Since its launch in 2011, many have urged the Open Government Partnership (OGP) to expand beyond narrow definitions of the term “government.” Legislators, mayors, and others argued that OGP’s transformational potential was tied in part to its ability to accommodate different branches and levels of government – not only the executive, as is the case in many member countries. A truly open government includes an accountable executive branch, trusted legislatures, and responsive governance at all levels. This was an ambitious vision, but many argued that OGP’s ability to deliver better democracy and better governance was tied to its continued growth and expansion. 

The OGP Summit in Paris, which took place last month and convened hundreds of open government champions and activists from around the world, clearly indicated that OGP is beginning to deliver on this ambitious agenda. This is particularly true with respect to parliaments, which are now an integral component of OGP in many member countries and are helping deliver real reforms at the country level. While the OGP Summit demonstrated that parliamentary openness is a mainstream issue in the OGP community, 2017 provides an opportunity to deliver even more meaningful legislative openness reforms.

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Issues of legislative openness and citizen engagement were highlighted at the European and Asia Pacific regional meetings of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) last week, as NDI and partners in the Chilean Congress organized sessions of the Legislative Openness Working Group.

At the Asia Pacific regional conference in Bali (May 6-7), an event hosted by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel of high-level officials from government, parliament and civil society. The panel delved into the challenges that parliaments face in engaging citizens who often have a declining trust in government.

New Zealand Internal Affairs Minister Peter Dunne described his government’s use of technology to respond to citizens’ increasing expectations, saying, “Not only are people much more willing to engage using the Internet, they expect to transact and engage via the Internet.” Dunne said that nearly 60 percent of New Zealanders report using government services online, a win-win. “This shift in the use of technology gives governments the ability to reach a wider audience for lower cost.”

Panelists address the audience in a LOWG session at the OGP Asia Pacific regional conference in Indonesia.

New Zealand also has ascribed this strategy to the legislative branch. It was the first country to attempt to crowdsource citizen input into legislation, creating an online “wiki” to collect citizens’ ideas on the 2008 Policing Act. The Parliament continues to allow online citizen submissions around draft bills under consideration as part of its recently launched beta.govt.nz website, which also provides a plethora of information about parliamentary activity.

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Thanks to Ariana Tuckey for assistance in drafting this post.

Around the world, parliaments, governments, civil society organizations, and even individual parliamentarians, are taking measures to make the legislative process more participatory. Some are creating their own tools – often open source, which allows others to use these tools as well – that enable citizens to markup legislation or share ideas on targeted subjects. Others are purchasing and implementing tools developed by private companies to good effect. In several instances, these initiatives are being conducted through collaboration between public institutions and civil society, while many compliment online and offline experiences to help ensure that a broader population of citizens is reached.

The list below provides examples of some of the more prominent efforts to engage citizens in the legislative process.

Brazil

Implementer: Brazilian Chamber of Deputies
Tool: e-Democracia platform

Description: The e-Democracia platform offers simple web 2.0 tools to allow citizens to interact with lawmakers on specific issues, helping to connect Brazilian citizens to national lawmakers across thousands of miles of geography. Citizens can use the portal and social media platforms to engage Congressmen, mark-up legislation, and propose and debate solutions to policy problems. The platform has facilitated cross-country dialogue among disparate groups and has thousands of active users. It has also improved legislative transparency.

Website: http://edemocracia.camara.gov.br/
Additional Information: OpeningParliament.org Case Study

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News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Spain, the PMO Civio launched a new project called Quién Manda, or “Who Rules?”  The project aims to monitor the interactions of Spanish politicians and officials with corporate leaders by an innovative photo-tagging scheme. Thus far, they’ve identified over 2500 relationships. Recently, a Sunlight Foundation team member worked with Civio in the lead up to the launch. There is still an active crowd-funding campaign for the initiative on Goteo. 

Elsewhere in Spain, a Spanish lawmaker held an attempt at direct democracy related to a transparency bill, a vital effort given Spain’s recent ranking of 75 out of 96 countries on access to information issues. Last month, the Masters of Media project commented on the Spanish status quo and Que Hacen Los Diputados discussed what the Congress needs to provide to ensure transparency.

In Pakistan, PILDAT released a number of reports, including on: the first meeting of a senate parliamentary friendship group on Afghanistan; the first 100 days of governance at the national and provincial levels; and two reports on the Pakistan-Afghanistan Parliamentary dialogues.

In Venezuela, Transparencia Venezuela released a report on the nation’s budget for the first half of 2013, and condemned corruption in the country and noted the role of civil society in combatting it. Meanwhile Entorno Parlamentario discussed key upcoming bills and opposition to an anti-corruption law.

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News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Germany, there was much activity in advance of the September 22 national elections. TechPresident highlighted the efforts of Tilo Jung’s series of Youtube videos to connect the younger electorate with candidates. Parliament Watch showcased a different public information series on Youtube. The PMO recently launched a new voter information tool called Candidate Watch and examined candidates who are committed to more transparency (and questioned those who are not). A new E-Government Act went into effect earlier this month and the CDU party recently released a “Merkel-App.”

In Chile, Matt Compton, deputy director of online content for the Digital Strategy Office of the White House, visited Chile Transparente to talk about the We The People platform and other citizen engagement efforts. Chile Transparente also held a seminar on transparency in political parties, featuring perspectives from Mexico and Germany. The Chilean parliament recently launched a new video transmission tool to increase parliamentary transparency.

In the United Kingdom, mySociety revealed a new name for the codebase associated with PMO platforms TheyWorkForYou, Mzalendo, and others: Pombola, a combination of “PMO” and “Tombola.” The code is generating interest around the world and will be used in the upcoming Zimbabwean PMO platform Kuvakazim. mySociety’s FOI website recently reached the milestone of 50,000 registered users and posted a case study on Fatequalcosa.it, a platform to improve government service delivery in Italy.  

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Thanks to NDI project assistant Greg Brown for his help in compiling these updates. Please send us your own news – it makes these updates much easier to compile.

News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

In Mexico, apart from the Senate’s endorsement of the Declaration, a group of activists and civil society representatives presented the five winners of the #App115 contest. The initiative convinced the Congress to cancel an unnecessarily expensive contract to build an app by mobilizing hackers to build the app for almost no cost at all, saving more than 110 million pesos. Read all about the story on TechCrunch.

This week in Poland, the PMO ePanstwo Foundation re-launched their comprehensive parliamentary monitoring website, Sejmometr. Back in February, an open source version of their platform called OchParliament was made available on GitHub.

In Italy, OpenPolis has launched a campaign to lobby members of parliament to make information about committee activity available to the public.

In Lebanon, a new coalition of civil society groups was launched, the National Civil Society Parliament Liaison Unit, with the aim of making parliament more transparent and responsive to citizens.

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