Paul McAdoo, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press attorney in Tennessee, will talk about the Tennessee Public Records Act, including some tips and tricks for accessing information as well as recent court decisions in an East Tennessee SPJ program on Thursday, March 14.

This workshop will provide an overview of the Rhode Island Online webinar via Zoom. Department of State’s Open Government resources, including the Open Meetings Portal, the Lobby Tracker tool, and contact information for government officials.

Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFPF) is happy to announce that this year’s annual Sunshine Week symposium will feature a variety of voices from the center-right space discussing the importance of transparency, open government, and Freedom of Information (FOI) laws at the federal, state, and local levels.  In addition to daily essays, there will be a webinar with the authors on Thursday, March 14, at 1pm Eastern.

Public records requests can help you find new stories, expand beat coverage, spark deep-dive investigations — and you'd be surprised at how much information is out there! In this session, IRE executive director Diana Fuentes will share 25 different public records to request right now. This webinar is hosted in partnership with Sunshine Week, to shine a light on the importance of public records and open government.

Transparency in K-12 and higher education helps empower parents and other taxpayers to feel connected and drive positive change.

We hold this event each year to recognize champions of transparency. We give the following awards:

The Toby Nixon Award--recognizing life-time achievements.

The James Andersen Award--recognizing an individual who has done extraordinary things promoting the coalition's mission.

The Kenneth F Bunting Award--recognizing outstanding journalism utilizing public records or educating the public about the PRA/OPMA.

For the second year, LBA members will visit the LancasterOnline | LNP newsroom for a training session featuring a panel of seasoned attorneys from Lancaster and beyond.

This workshop will provide an overview of the Rhode Island Business Data Hub, a collection of interactive tools to explore business data collected by the RI Department of State. This workshop will also cover how to use the Corporate Database to find details about a particular business or non-profit.

Our annual public records conference, FOIA Fest, is returning as a one-day in person event on Saturday, March 16. Kimbriell Kelly, Assistant Managing Editor and Washington Bureau Chief at the LA Times, will headline the event.

Public records are one of the key tools journalists use to shed light on state and local government in Rhode Island. Hear from working journalists who use Rhode Island’s public records law daily to tell important stories and hold our government accountable. Learn the good - and bad - of public records law in Rhode Island.

NYC School of Data 2024 — a community conference that demystifies the policies and practices around open data, public interest technology, and service design. This year’s conference concludes NYC’s Open Data Week & features 30+ sessions. With programming support from the Open Data Team at the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation, our conference convenes city officials, technologists, designers, data analysts, and community members around open data, civic technology, and service design in New York City.

Hear top experts at The New York Times, Newsday, The City, and KFF Health News reveal how to break original stories using local and national Freedom of Information laws.

At this all-star panel, you’ll learn strategies to obtain records for investigative reporting that has impact and drives change, such as coverage of denied reproductive care, prisoner abuse and torture, illegal campaign donations, toxic dumping, and more.

The Freedom of Information Act, the federal law recognizing the public’s right to government information, is more than 50 years old but faces challenges old and new. The advent of the internet and digital records has created a new world of opportunities and impediments for laws originally designed for a hard-copy era. The panel, comprised of a leading FOIA scholar and two investigative journalists, will consider the state of freedom of information laws, including enduring problems like delay and access to law enforcement as well as potential solutions.