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Council members and their staffs must use use official e-mail accounts for public business no later than March 1, 2013 to comply with new rules approved Jan. 2, The Washington Post reported. The D.C. Open Government Coalition sued the Council of the District of Columbia on Oct. 16 for access to emails exchanged by members' personal accounts where they conducted public business. The lawsuit is pending in D.C. Superior Court.

Data on D.C. restaurant health inspections and violations is searchable by name and location in a new mapping tool built by local interactive mapper Graham MacDonald, DCist reports. The map pulls public data released by the D.C. Department of Health each week to track violations. As DCist points out, this information is also made very accessible by the Health Department and cleanEats maps it as well.

A single speed camera has generated more than $11.6 million in revenue for the District of Columbia in the last two years, a Washington Post FOIA request found. The camera on New York Avenue in Northeast Washington resulted in 116,734 tickets during that period, the records show. The Post put together a graphic showing locations of the cameras that generate the most citations. D.C. Read more »

The D.C. government "has got to get a more clear policy" on government email sent from personal accounts, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) told The Washington Post in response to the D.C. Open Government Coalition's Oct. 16 lawsuit against the Council of the District of Columbia. Read more »

Courts awarding attorney’s fees to prevailing plaintiffs in D.C. Freedom of Information Act cases should follow the same model as the federal courts, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals held Aug. 23. Read more »

Results of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's quarter-million dollar "mystery rider" program will not be released to the public, the Washington Examiner reported August 10. Costing $252,000 in rider fares and taxpayer dollars, the program involves undercover riders who report back on the transit system. The multi-jurisdiction agency says release would share internal observations to be used in improving the system and may also contain proprietary and confidential commercial information. The Examiner reports that WMATA released a similar report in the past. Read more »

Security for Mayor Vincent Gray cost nearly $1 million in his first year in office, the Washington Examiner reports, but he spent less than his predecessors on travel and home-security upgrades. Metropolitan Police Department records released under the D.C. Freedom of Information Act show that taxpayers spent 37% less to secure Gray's home than for Mayor Adrian Fenty. And while Fenty took security detail along on his travels -- costing nearly $12,000 in 2010 alone -- Gray traveled without MPD officers in 2011.

Mayor Vincent Gray signed an order July 10, 2012 limiting D.C. employees' use of personal email to transact public business. DCist pointed to several examples of administrators using personal email in their public capacities. The order will require employees who do use private email to provide copies to their official D.C. email accounts. This policy does not apply to the D.C. Council or its staff.

In a June 30, 2012 editorial, the Washington Post came down on Mayor Vincent Gray's proposed amendments to the DC FOIA which would weaken the law. Specifically, the Post points to provisions that would broaden exemptions to the law without justification. "If there’s been any problem with the city’s FOIA laws, it is not that records are being disclosed that shouldn’t be," the editorial states. The D.C. Read more »