do the city's business. San Diegans for Open Government is accusing Jan Goldsmith of hiding behind his private email account so he will not have to turn over certain emails. Attorney Cory Briggs is suing Goldsmith on behalf of SDOG, or San Diegans for Open Government. read more ...

It always rankles when someone elected to public office tells the people who put him there that they don't really need to know something about government. It further rankles when people asking for information are characterized as "nosy." But that is exactly what state Rep. Brent Yonts, D-Greenville, said last week as he explained to reporter John Cheves his plan for killing a bill that would provide more transparency about our deeply troubled state retirement system. read more ...

Civic Dynamics has announced its formation and unveiled its Civic Dynamics Platform (CDP), the first truly dynamic, open-data platform for local governments. CDP's underlying open-source software and supporting systems enable municipalities to publish open government data in a dynamic format that allows citizens to easily view, mix, match and analyze it. The company is a partnership with two U.S. companies, Structured Dynamics, open data and semantic technology experts, and Buzzr, a Drupal-based hosted content management platform for building affordable yet robust websites. read more ...

The bipartisan Open Government Caucus (OGC), led by a Seattle Democrat and an East Wenatchee Republican, hit the ground running at its first meeting this week. The caucus is co-chaired by Rep. Gerry Pollet, the Democrat, and Rep. Brad Hawk ...