This will be the last Newsbrief of 2014. See you in 2015!
News from the parliamentary monitoring community:
In India, PRS Legislative Research held its 7th annual Conference on Effective Legislatures, which featured several lectures exploring the ways in which the parliament can more effectively fulfill its mandate. In preparation for the conference, which took place on December 9, PRS Legislative Research drafted three discussion papers on Parliament’s Role in Financial Oversight, Parliament as a Law Making Body, and Parliamentary Oversight of the Executive.
In Tunisia, Al Bawsala published a report on the development of rules of procedure in the National Constituent Assembly. The report also includes the organization’s recommendations for changes to the rules of procedure that would strengthen the Assembly and make it more transparent.
In Croatia, noting increasing public distrust of politicians and members of parliament, GONG has released recommendations to improve the management of conflicts of interest and strengthen public integrity systems.
In Kenya, Mzalendo launched the People’s Shujaaz Awards to recognize members of parliament in the National Assembly and Senate that have served as champions of the public interest.
In Malaysia, Sinar Project launched BillWatcher, making it easier to find, search for, and discuss pieces of legislation introduced in the Malaysian parliament.
In Australia, OpenAustralia.org – a website built and managed by the Open Australia Foundation – now includes searchable data on how members of parliament vote.
In Georgia, Transparency International Georgia organized Anti-Corruption Week 2014, a series of events on December 3-9 to discuss Georgia’s anti-corruption framework. Among other topics, the role that the legislature plays in promoting and ensuring a national culture of anti-corruption was discussed, including the legislature’s weaknesses in this area.
In Pakistan, the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT) published a report on Round VI of the India-Pakistan Parliamentarians Dialogue, which took place on December 11-12.
In Argentina, the Electoral Route – a project by Poder Ciudadano, CIPPEC, and Andy Tow – visualizes campaign contribution data from 2007-2013, making it easy to see which regions of the country have donated to which politicians.
Open Knowledge launched the Global Open Data Index which, among other topics, assesses the extent to which legislation is made available online in open formats.
In Liberia, the Institute for Research and Democratic Development (IREDD) released its latest parliamentary monitoring report, a summary of which can be seen here.
In Jordan, Al Hayat Center released their 4th weekly report on the performance of the 17th Jordanian Parliament. See their report here.
In the UK, Democracy Club built YourNextMP, a comprehensive database of candidates for the 2015 general election. YourNextMP has been endorsed by mySociety.
In Germany, Parliament Watch is raising funds to bring the Parliament Watch platform to state level parliaments, allowing citizens to interact with local elected officials.
Other Related News:
In the UK, the House of Commons’ Procedures Committee released a report making recommendations for the creation of an e-petition system that would allow citizen to petition MPs.
The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies’ HackerLab hosted a hackathon on gender and citizenship. Read more about the fantastic tools that were developed during the event here.
A number of open parliament projects and groups are represented in Making All Voices Count’s Global Innovation Competition shortlist. For inspiration, take a look at the shortlisted projects here.
Code for Africa and Open Knowledge are piloting an Open Government Fellowship program, giving three open government activist in Africa with the tools and trainings necessary to launch an open government project.
The Organization of American States recently launched the OAS Fellowship on Open Government in the America’s to create and train a network of young open government activists across the region.
In France, leaders of both the Senate and the National Assembly recently made commitments to release more information about the parliaments work and decision making processes. The National Assembly has committed to release committee attendance records, information about lobbyists, and other key pieces of information.
The German parliament’s Committee on the Digital Agenda held a hearing on open data and concluded that while the political will to improve Germany’s open data ecosystem is there, implementation and action have been lacking.
The US government is developing a “public participation playbook” that will compile best practices from various levels of government in the United States and define performance metrics for assessing public participation in governance. The draft, which can be seen and commented on here, is hosted on the OpenGov Foundation’s tool Madison, a platform that allows for policy co-creation and collaboration.
After promising to develop a mandatory registration and disclosure systems for lobbyists, it appears that the European Parliament and Commission are now proposing to create a weaker, voluntary disclosure system for lobbyists.
Resources:
Involve (UK) organized an event that focused on the ways in which social media is changing the nature of political representation at the local level, focusing on the wired or digital politician. Video of the event can be seen here.
The GovLab has compiled a number of open governance Twitter lists featuring leading organizations and experts in the field. One of the lists focuses on “crowdlaw,” or efforts to collaboratively draft legislation.
Events:
The OpenGov Foundation and the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation announced #Hack4Congress, a three day hackathon that will take place January 30 - February 1 in Washington, DC and will bring together technologists and policy makers to develop innovative tools and policy to help strengthen the US Congress.
The International Development Research Center, World Bank, and Canadian government are co-hosting the 3rd International Open Data Conference. The event will take place May 27-29 in Ottawa, Canada and will convene a group of government officials and representatives from industry and civil society to exchange ideas and move the open data agenda forward.
