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.

Click here to read more.

This week’s Paris Summit comes at an important moment in the growth of the Open Government Partnership (OGP). With the recent passage of an official legislative engagement policy, the OGP Steering Committee has more clearly outlined rules for legislative participation, clearing the way for deeper parliamentary engagement in OGP. This Summit provides an important opportunity to share information about this new policy, identify community priorities for the coming year, and develop a more concrete strategy for fully realizing the potential of legislative engagement.

Click here to read more.

As in previous years, Global Legislative Openness Week (GLOW) showcased the fantastic work being done around the world to realize the principles of open parliament. Organized by members of the Open Government Partnership's Legislative Openness Working Group, GLOW featured more than 20 events and activities organized by parliaments and civil society organizations in over 15 countries around the world. This year included a diverse range of activities, such as public events and private meetings, campaigns and advocacy, and hackathons and the development of new digital tools. The diversity of approaches and actors that made Global Legislative Openness Week a success also demonstrates that the global movement for open, responsive legislatures is broad, deep, and growing.

Click here to read more.

A few years back, Kamil Gregor published a post under the title “Visualizing politics: Network analysis of bill sponsors”. His post, which focused on the lower chamber of the Czech Parliament, showed how basic social network analysis can support the exploration of parliamentary work, by revealing the ties that members of parliament create between each other through the co-sponsorship of private bills.

As Kamil observed, this kind of research is heavily dependent on open legislative data, which does not exist for many parliaments. There has been, however, some amount of progress in that area – and even when parliaments do not develop open data portals, they often maintain quite detailed official websites.

In what follows, I would like to quickly report on a small research project that I have developed over the years, under the name “parlnet”.

Legislative data on bill co-sponsorship

This project looks at bill co-sponsorship networks in European countries. Many parliaments allow their members to co-sponsor each other’s private bills, which makes it possible to represent these parliaments as collaborative networks, where a tie exists between two MPs if they have co-sponsored legislation together.

This idea is not new: it was pioneered by James Fowler in the United States, and has been the subject of extensive research in American politics, both on the U.S. Congress and on state legislatures. Similar research also exists on the bill co-sponsorship networks of parliaments in Argentina, Chile andRomania.

Inspired by this research and by Baptiste Coulmont’s visualisation of the French lower chamber, I surveyed the parliamentary websites of the following countries:

• all 28 current members of the European Union ;
• 4 members of the EFTA: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland

This search returned 19 parliamentary chambers from 15 countries for which it was (relatively) easy to extract legislative data, either through open data portals like data.riksdagen.se in Sweden ordata.stortinget.no in Norway, or from official parliamentary websites directly.

From legislative data to network graph

After splitting the data into legislative periods separated by nationwide elections, I was able to draw a large collection of networks showing bill co-sponsorship in these 19 chambers. Here, for instance, is the network for the Belgian lower chamber during its 51st legislature (years 2003-2007):

Click here to read more.

This will be the last Newsbrief of 2014. See you in 2015! 

News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

In India, PRS Legislative Research held its 7th annual Conference on Effective Legislatures, which featured several lectures exploring the ways in which the parliament can more effectively fulfill its mandate. In preparation for the conference, which took place on December 9, PRS Legislative Research drafted three discussion papers on Parliament’s Role in Financial Oversight, Parliament as a Law Making Body, and Parliamentary Oversight of the Executive.

In Tunisia, Al Bawsala published a report on the development of rules of procedure in the National Constituent Assembly. The report also includes the organization’s recommendations for changes to the rules of procedure that would strengthen the Assembly and make it more transparent.  

In Croatia, noting increasing public distrust of politicians and members of parliament, GONG has released recommendations to improve the management of conflicts of interest and strengthen public integrity systems.

In Kenya, Mzalendo launched the People’s Shujaaz Awards to recognize members of parliament in the National Assembly and Senate that have served as champions of the public interest.

In Malaysia, Sinar Project launched BillWatcher, making it easier to find, search for, and discuss pieces of legislation introduced in the Malaysian parliament.

In Australia, OpenAustralia.org – a website built and managed by the Open Australia Foundation – now includes searchable data on how members of parliament vote.

Click here to read more.

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.

Click here to read more.

Watch Cristiano Ferri, senior staff member of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, talk about the movement toward open parliaments in Brazil and around the world in a TED talk in Sao Paulo, Brazil: