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Posts tagged "Austria"

PMO News Update: Vol. 20

Posted February 20, 2013 at 2:46pm by danswislow

News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

In Croatia, a new freedom of information law has been adopted. The law outlines the types of information that must be made public and calls for proactive publishing of this data by government agencies and bodies. GONG, a Croatian parliamentary monitoring organization, provided input and amendments to the law during its drafting, which were adopted.

In Botswana, the Botswana Speaks Parliamentary Initiative was recently launched with the help of Gov2u and other partners. The initiative, similar to the USpeak platform in Uganda, intends to improve governance and bring more voices into the policy-making discussion by connecting MPs directly with citizens through SMS messaging.

In Mexico, Fundar continues to work with MPs who are interested in redesigning the parliament’s website in order to make it more responsive to citizens. MPs cite the Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency’s index and the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness as guides for this work. MPs held a Legislative Dialogues for a Digital Mexico meeting with activists, civil society organizations, and scholars calling for the creation of a new federal agency that would address a growing digital divide, work towards universal access to information, and drive Mexico’s broad digital agenda.

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PMO News Update: Vol. 4

Posted July 2, 2012 at 10:04am by danswislow

One quick reminder before I share some interesting articles: comment on the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness and the accompanying commentary here. The document would benefit greatly from your input, including your own country’s parliamentary practices and progress towards openness. Also, if you’d like your organization to be associated with the Declaration, both on the web and in print, shoot me an email with your logo. Now onto the news:

In Tunisia, organizations that are members of the group OpenGovTN, including the PMO Al Bawsala, are launching formal complaints against the National Constituent Assembly for failing provide parliamentary information like voting and attendance records and commission reports, as required by law. Read more about that in a blog post from OpenGovTN and an article from the Tunis Afrique Press (both in French).

In the United Kingdom, the group MySociety announced that they have received a $2.9 million grant from the Omidyar Foundation to fund efforts to internationalize their websites and help organizations around the world to promote transparency and accountability in government by building their own websites and apps. Check out Tom Steinberg’s announcement on the MySociety blog or this article in techPresident to read about it.

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