Photo credit: Making All Voices Count

On September 15, Making All Voices Count (MAVC), a global initiative that aims to create opportunities for new ideas and technologies that strengthen citizen engagement and government responsiveness, is launching its second Global Innovation Competition (GIC). In this year’s competition, Making All Voices Count is seeking ideas relating to four themes, including legislative openness. 

£300,000 in grants are available to winners who propose projects in a limited set of countries: Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Indonesia, the Philippines, Liberia, Tanzania, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mozambique, Uganda and Nigeria.

This announcement comes on the heels of the Global Legislative Openness Week (GLOW), being organized by the Legislative Openness Working Group of the Open Government Partnership, that will see events and conversations relating to legislative openness happening around the world. The GIC offers an important platform to help translate many of these discussions into new tools and innovations to help parliaments better represent citizens, and to help citizens better engage and communicate with their elected representatives.

You can read more about the competition at MAVC’s website.

News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Venezuela, Transparencia Venezuela outlined various civil rights in response to the worsening human rights situation in Venezuela. Earlier in February, the group joined with Forum for Life and other Venezuelan organizations to issue a statement condemning the increasing violence, arbitrary detention, and spread of misinformation by the government.

The European Parliament recently called on the government of Venezuela to disarm pro-government militant groups targeting ongoing protests with impunity. In a joint resolution, the Parliament called for the dispatch of a European-led monitoring group to Venezuela and for the Maduro government to withdraw arrest warrants issued for opposition leaders.

In the Ukraine, CHESNO suggested five criteria for the composition of a new cabinet of ministers and other management authorities in Ukraine. The President of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly (who has previously blogged on OpeningParliament) stated that the Assembly should play a strong role in direct talks between Ukraine and Russia.

Meanwhile, OPORA reported that documents taken from the Party of Regions headquarters in Chernivtsi may reveal violations of the 2012 electoral law, including the improper use of administrative resources by the Party, indirect vote-buying, using indirect Party representatives to obtain a majority in the election commissions, and the improper handling and storage of personal data lists.

In Afghanistan, the Free and Fair Election Forum (FEFA) released its first election observation report, which analyzes the security and electoral environment and reports violations observed so far in the run up to the April 5 presidential election.

In Mexico, Senator Laura Rojas spoke during Transparency Week in Mexico in support of further efforts to open government, which she said would address public concern with closed door negotiations on appointments, lack of budget transparency, confusion about allocation of resources for parliamentary travel, and many other issues. During Transparency Week activities, Senate President Raul Cervantes announced the creation of a joint commission to recommend actions to increase the transparency of Mexico’s government.

Click here to read more.

News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Mexico, Visión Legislativa took on the task of reviewing fast track legislation and the legislative process as established by la Ley Orgánica del Congreso. The article gives a brief overview of some of the best pieces of legislation between the years 1917 and 2000. Visión Legislativa also recently published a history of legislative elections and political parties.

SayIt, a new component of the Poplus network, launched this week. The goal of Poplus, which mySociety and Ciudadano Inteligente founded, is to collaboratively build pieces of technology that make it quicker and cheaper for people around the world to build websites and apps designed to empower citizens.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Centre for Civil Initiatives reports that parliamentarians and citizens participated in 27 public meetings in 2013, providing a forum for parliamentarians and citizens to talk about the current situation on a given topic.

In Georgia, Transparency International Georgia issued a statement urging the Georgian Parliament not to vote for the postponement of a new rule related to witness interrogation during investigations, a process seen as unconstitutional.

Click here to read more.

News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Taiwan, the folks at the PMO g0v.tw have a neat version tracking tool for amendments to existing legislation. An example is here.  

In Ghana, the Africa Freedom of Information Centre and Ghana Right to Information Coalition have praised the government for demonstrating resolve to deepen transparency and good governance as a means of improving the living conditions of Ghanaians by tabling in Parliament the Right to Information Bill.

In Japan, the Guardian reports that officials who leak ‘special state secrets’ and journalists who seek to obtain them could face prison if the proposed state secrets law is passed.

In South Africa, the Right2Know organization continued to mobilize against a Secrecy Bill which was recently passed by the parliament. OKF South Africa covered new efforts to increase transparency on the city of Cape Town’s by-laws.

Click here to read more.

Haz clic aquí para Español.

A Legislative Openness Working Group, co-anchored by the Government and the Congress of Chile and NDI, was formally launched at the annual summit in London on Thursday of the Open Government Partnership (OGP). The working group is a partnership between civil society, parliaments and governments to share good practice on legislative openness, including information about commitments that governments and parliaments can make to engage citizens more actively in the legislative process.

The summit, hosted by the Government of the United Kingdom, convened more than 1,000 members of government and civil society from more than 60 countries. The Leader of the House of Commons, Rt. Hon. Andrew Lansley, CBE, opened the official launch event of the Legislative Openness Working Group, stating, “Expectations are rising. People are used to commenting instantly on events and having their voices heard, and they rightly want to have that immediacy and voice heard in the legislative process.”

To date, 21 countries have indicated their intention to participate in the working group, which is one of five new thematic working groups in OGP.

“It is a particular honor for the Bicameral Commission for Transparency of the Chilean Congress to co-anchor the working group given the priority that it attaches to this issue of parliamentary openness,” said Senator Hernán Larraín, chair of the bicameral commission. “The Chilean Congress has taken steps to adopt its own action plan as part of OGP, to open Congress and encourage other parliaments to do the same.”

Click here to read more.

News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Argentina, a number of CSOs, including Directorio Legislativo, Poder Ciudadano, and Asociación Civil por la Igualdad y la Justicia (ACIJ) have partnered with the newspaper La Nacion to launch an interactive website revealing the financial statements of MPs, public officials, and judges. This video (Spanish) explains more about the project, which was 10 years in the making.

In Germany, the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany organized a youth civic hacking event. OKFN Germany’s August activities report is available here. Meanwhile, Parliament Watch examined extra income received by German politicians.

In the United States, the Sunlight Foundation announced procurement open data guidelines to help shape how governments release data on their procurement process. Elsewhere in the U.S., GovTrack founder Josh Tauberer was featured in a profile, the city of San Francisco will test online participatory budgeting, Code For America discussed why civic hacking matters, Fast Company profiled PopVox, and the makers of Politify (now called Outline) finalized a deal to create a “public policy dashboard” for the state of Massachusetts. Outline was also a winner of a Knight Award (the most recent of which went to community-focused open government projects).

In Georgia, Transparency International Georgia detailed key aspects of the new “personal data protection inspector” position and pushed for a proactive publication of government information. JumpStart Georgia also issued a similar call, highlighting its work to make election and parliamentary data open and accessible.

Click here to read more.

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.

Click here to read more.