International Right to Know Day

Today, September 28, is International Right to Know Day, a day where we celebrate and promote freedom of information and open government. Our government is pretty open, and has recently announced major moves towards proactively releasing cabinet material which are pretty much unprecedented. Still, we could do better.

The Ombudsman and the Privacy Commissioner marked the day with the a public Q&A session on Wednesday. I wasn't able to attend, but I'm looking forward to watching it on YouTube here.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to mark the day, I can think of no better way of doing so than using the Official Information Act to ask the government something. If you're not sure how to do that, go to FYI, pick an agency (the list of popular agencies is always good, but you can search), decide on something you'd like to know, and ask them. If they obey the law, you should get your answer in 20 working days.