Organization: Vouliwatch

Country: Greece

Government Level: National

Overview: Vouliwatch is a digital platform that engages Greek citizens with legislative politics and grants them with the opportunity to communicate, evaluate and hold elected representatives in the Greek and the European Parliament (MPs & MEPs) accountable.

Background: Vouliwatch was set up in March 2014. It is an independent, non for profit organisation aiming to promote public dialogue, knowledge, political participation and accountability between citizens and politicians.

The mission of the project is to encourage Greek citizens to engage in politics, as well as to increase accountability and transparency in the Greek political system. To achieve this, the Vouliwatch team will be cooperating with politicians and civil society in order to promote a culture of dialogue and understanding.

Vouliwatch incubates and cultivates a synergistic democratic culture that inspires institutional and technological innovation. Therefore, we are looking for new ideas, concepts and human networks to disseminate and improve our project.

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Organization: Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS)

Project: Report cards for elected representatives

Country: India

Government Level: National and state level 

Overview: Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS) is a Indian civil society organization that promotes transparency and accountability in government, as well as citizen engagement with government processes. It leverages citizens’ Right to Information (RTI) to fight corruption and advocate for proper use of public funds and effective policy development. In order to inform voters and ensure accountability of elected representatives - members of parliament, state legislatures and municipalities - SNS develops and disseminates report cards on the performance of individual elected representatives.

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Organization: Team POPONG

Project: Pokr - Politics in Korea

Country: South Korea

Government Level: National

Overview: Pokr (pronounced pōker) – short for “Politics in Korea”  – was designed and developed by Team POPONG, a non-profit organization from South Korea. Team POPONG’s goal with Pokr is to organize Korean political information and make it universally accessible and useful. The website allows users to search for any official or candidate; proposed bill; political party or administrative region in South Korea.

Background: Team POPONG (POPONG: Public Open POlitical engineeriNG) is a Korean nonprofit, nonpartisan group founded in 2010 that aims to make politics easy and fun via technology. They value political neutrality, process automation and reproducibility, open source and open data.

The team initially created a platform called Korean Political Dictionary that compared candidates standing for election in the National Assembly.  At the time, there was very limited amount of information available on public candidates. POPONG began to find this data and, with the use of APIs, organized the information within a single source. This project turned into Pokr when the team decided to also provide information on bills and the inter-election season in which they were proposed.

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Organization: Samara
Project: The Member of Parliament Website Project
Country: Canada
Government Level: National

Overview:  

Samara’s Member of Parliament Website Project analyzed the websites of 300 members of the Canadian Parliament (MPs) to better understand how MPs use their websites and the extent to which MPs take advantage of the opportunity the Internet provides to allow them to better connect with their constituents. Samara created a list of 14 criteria that were analysed by volunteers for each website. Samara summarized the results in an infographic that can be shared across social media platforms. They also provide a list of the Top MPs websites and a checklist of tips for elected officials’ websites.

Overall, the analysis found that MPs are great at offering their constituents the basic information about themselves, but they perform poorly at offering ways for Canadians to engage with politics or have input on decisions and policy.

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Organization: Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) 
Project: PMG Training Manual
Country: South Africa
Government Level: National

Overview:  

PMG’s Training Manual for Monitors is a comprehensive guide for its part-time monitors, full-time interns and international volunteers who assist PMG to monitor the South African Parliament’s Committee meetings. The training manual helps to prepare monitors to attend Committee meetings, write up reports of the proceedings, and provide electronic copies of all Committee documents. The work of monitors is to produce objective, accurate reports within 24 to 36 hours of each Committee meeting.

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Organization: Fundar & Citivox
Project: Curul 501 (The 501st Seat)
Country: Mexico
Government Level: National

Overview:  

The Curul 501 platform increases citizen awareness of the activities of the Chamber of Deputies (Lower House) of Mexico. The website strives to make the work of the legislature more accessible and understandable, with primers on the legislative process and composition of the Chamber, parties, and electoral districts. It also reports on pending and passed legislation and representatives’ proposals, while advocating for more parliamentary openness. Citizens can submit questions and concerns directly to representatives, while offering the chance to “vote” on bills and compare the citizens’ vote with the official record.

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Organization: SmartGov - Démocratie Ouverte
Project: Parlement & Citoyens
Country: France
Government Level: National

Overview:  The Parlement & Citoyens platform was designed and developed by SmartGov, a four-person non-profit organization based in Paris. The innovative platform allows citizens to contribute their analysis and ideas to parliamentarians as they develop legislation. After a parliamentarian publishes a short video and text description outlining a problem they have observed in society and the solutions they think can be codified in a law, citizens upload their ideas about the possible causes of the problem.  Citizens then have the opportunity to upload their own ideas and vote for those that most effectively characterize the problem and contribute to a solution. SmartGov synthesizes the results and hosts a public debate between the MP and active participants in the online discussion. The parliamentarian proposes a bill in parliament based on the results.

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