News from the parliamentary monitoring community:
In Germany, Parliament Watch described efforts to get candidates to sign a transparency pledge ahead of the September elections. Parliament Watch also recently worked with their media partner Der Spiegel to create an interactive election website for citizens to guess the outcomes of upcoming elections. Elsewhere, the German branch of the Open Knowledge Foundation visited the Code for America offices in San Francisco to begin the “Code for All” international partnership. A monthly report of all OKF Germany’s July activities is available here.
In Peru, the Congress faced a battery of criticism over appointments to a number of key posts in the country, with President Ollanta Humala calling on some of the new appointees to step down. Entorno Parlamentario suggested four areas of reform (and Transparencia Peru a further three), while La Republica criticized the ethics committee for lack of sanctioning members who receive formal complaints.
In Afghanistan, the Free & Fair Elections Forum (FEFA) released their June 2013 parliamentary monitoring report, which highlighted a number of positive developments, including on the activities of the Oversight Committee on Performance of the Government and the Committee on Women’s Affairs.
In Argentina, a new voting record tracking app, the winner of an April 2013 hackathon won seed funding to further develop and scale. An interview with the team is available and the source code is available on GitHub.
In the United States, the House of Representatives published the U.S. code as open government data; an excellent summary is available here from Alex Howard. Meanwhile, Congress.gov announced newly available data, including committee pages and reports, and a former staffer debuted the Capitol Bells app, which helps track floor votes. Many members of Congress participated in the Connected Congress conference to learn about technology and effective legislation. This comes just as GovTrack published a list of legislative inactivity.
Also in the United States, David Sasaki highlighted a number of interesting open government developments, including a new partnership between Omidyar Network and Avina Foundation to develop a fund to support civic technology. Finally, the Sunlight Foundation celebrated five years of Party Time, an app to track political fundraising.
In Tunisia, Constituent Assembly President Mustapha Ben Jafar invoked an internal regulation to publicize the names of members who are absent from three or more plenary sessions. Meanwhile, Al Bawsala released a joint op-ed with Amnesty International, the Carter Center, and Human Rights Watch, highlighting concerns with the constitutional process.
In Spain, Qué Hacen los Diputados covered the many problems in the development of a new transparency law. This comes as the organization wraps up a crowd-funding campaign. Civio also expressed concerns with the process.
In Mexico, the Institute for Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data of the Federal District (InfoDF) and the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District (ALDF) will establish three working group to improve transparency, accountability, and access to information. This comes after InfoDF made 23 recommendations to improve transparency and accountability last month based on international legislative standards, including those described in the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. The report is available as a Google Document here. Finally, Fundar published a video and a new bulletin on transparency and accountability.
In Chile, a new study on transparency in political parties was released by Chile Transparente. In a recent seminar, Chile Transparente asserted that no political party would comply with a draft law on political parties. It also released the website of a (fictional) model party. Meanwhile, the government of Chile expressed support for further transparency in political parties and released a new anti-corruption website.
In Ukraine, the director of Transparency International Ukraine held a public event to “break the wall of bureaucracy.” Also in Ukraine, the PMO CHESNO reported on a number of parliamentary actions and developments.
In France, Democratie Ouverte, the creators of the Parlement & Citoyens platform, were interviewed on the topic of an “open democracy” and the importance of citizen activism.
In Romania, the Institute for Public Policy (IPP) released a report on the parliamentary activities of the first parliamentary session, including a lack of consultations with civil society groups.
In Montenegro, Centar za Demokratsku Tranziciju (CDT) criticized a recent draft law on budget and fiscal responsibility for its lack of transparency.
In Guatemala, Acción Ciudadana published a press release on a recent injunction against the Comptroller General of Accounts related to freedom of information requests.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, CCI released a report the parliament’s performance for the first half of 2013, noting an unstable parliamentary majority.
In New Zealand, FYI.org.nz, the country affiliate of mySociety, the creator of popular Alaveteli platform (featured last week on this blog) adapted around the world to facilitate freedom of information requests celebrated over 1,000 requests in the country.
Other related news:
In Slovakia, a new platform to promote transparency in the judicial system debuted, which merged five different data sources to create a searchable archive of 500,000 rulings. The source code is available on Github here. More information is available from TechPresident here.
In Venezuela, parliamentarians from Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Peru met to discuss Venezuela’s parliamentary challenges. This comes as a parliamentary exchange between Ecuador and Venezuela was announced. Amid these positive developments, Transparencia Venezuela criticized the parliament for the disqualification of an opposition leader. A recent video by the group urges citizens to be aware during the next elections.
In Latin America, the Red Innovación announced an essay contest on the topic on the use of new technologies to promote transparency.
In Chile, former executive director of Transparency International Miguel Schloss discussed how corruption affects Latin American countries in the latest edition of the Latin America Advisor, published by the Inter-American Dialogue.
In Lithuania, the head of the Transparency International affiliate gave an interview on anti-corruption efforts.
In Brazil, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, penned a blog post on Open Government, including how it relates to the recent tech-enabled protests in his country.
Resources:
Agora, an online portal for parliamentary development, launched a revamped website and a new e-learning initiative.
In the United Kingdom, Researchers at Sciencewise published a new paper that explores the value of involving citizens within policy-making, including the importance of direct contact between policy makers and public voices. A summary is available here.
In Colombia, Congreso Visible joined the University of the Andes in a call for research papers related to legislative studies that focus on links between representatives and represented and accountability in parties and legislators, among other topics.
In Argentina, CIPPEC published a working paper on improving transparency in local governments (available in Spanish here).
In the United States, the Urban Justice Center released a “Research for Organizing” toolkit, which discusses themes and methods of participatory action research. While not directly applicable to open legislatures and open government, it may be of interest to some readers as a general resource. Also in the United States, NDI’s survey of parliamentary monitoring organizations is now available in Spanish and Arabic.
Events:
August 9: Matthew Compton from the Office of Digital Strategy at the White House will discuss the We the People platform with Chile Transparente at the Institute of North American Culture in Santiago, Chile.
September 10: The Data Transparency Coalition will host a conference on “The Future of Open Data Policy” in Washington, D.C, including a session on building the demand for open data.
September 16-18: The Open Knowledge Foundation conference will take place in Geneva, Switzerland. Hosted by the Switzerland local OKFN group, an event blog has been established and selected conference proposals were just announced.
October 31 - November 1: The Open Government Partnership (OGP) annual conference will take place in London, England. Participants must pre-register by August 26 to be considered for funding. The Open Knowledge Foundation will collaborate with OGP to host a civil society pre-conference on October 30. OGP recently called for an emphasis on transparency, participation, and accountability in the post-2015 development framework.
November 23 - 29: The World Forum for Democracy will host a conference on “Re-wiring Democracy: Connecting Institutions and Citizens in the Digital Age” in Strasbourg, France. Prospective youth participants may apply by August 9 to attend.
Recent blog posts:
A standardized API for parliamentary monitoring in Europe (August 8)
Got vote data? Get an animated visualization, free (August 6)
OSCE PA: Time for parliaments to commit to openness (August 5)
Case Study #2: mySociety & Alaveteli (August 1)
Legislative openness comes to OGP (July 29)
