Here, the only assessment can be a failing grade.We remain bedevilled by the antics of those federal entities that invoke national security at the drop of a hat to restrict the dissemination of vital information to journalists and, in turn, the public. Perhaps this attitude is best exemplified by a recent exchange between a federal government lawyer and the Military Police Complaints Commission, in which the lawyer not only challenged the commission’s right to obtain certain government documents on detainee transfers but went so far as to indicate that he was not at liberty to discuss when those documents might be available. Add to this the countless delays and roadblocks put in the way of access to information and we are left wondering how the prime minister could praise the media’s attempt to hold government accountable while abandoning his own promises of access reforms so loudly trumpeted on the campaign trail.

April 10 saw the launch of OpenParliament.ca, which aims to make it easier to follow what’s happening on the Hill. You can quickly and easily search for topics, people, communities, and more, and see what’s in Hansard, the official record of what’s said in the house of commons. Hansard has been available online officially for some time, but the interface is clunky and unhelpful; OpenParliament is much more user-friendly and speeds the process up considerably. You can sort the records by the activities of individual MPs, particular bills being considered, and subjects up for debate. The site also provides RSS feeds or email alerts that you can subscribe to, giving you instant updates on what parliamentarians are up to. Click on Libby Davies’ profile, for example, and you’ll see what she’s Tweeted, mentions in media outlets, motions she voted on, and statements she made in the house. Individual Bills also get profiles, collecting together who their sponsors are, who voted in favour or against, and what stage it’s at in the digestive tract of Canadian democracy.

The strength of OpenParliament.ca isn’t the information itself, which was always publicly available; its strength is that it pulls it all together in a way that is intuitive, fast, and beautiful. We’ll definitely be keeping an eye on it. You can also follow @openparlca on Twitter.

Just yesterday, writer/activist/consultant David Eaves threw the switch on Datadotgc.ca, another citizen-built website meant to liberate the flow of government information. Here’s their own statement on the purpose of Datadotgc:

Unlike the United States (data.gov) and Britain (data.gov.uk), Canada has no open data strategy. This must change. Canadians paid for the information gathered about our country, ourselves and our government. Free access to it could help stimulate our economy and enhance our democracy. In pursuit of this goal, this website is a citizen-led effort to promote open data and help share data that has already been liberated.

The site displays a chart on its front page showing the sources of its data, and which ministries and departments are providing open access to government data, to how many documents and databases; tellingly, the bar chart shows a bunch of zeroes, for everything from the Privy Council to Defence to Health Canada to Fisheries and Oceans. Unlike OpenParliament, which launches with 16 years worth of publicly accessible records already loaded, Datadotgc.ca (a homophonous play on the .gc.ca government of canada domain extension) will grow over time as volunteers add more links to the database. The project seems more technically complex, focused on building a huge structured database that will be of use to democracy nerds who want to build other sites (like OpenParliament) that slice and dice raw information in helpful ways.

So, while the government may not be getting more open, citizens are doin’ it for themselves with projects like these two. Got more examples? Leave some links in the comment section below!

“While timeliness is the cornerstone of the Act, delays continue to be its Achilles’ heel,” said Legault. The findings of a special report tabled in Parliament this morning “show that little progress has been achieved so far to remedy the root causes of delay across the system.”

The bottom line is, important parts of Canadian government have become near-completely opaque, operating out of the oversight of citizens. They aren’t small departments or ministries, either: we’re talking big, important divisions of the bureaucracy, and their report card scores are much worse than “needs improvement.” The Globe story:

…core departments including the Privy Council Office and Foreign Affairs were singled out for slow response times and for creating a bottleneck that causes delays in other departments.

Five departments received F rankings and seven earned Ds, while the performance of Foreign Affairs was deemed so poor that its report card ranking simply states “red alert.”

There’s a little ray of sunshine here, the launch of OpenParliament.ca, which launched yesterday — good timing! — and allows you fast searching of Hansard records to easily follow what’s going on in the House of Commons. Different MPs’ statements are tagged by topic, party, and more. So it’s not all bad news. Just most of it.

In North America, text-messaging has a reputation for being frivolous, used to spread teenaged rumours, or the recent mania over “sexting.” But in developing countries like Africa, cell phones and text messages are the primary means of communication. And, not just for gossip.

Information and communication for development or ICT4D, isn’t just another fancy development acronym. Instead, it encompasses a booming cell phone industry which can be geared towards inclusive, empowering and cost-efficient development.

Frontline SMS is one of many ingenious programs that are helping non-governmental organizations connect with rural communities on a mass-scale. Basically, you plug your cell phone into a computer, power up the software, enter your recipients’ phone numbers and, with one click of the mouse, send out hundreds of text messages to the most rural of places. Returning text messages can be organized into databases like Ushahidi’s, essentially an abridged Google Map that visually traces events like Kenya’s post-election riots.

While Frontline SMS might seem basic—at least from the tech-saturated Western perspective—this quality makes it accessible and flexible. The human rights community was the first to put the software to test in 2005. Immediately successful, Frontline SMS first helped advocacy organizations like Kubatana track communities being abused by Mugabe’s henchmen. It was also used by the Nigerian Election Reporting Project to track voting in areas deemed too dangerous for election observers.

Over the past year, the software has become popular in other sectors. Here in Kenya, Frontline SMS is now being used in health and agriculture. Nelson Ojango, a young veterinary working with the Kenya Livestock Breeders Organization, uses the software to send out mass text messages to breeders across the country. They send text messages back detailing their current stock and breeding capacities. Health Action International‘s offices in Nairobi use the software to track medicine availabilities in rural clinics across four different African countries.

While computer access and skills are still limited in developing countries, Ken Banks, the creator of Frontline SMS, is developing a version that will run on a USB stick. Stroll into any Internet café and within a few minutes you’ve reached hundreds of people, hundreds of miles away.

Around the world, it’s looking like the revolution will be texted. As we see in the streets of Tehran, mobile phone technology, and software like Frontline SMS, have the power to threaten authoritarian governments, improve health and ensure fair elections.

Like all technologies, this one has its darker uses, too. While used to track violence in Kenya post-election, text messaging was also used to spread ethnic hate. Every communication technology has the means of spreading information—for both good and evil.