News from the parliamentary monitoring community:
In Montenegro, the Center for Democratic Transitions (CDT) was selected as one of the four winners of the UNDP competition “Technology for Citizen Engagement.” The award provides small grants to support ideas for using technology to expand opportunities for citizen engagement. CDT’s winning idea was Ask for Data, a tool that will allow citizens to easily request information from public institutions.
In Kenya, Muslims for Human Rights released a video raising awareness about the right to know how MPs are spending constituency development funds. The constituency development fund, which is intended to support development projects in MPs’ constituencies, lacks meaningful oversight.
In Greece, Vouliwatch recently released its first annual report, highlighting the role of digital technology in allowing citizens to follow parliamentary issues, ask questions to MPs, and to share ideas and proposals. The organization also announced that it will begin to provide information about the activities, discussions, and decisions of the European Parliament related to Greece and other key policy issues.
In Pakistan, Pakistan Institute for Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT) released two scorecards measuring the quality of governance at the federal and provincial levels of government.
In Chile, Chile Transparente released a report on the transparency of political parties. The report concludes that although there was overall improvement compared to previous years, political parties still have weak programmatic and financial transparency.
In Georgia, Jumpstart Georgia’s Gender Pay Game was selected as a finalist for the Data Journalism Awards 2015. Winners will be announced during the Data Journalism Awards Ceremony at the General Editors Network Summit in Barcelona on June 18.
In Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, and Nigeria, Open Knowledge and Code for Africa announced the 2015 cohort of Open Government Fellows. The new fellows will promote increased government transparency and improved dialogue between citizens and governments.
In Europe, more than 100 groups issued a letter to urge the European Commission to make the lobby register legally binding. The letter also calls on the Commission to ban meetings with unregistered lobbyists and to allocate appropriate resources for monitoring and enforcement of this rule.
In Kuwait, Kuwait Transparency Society celebrated its 10th Anniversary.
In Mexico, the Senate, in cooperation with the National Democratic Institute, hosted a three day workshop on Promoting Legislative Transparency. The training covered several tools and methodologies to improve civil society’s capacity to use data to monitor parliamentary activities.
Other related news:
The Parliament of Georgia endorsed the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness and formally indicated its participation in the Open Government Partnership.
In Peru, a new law will create a one-stop information portal that allows parties to view the criminal background of possible candidates for office.
A new FOI law was enacted in Mexico and the new anti-corruption system was approved by the majority of local councils to become part of the Constitution.
With the publication of the 100th OGP National Action Plan, OGP released an infographic summarizing the more than 2000 commitments that have been made by 65 governments since the initiative launched in 2011.
Digital Democracy launched a new online platform which features a searchable database of California State legislative committee hearings, allowing users to search videos by keyword, topic, speaker, or date.
After years of preparation, the Slovak parliament is set to approve a FOI law in the upcoming weeks. According to FreedomInfo.org, on paper the new law would be among the strongest in Europe.
Following an executive order by the Croatian Personal Data Protection Agency, the Parliamentary Conflict of Interest Committee removed declarations of assets of office-holders from its website; the committee has promised to appeal the executive order.
After the recent enactment of the Regulation of Lobbying Act in Ireland, an online lobbying register will be launched next month.
Resources:
Agora released a brief that considers both how to use ICT to better connect parliaments and citizens as well as strategies used by parliamentary monitoring organizations to increase transparency.
The Sunlight Foundation published “The Social Impact of Open Data,” an effort to develop a methodological framework to build more robust indicators for the social and political impacts of open data initiatives.
The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation published Global Mapping and Analysis of Parliamentary Strengthening, a study that provides an overview of the actors, strategies, and main activities applied in parliamentary strengthening efforts.
Events:
In a full week of events, the 3rd International Open Data Conference will be held in Ottawa, Canada on May 25-29. This year’s theme is building sustainable, dynamic, and innovative open data communities. The meeting will feature a conference pre-event focused on parliamentary openness, specifically considering how open data efforts can contribute to strong, open, and accountable legislatures. To register for the open parliament event, see this page.
The Open Government Partnership Global Summit will take place in Guadalajara, Mexico, October 27-29, 2015.
Nesta and partners will host LabWorks 2015 - Global Lab Gathering London on July 10-12. The event will bring together a growing global network of teams driving innovation in public service.
More than 50 representatives from CSOs working on transparency and access to information will gather for the second edition of the International Alaveteli Conference on May 19-20 in Madrid, organized by mySociety.
The Congressional Data Coalition recently released a report summarizing the main conclusions of the 2015 Legislative Data and Transparency Conference.