News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Paraguay, the President of the Senate signed a cooperation agreement with Semillas para la Democracia and the National Democratic Institute, agreeing to collaborate on developing initiatives to increase legislative transparency. The agreement includes a commitment from the Senate to strengthen legislative measures against corruption and to help build the capacity of civil society to monitor its work.

In South Africa, People’s Assembly launched the Members Interests Browser, which tracks data on MPs’ interests. Its features enable greater analysis than the PDF files published by Parliament, including features that allow users to filter and count interest declarations and explore the third parties referred to in declarations.

In Italy, OpenPolis published an Index of Parliamentary Productivity for 2014 that assesses the efficacy of MPs in performing parliamentary duties and passing legislation.

In Jordan, the Al-Hayat Center’s RASED Program released its first weekly report on the 2nd Ordinary Session of Jordan’s Parliament. Among other items, it drew attention to MPs attempting to form parliamentary committees outside official parliamentary procedures, which stipulate that the executive office appoints committees based on proportional representation of parliamentary blocs.

In Spain, Access Info Europe outlined a series of concerns about the Council of Transparency and Good Governance, a new body tasked with upholding governmental transparency requirements and citizens’ right of access to public information. Additionally, Access, Que Hacen Los Diputados, and CIVIO are calling for the immediate implementation of a law on public access to information, following the recent discovery that several MPs have used public funds to pay for personal travel.  

In Nigeria, the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre participated in a forum at the National Assembly focused on the need to generate greater engagement between civil society and the legislature on four thematic issues, including local government autonomy, government/CSO relations, minimum wages, and the 2015 general elections.

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News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Argentina, a group of NGOs and members from both houses of congress launched a working group on legislative transparency in May. Shortly after, a summit was held in Buenos Aires to showcase regional experiences regarding legislative transparency. At the summit, members of both chambers agreed to introduce legislation to modernize their access to information policies.  

In Paraguay, an access to information bill was passed in the Chamber of Deputies after a controversial amendment making it easier for the government to withhold certain types of information was removed. The bill now returns to the Senate, which passed a similar version earlier this year.

In France, Regards Citoyens and Sciences Po launched a new project, La Fabrique De La Loi, which hosts tools to analyze parliamentary debates and track the evolution of bills throughout the legislative process. The project utilizes public data in order to shed light on parliamentary procedures and their impact on the lawmaking process.

In Morocco, SimSim-Civic Participation will launch Nouabook.ma this week, Morocco’s first website to facilitate citizen engagement with parliament.

In Hungary, the government included K-Monitor on a list of “problematic” NGOs that are routinely critical of the government. The list follows a disagreement between the government and Norway Grants, the organization that funds many of the organizations, several of which were recently raided by government officials.

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News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In India, national elections closed on May 16, with Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party anticipated to win more than the 272 seats required for a parliamentary majority. In advance of the election, Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS) developed report cards for members of the Lok Sabha. The report cards provide citizens with information gathered through the Right To Information Act and other government websites and assess MP performance on factors like attendance and efforts to introduce new development within their districts. See here for more information on SNS’ methodology.

Last month, PRS Legislative Research provided a historical comparison of the number of bills passed to ordinances declared during each Lok Sabha since 1952.

In Chile, delegates from 27 countries gathered in Santiago on April 29-30 for the first Poplus Conference, organized by mySociety and Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente. Participants shared goals for the future of the Poplus network, a nascent project with the goal to create and share open source code that helps civic organizations around the world.

In the European Union, voting for European Parliamentary elections will take place May 22-25. Election results will be available in open data format, allowing interested users to retrieve raw data, use filters to present the information in custom ways, and publish it on their own online platforms.

In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Kohovolit.eu launched an election calculator for the European Parliament that allows users to browse voting data of European MPs from 2009 to 2014. The calculator allows users to curate the data by selecting issues important to them and reviewing how closely the voting records of different EMPs match their views.

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News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Portugal, a petition that began to circulate in March calls for more comprehensive information access on the voting records of Members of Parliament on the parliament’s website. While the website currently holds a record of activity for each member, determining how an individual votes for a particular measure can be difficult. The initiative is similar to another petition, that would create an electronic registry on the votes of each representative in the National Assembly. Transparencia Hackday, a Declaration endorser, has supported these measures.

