I have some more news to share from the past week or so, including several success stories from PMO conference participants. Please reply with comments and share your own news as well. I’ve heard some great stories over the past couple of weeks from some of you in calls and emails about the work you’re doing around the world – it’s always inspiring to hear about. Here are a few examples:

In Tunisia, a coalition of open government organizations, OpenGovTN, which counts PMO Al Bawsala among its core members, has announced that, as of today, the Citizen Assembly should be publishing all committee meeting minutes and reports, and plenary roll call lists on the Assembly’s official website. You can read more about OpenGovTN’s efforts to unlock this information in this blog post from Nawaat.

In Serbia,a new website, otvoreniparlament.rs, was launched by the Open Parliament initiative, which includes the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA) among its leaders. The website will provide Serbians with the transcripts of all parliamentary sessions. You can read more about this in a press release from USAID.

In Kyrgyzstan, over the past month, the Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society has won two major court cases against the Parliament of Kyrgyzstan. The first, decided on May 11, will force Parliament to provide detailed information about the voting behavior of MPs. The second, decided last week on June 7, obliges Parliament to provide information on the business trips of MPs.

In the United States, an effort by a House Appropriations subcommittee that would have potentially stopped the release of bulk data downloads used to run websites like GovTrack and supply data used by the Sunlight Foundation, was beaten back by GovTrack, Sunlight, and many of their supporters. In fact, they have achieved what Daniel Schuman of the Sunlight Foundation calls a “milestone for legislative transparency.” To understand the details of how a draft committee report nearly reversed years of progress on transparency in the U.S., and how PMOs helped turn this into a victory for parliamentary openness, see this blog post by Josh Tauberer of GovTrack. If you need further confirmation, check out this article from the Washington Post.

Bangladesh (TI Bangladesh): TIB chief sees signs of instability (The Daily Star)

Croatia (GONG): Assessment of the New Government by Platform 112 (GONG)

Pakistan (PILDAT): Budget Scrutiny: Parliament urged to give committees an effective role (Daily Times)

India (PRS Legislative Research): Manish Tiwari asks most questions in Parliament among Punjab MPs (Hindustan Times)

South Africa: Parliament Looking to Expand Public Participation (allAfrica)

Egypt: Two bills in Parliament compete to provide freedom of information (Egypt Independent)

Europe: EU decision-makers push for less transparency (Access Info Europe)

International: Why Open Data isn’t enough (Open Knowledge Foundation)