In the premises of the only city that has been the capital of two great empires, parliamentarians from across Europe, Asia and North America gathered last month to continue the ongoing debate on human rights and security.
What we decide as parliamentarians or government officials is never easy, for we as elected officials represent diverse interests, but how we should deliberate on these public policy questions is always easy: openly and transparently.
That is why the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly has become the first international institution to endorse the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness.
Photo credit: OSCE
The declaration, finalized last year, includes principles to which parliaments and governments should adhere to work in a culture of openness. It outlines information that should be publicly available (voting, amendments, salaries) and the channels through which it should be provided (streaming video, user-friendly documents, for example).
More than 120 organizations in 73 countries, including over 50 OSCE member countries, have endorsed the declaration, which stemmed from collaboration among civil society organizations that work with parliaments. The document essentially gives any parliament a roadmap to help their institutions improve interaction with the citizens it represents – a concept heartily endorsed by the OSCE parliamentarians in our actions and votes at our Annual Session.
The Istanbul Declaration adopted last month – with support of such varied countries from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Belarus and Azerbaijan to America – hails transparency and openness as key to reinforcing the trust between parliaments and voters and calls for states to engage with NGOs and civil society institutions in regular decision-making processes.
Whether we look at Latvia’s popular ManaBalss.lv, which allows citizens to draft, vote, and submit legislative proposals, Germany’s citizen-funded Abgeordnetenwatch.de, on which some 90 percent of Bundestag members have replied to over 115,000 citizen questions, or Iceland’s use of Facebook to draft a new constitution, the fact is new technology is strengthening citizen engagement all around us. It is up to us to keep that momentum going.
As directly elected officials, parliamentarians are often democracy’s first line of defense. A parliament that meets behind closed doors, hides from a free press, or limits citizen access to parliamentary information only sows seeds of discontent among populations yearning for their own voice to be reflected by their national decision makers.
In my home country, Montenegro, we have a growing tradition of openness where the public can view our sessions from committee to plenary, and see public procurement information online and have it delivered upon request.
Despite the successes of a number of individual parliaments in making their institutions and data more open to the public, generally parliaments have been slower to engage in international partnerships to help lead the movement toward more open government. This is beginning to change. At the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, where we have advocated for greater governmental transparency and accountability for 20 years, it is only logical that we would be the first parliamentary assembly to express support for collective action to improve parliamentary openness as well.
Parliaments are, after all, the governing institution closest to the citizens, meant to provide citizens with a direct link to the policymaking process and a method of accountability and oversight of other branches of government.
In an assembly like ours, dedicated to international dialogue, having parliaments using new technology to make legislation and debates accessible online also helps further our goals, making it easier for policy ideas being enacted in one country to be replicated in harmony ten time zones away.
For the sake of democracy and in recognition of how much easier the Internet has made it for parliaments to function, we support the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness and call on parliaments to increase their “commitment to openness and to citizen engagement in parliamentary work.”
We as parliamentarians must embrace the tools that give people a larger voice in policymaking, not only because it is in line with our own democratic commitments, but because it shows leadership by example and strengthens our voice in holding governments to account on their own commitments to transparency.
At the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, we highlight this engaging work from our members on a regular basis, because as much as we learn and share policy ideas with one another we must also share our innovative processes – innovations that help us fulfill our democratic role in an increasingly tech-empowered world.
Ranko Krivokapic is President of the Parliament of Montenegro, and the newly elected President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, the world’s largest regional parliamentary forum, including 57 nations in Europe, Central Asia and North America.
