News from the OpeningParliament.org community:
In Taiwan, the folks at the PMO g0v.tw have a neat version tracking tool for amendments to existing legislation. An example is here.
In Ghana, the Africa Freedom of Information Centre and Ghana Right to Information Coalition have praised the government for demonstrating resolve to deepen transparency and good governance as a means of improving the living conditions of Ghanaians by tabling in Parliament the Right to Information Bill.
In Japan, the Guardian reports that officials who leak ‘special state secrets’ and journalists who seek to obtain them could face prison if the proposed state secrets law is passed.
In South Africa, the Right2Know organization continued to mobilize against a Secrecy Bill which was recently passed by the parliament. OKF South Africa covered new efforts to increase transparency on the city of Cape Town’s by-laws.
In Mexico, Animal Politico published a blog post about the history of legislative reelection in the country and how it relates to transformation of the the political system.
In India, the Times of India reported that civil society activists are pushing for parliament to pass accountability legislation, including the Whistleblowers Protection Bill and one on addressing government grievances in service delivery.
In Spain, Access Info reports that the Law on Transparency, Access to Information and Good Governance was approved by the Senate with no improvements to the right of access to information, despite the rejection of the text from the majority of parliamentary groups.
In the United Kingdom, mySociety announced a number of updates to the TheyWorkForYou parliamentary monitoring website, based on user feedback (you can add more here).
Other related news:
In the United States, Google announced a new API focused on civic information. One topic area is connecting U.S. citizens with their Congressmen, including efforts by POPVOX. During a recent New York Times hackathon, developers created NYT Bill Explorer, a tool that relates New York Times articles to congressional bills (available on Github here).
In Argentina, TechPresident reports that Buenos Aires has developed a fledgling but flourishing open data culture. According to the article, “The Buenos Aires city government has been publishing data under a creative commons license and encouraging civic innovation through hackathons. NGOs have launched a number of tech-driven tools and Argentina’s second largest newspaper, La Nación, has published several hard-hitting data journalism projects.”
In Brazil, the state government of Minas Gerais released a new data visualization tool called DataViva. The Guardian discussed this and other access to information efforts in Brazil recently.
In Italy, citizens are demanding more transparency in the work of parliamentary committees. TechPresident recently covered participatory democracy efforts in the country.
In Australia, FutureGov published an interview with Australia’s Information Commissioner on the lessons learned in using technologies to promote open government.
The United Nations Democracy Fund invites CSOs to apply for funding for two-year projects related to democracy promotion, including on “tools for democratization.” The deadline to apply for these competitive grants is December 31.
Resources:
The OECD released a preliminary version of their 2013 Government at a Glance report, which includes key indicators on public sector performance, including governance and public management issues, like transparency in governance and regulatory governance.
Code for America released a book of case studies on efforts to go “beyond transparency” in open data projects. TechPresident has an interesting review here.
The Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption (GOPAC) released a discussion paper laying out the options to enable GOPAC to seek to establish “Grand Corruption” as a crime at international law in order to enable international institutions and alliances to apprehend, prosecute, judge, and sentence the guilty.
The Knight Foundation published The Emergence of Civic Tech: Investments in a Growing Field, which maps the growing civic tech ecosystem and covers 209 companies that have received funding since 2011.
Events:
Jan 17-18: Stanford University will organize a conference on “technology, accountability, and democracy” alongside the University of Mumbai in Mumbai, India. Participants may register to observe, participate, and/or present a paper or project. More details are available here.
Jan 24-26: The European Parliament will host a hackathon in advance of the 2014 European Elections in Brussels, Belgium.