This guest blog comes from Sunlight's Organizing Fellow, Tamar Gurchiani, who is leaving us today after a wonderful three months to head back to her home country, Georgia. We'll let Tamar (a lawyer, long time freedom of information advocate, and former TransparencyCamp scholar) speak for herself in the entry below, but first we have to note that we didn't pay her (or even advise her!) to make the way-too-gracious statements below.

Now, enough about us. Keep reading to learn about the current state of transparency in post-Soviet Georgia...and what's around the corner.

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Can the classified information in one country be publicly available in another? Yes if the first country is post-soviet Georgia, where unlike the US, “in the face of doubt, still secrecy prevails.”

In March of 2010, the Georgian government refused to disclose the contracts between the Security Council of Georgia and several US lobbying firms (including Orion Strategies, Public Strategies, and the Podesta Group). The contracts were requested through the General Administrative Code (the Freedom of Information Law in Georgia) by the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association, a non-profit I worked with before I came to the US to study law. During the litigation process, I was able to find the documents my country was hiding from us in the Sunlight’s foreign lobbying influence tracker.

At TransparencyCamp DC this spring, I finally met, in person, the Sunlighters who build those amazing tools for greater transparency. And, during the last three months, I had a wonderful opportunity to work with them -- the most creative, professional and inspirational people I’d ever met in my life. I had a wonderful chance to see myself how technology can be used for the public interest and how big its impact is on every citizen’s life in the US.

But who is responsible for digitizing the official data and then make it available via the Internet in countries like Georgia? The government does not necessarily regard the Internet as basic infrastructure like roads, waste and water. From 2000 to 2010 the Internet usage in Georgia increased from 0.5 % to 28.3 %. Georgian freedom of Information legislation was enacted in 2000 but no legal obligation exists yet for online transparency.

Transparency communities can grow if the basic infrastructure is in place and they don’t have a constant fear that the government will shut them down whenever it needs to. They also grow when government makes public information available to the public without lengthy and expensive litigation process.

A few days ago, the Associated Press published a new study on Right to Know Laws. The study found that the newer democracies were in general more responsive than some developed ones. Before that, Access Info Europe and Centre for Law and Democracy conducted the Ask Your Government! 6 Question Campaign where France, with a 32 year-old FOI law, was among the poorest performing countries and Georgia, with only 11 years of experience, ranked as number two among the best performing countries.

In 2008, Georgia was among the first 12 countries that ratified the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents - the first legally binding international document recognizing access to information as a fundamental human right. Not to mention the other commitments my country has taken within the UN, OECD and GRECO frameworks.

Why are the countries like Georgia the first ratifiers of those conventions? Unfortunately the answer not always the healthy inclination to transparency, but a response to so-called collateral consequences (investments, international reputation etc.) Somebody might say that nothing is wrong if a country cares about its image. I would agree with that, but I’m sure for many of you the French example came as a surprise. If this is the “result” of good reputation, no, we cannot afford it.

But it’s up to us to make sure that these rankings translate into better practice.

With this goal, in May of 2012 more than 20 Georgian partners including Open Society - Georgia Foundation, Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association, Transparency International - Georgia, Institute for Development of Freedom of Information and Open Maps Caucasus will make TransparencyCamp Georgia happen. Representatives of the Georgian government and international donors, journalists, developers and civic activists will gather to find out where we are now, what resources and potential we have. TransparencyCamp Georgia will be a great meeting place for both the people who already know what should be done and the people who know how to do it by using technology.

TransparencyCamp Georgia was inspired by TransparencyCamp DC, the most impressive part of which, to me, was its setting. Will an “unconference” - an event run with a certain level of self-organization, audience-driven agenda, and voting for the each presentation topic - work in Georgia where most of the (even transparency themed) conferences mean long monotone (read: boring) speeches?

I’d been asking these questions to myself before my first meeting after Camp with Sunlight’s Laurenellen McCann. At this meeting Laurenellen revealed Sunlight’s secret of success: experimenting and learning by mistakes. Few months later, Georgian Vice Prime Minister Giorgi Baramidze said at Johns Hopkins University that “with mistakes and failures we [Georgia] are moving forward.” TransparencyCamp Georgia will be the experiment and test for moving forward to transparency.

Sunlight's Organizing Team: Wishing Tamar (second from the right) well in continuing her work back home.

Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great work by covering local, state, and congressional political news. This week I have highlights from New Mexico, Georgia and Illinois.

New Mexico FBIHOP has been live blogging the New Mexican legislative session.  This year is a short 30 day session covering mostly budgetary issues.  Matt is doing a great job keeping on top of what is going on, along with the live streaming action on New Mexico Independent this legislative session will be well accounted for.  In the coming weeks we will be keeping track of the up and coming transparency initiatives in the state, so stay tuned.

Peach Pundit has a post about a former candidate for Governor's PAC, which hasn't filed a campaign report in a while, but had a great deal of money left over.   The blogger wondered if they had to continue to file if they had any left over funds. Apparently they do not have to disclosure left over funds and can do whatever they wants with it.

Illinois' The Quincy Pundit has a post about strange practices in the Quincy City Hall.  The City Attorney sent out a letter to people in the community, on official letterhead, basically asking them to not vote for a particular candidate for Mayor because that candidate would fire him.  Well, isn't that special.

I also wanted to point out this awesome article by MediaShift highlighting great work by 3 local bloggers from around the country.  I think this quote by blogger Chuck Welch sums up the local political bloggersphere perfectly.

"I think there are cases now where city council or city staff might be more cognizant that just because the newspaper reporter is not in the room it doesn't mean the community is not going to learn about whatever it is they are doing."

It is widely accepted that citizen journalists doesn't replace investigative journalists, however, that doesn't discount how important they are to keep track of local government.  With the recent court decision transparency is more important than ever we need people willing to dig through disclosure data and an active political blogosphere is where we look to find them.

Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great job of covering local, state, and congressional political news.  This week I have highlights from Wisconsin, Illinois, Idaho, Georgia and Hawaii.

In Wisconsin, the Critical Badger, has an interesting post about the current state of journalism and the future of Web 2.0.   The post is interesting because it talks about the important role of trained journalists to the blogosphere and that they can't be replaced.   Another problem is that the decrease in newspapers causes large parts of  public life to go unmonitored, which can make elected official less accountable in their actions.  The post also looks at the sustainability problems of political blogging.  Definitely read it, as well as all the great research the author sites.  How do we create a sustainable system that will compensate skilled journalists, as well as, the hard work bloggers put into keeping track of their communities and disseminating information.

In Illinois, Prairie State Blue points to a new county Web site that shows employees salaries and expressing support of the Clout Wiki started in Chicago that connects officials and the influence they have.  This is exactly why the work that LittleSis.org is doing is so important.  Creating comprehensive maps of influence can help paint better pictures of what is going on.

New West Boise has a post on how you can't look at government officials emails with the state's FOI laws.  The article goes on to say that there is very little in terms of email retention policies at the state level.  Given how email is used in this day and age it would be extremely valuable for states to start having email retention policies, as well as, making sure emails are available via Freedom of Information.

In Georgia, Peach Pundit has a post comparing Ethics Code and points out that there is little teeth is the code because it doesn't require lawmakers to be removed from office if they violate it.  There needs to be clear consequences when lawmakers violate ethics rules.  This is one of the first steps to clearing up some of the corruption that happens.

ILind.net has a follow up to Lt. Governor Duke Aiona's out of state fundraisers.  Apparently the video of the fundraiser was deleted from Youtube.  Was this a response to the criticism?