Blog Posts
Office of Administrative Hearings Gets Marching Orders on Improved Transparency from D.C. Council
July 8, 2021, by Fritz Mulhauser
The D.C. Council is recommending a dozen new actions by the Office of Administrative Hearings. Some are to address problems of electronic case filing and online public information the committee calls “critical.” According to the Council, information systems at the busy court are ”outdated and inaccessible.” Along with a half-million-dollar budget bump for added OAH […]
June 16, 2021, by Fritz Mulhauser
The Office of Administrative Hearings after years of delay this week agreed to set a schedule for beginning electronic document filing and publishing online case information including opinions. These have been routine in other courts in the District, and nationwide, for many years. The newly-confirmed chief judge, M. Colleen Currie, in her first budget hearing […]
Coalition Announces “Digging into DC” Trainings: July 20 Initial Session to Focus on Education
June 14, 2021, by Fritz Mulhauser
UPDATE 7/25/21: Video of this event is available here. Want to know how much DC spends on your child’s school? Worried about staffing cuts? Interested in the health and safety conditions of school facilities? We’re excited to bring together transparency advocates for the first in a series of “Digging into DC” trainings to help you […]
June 1, 2021, by Sandra Moscoso
This piece was written by DCOGC Board Member Sandra Moscoso and edited by Board Member Miranda Spivack. This post is part of a series that will become a case study in the upcoming D.C. Open Government Coalition’s open government education and training program. We are planning to hold our first session on Zoom will be […]
May 24, 2021, by Fritz Mulhauser
UPDATE 12/14/21: Research and press access is allowed in the eviction record sealing bill, B24-0096, passed out of committee December 1, 2021. Earlier drafts allowed access by court order but with names and addresses stripped off the files before release. That would have made the data useless for many studies, especially neighborhood patterns. The final […]
Public Comments Support Expanded Online Access to Records at D.C. Court of Appeals
May 11, 2021, by Fritz Mulhauser
Recently the D.C. Open Government Coalition hoped to review an appeal in progress in D.C.’s highest court, to weigh possible assistance with a friend-of-the-court brief. No button in the online list of pending cases allowed clicking to read or download the briefs electronically, unlike in D.C. Superior Court or federal courts elsewhere in town. Impossible […]
Coalition Presses D.C. Legislature for FOIA Improvement in Oversight Hearings
April 15, 2021, by Fritz Mulhauser
Three Council committees heard Coalition testimony during the annual hearings on agency performance this year in February and March. The Coalition discussed familiar themes: ending over-redaction by the Metropolitan Police Department of body-worn camera video and releasing files on complaints and discipline; ending years of secret opinions by judges at the Office of Administrative Hearings […]
Coalition Urges Appeals Court to Open Full Online Access to Records
April 13, 2021, by Fritz Mulhauser
With court papers now required to be filed electronically in both D.C. courts, and large majorities of people everywhere using the internet according to data from the Pew Research Center, the D.C. Court of Appeals is hearing from the public about online access to its files. At present only the docket—a list of events in […]
April 12, 2021, by Fritz Mulhauser
The U.S. Supreme Court once held that “a mandatory rule [denying public access to a class of court matters], requiring no particularized determinations in individual cases, is unconstitutional,” yet that was precisely the proposal advocated by every witness (but one) in the D.C. Council hearing April 8 on sealing criminal records in D.C. Superior Court. […]
Useful Summary of Open Government Rights – New from D.C. Office of Open Government
April 11, 2021, by Fritz Mulhauser
Published April 7 from the central D.C. government office watching out for open meetings and FOIA, see this handy “open government bill of rights.” Text seems generally correct. But note: Both “open” and “right to be present” have a new meaning as long as the public health emergency lasts (currently until May 20, 2021). Meetings […]