Today, September 15, is the International Day of Democracy and the beginning of the Global Legislative Openness Week (GLOW), sponsored by the Legislative Openness Working Group of the Open Government Partnership.

Get Involved!

For ideas on how you can support the campaign for greater parliamentary openness during the GLOW, click here. 

Don’t forget to Follow all of the action on Twitter using the hashtag #openparl2014 and tell us, why is an open parliament (or legislature, congress, council or assembly) important for your democracy?

You can check out a calendar of some of the events that are happening around the world during the GLOW at www.openparl2014.org.

To start us off, the Legislative Openness Working Group is convening a regional meeting of MPs, legislative staff and civil society organizations from 15 countries at the Parliament of Montenegro in Podgorica today and tomorrow (view an agenda for that meeting here).

Today also marks the launch of a global advocacy campaign during the GLOW, Open Up Your Legislature!, led by the Sunlight Foundation. The campaign calls on the world’s parliaments to make legislative data “open by default.” More than 100 organizations from the OpeningParliament.org community have signed onto a letter in support of the initiative over the last two weeks, which will be sent to parliamentary leadership around the globe. The letter has been translated into twelve languages so far, available here.

The Declaration on Parliamentary Openness is launched in Rome on September 15, 2012.

Lastly, today we’re also celebrating the two-year anniversary of the launch of the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness, which more than 150 civil society organizations from over 80 countries have signed onto so far. Has yours? Read more about the launch at the 2012 World e-Parliament Conference here.