In the United Kingdom, mySociety interviewed Flavio Zeni about the Akoma Ntoso metadata format for the recently launched SayIt platform (for more on Akoma Ntoso implementation around the world, see Robert Richards’ list here). mySociety reviewed the UK Parliament’s online services last month (report available here), while Computing.com recently provided a look at technology in the British Parliament, including widening access to parlaimentary information (H/T Robert Richards).

In Hungary, the Public Policy Institute (PPI) released its report on parliamentary activities in 2013, drawing attention to several important issues, including the quality of projects initiated by parliamentarians, chronic absenteeism, abuse of tacit adoption procedures, failure to exercise legislative power to rein in the executive branch, and encouragement of political migration by some parties.

In Nigeria, CISLAC outlined various advocacy positions and strategies for engagement during the recently convened National Conference. CISLAC emphasized that beyond discussing contentious historical issues at the conference, the government needed to set the agenda “inclusive, participatory democratic governance beyond 2015.”

In the United States, the Sunlight Foundation analyzed the White House Office of Management and Budget’s opposition to portions of the DATA ACT and changes to the Senate version of the bill which weaken the bills data standardization provisions. It also has continued a webinar series on enhancing transparency in political finance, with past webinars viewable here. Elsewhere, GCN profiled the GovLab and its new public interest lab network.

Click here to read more.

The information in this list was compiled by Andrew Mandelbaum with the assistance of Ariana Tuckey.

Parliaments are increasingly seeking to enable citizens to reuse, mix and republish parliamentary information, recognizing the potential of ordinary citizens to harness technology to explore and analyze data in innovative ways. A primary concern for parliaments and citizens alike is the way parliamentary information is licensed and whether or not it conforms with open data principles, such as those captured in the open definition, the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness, or the 10 Principles for Opening Up Government Information. These documents encourage parliaments to publish information in machine­readable formats and to allow for citizen reuse and republication by default (recognizing that exceptions may exist in discrete and narrowly defined cases).

While many parliaments are adopting ‘open licenses’ in order to meet the open standard, others are simply placing information in the public domain. The list below describes the licensing standards that select parliaments are using to allow citizens to reuse and republish parliamentary information.

Australia

Chamber: Parliament of Australia
Website: http://www.aph.gov.au/Help/Disclaimer_Privacy_Copyright
License: Creative Commons BY­NC­ND 3.0
License Wording: Available here.

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News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Ukraine, protests against the government were met with brutal force. TI Ukraine expressed “burning indignation” at the government’s response. CHESNO offered dramatic videos from the legislative chamber on a no-confidence vote in the Parliament, as well as a vote to keep former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko imprisoned. Opora demanded action against the culprits and called for a support for the no-confidence vote.

In the United Kingdom, mySociety requested input on a survey about the UK Parliament’s online services and wrote about how critical research is key to the “civic power” sector. The UK Parliament recently held a hackathon (list of projects here, collected tweets here), while the House of Lords launched a new website to engage members. A number of CSOs participated in an “Open House” event on reforming the House of Commons. Simon Burall of Involve has follow-up thoughts here.

In Uruguay, DATA announced its recent membership in the Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency (LALT Network), particularly relevant now that Uruguay is part of the Open Government Partnership’s Legislative Openness Working Group.

Click here to read more.

Due to my work in Mexico (which you should see another update on very soon), this post has been long delayed. And because of that, it’s also just plain long – you might need a few sittings to get through this one. Thanks to NDI project assistant Greg Brown for his help putting this together:

News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

During an OpeningParliament Google Hangout, Markus Schmidt discussed his study of the performance of the German, Swiss and Austrian parliaments against the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. During the session, German PMOs began planning to conduct joint advocacy using the study and the Declaration to create a workplan that Bundestag staffers can follow to open parliamentary data.

In Mexico last week, it was announced that the government had signed a nearly $10 million contract to create an app to release legislative information. In response, Codeando México launched #App115, a contest to build the app for free through open source tools, offering a prize of just $1,000. After the outcry, the Mexican Congress canceled the expensive contract and organizations who lined up to support #App115, like Fundar, have been invited to present its results to the Congress’ Science and Technology Commission at the beginning of next month.

In the U.S., the Sunlight Foundation published its Open Legislative Data Report Card, an analysis of the openness of data in all 50 U.S. states. The report card analyzes states based on the completeness, timeliness, and permanence of government data along with ease of access and machine readability. Sunlight, a core partner in OpeningParliament.org, has recently expanded its focus to rededicate itself to international efforts.

Click here to read more.