We’re running a bit late – still catching up after a few days off due to Hurricane Sandy last week. A quick shout out to NDI’s great project assistant, Jack Mahoney, who assisted me in writing this update.

NEWS:

In Spain, the PMO and Declaration supporter Access Info Europe was charged €3,000 by the Spanish Supreme Court for requesting information about how the Spanish government plans to fight corruption. The ruling, which is being appealed, reflects the struggles of NGOs in Spain to obtain information from the government. Spain remains the largest European country without a national transparency law. Also in Europe, Italy‘s Chamber of Deputies recently voted 481 to 19 to approve a new transparency law that Transparency International hailed as a step in the right direction. 

In Kyrgyzstan, the PMO community member Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society released a list of Kyrgyz MPs whose offices did not register with an online consortium of civil society groups. At latest count, a dozen MPs have remained inaccessible to civil society activists and their organizations. The Coalition also reports that an ethics crisis is now consuming the Kyrgyz Parliament.

In Lithuania, PMO community member Transparency International Lithuania launched a simple web platform for users to anonymously report cases of corruption. The website includes a map so citizens can see how their communities are affected by corruption, and also includes a list of tools to help them take action.

Lebanon's Civil Campaign for Electoral Reform gathered well over 100 representatives from the media and civil society groups to hold a 'People’s Parliament’ in Beirut’s Martyr’s Square where participants were given the chance to question MPs on reforms to the electoral law of Lebanon.

Click here to read more.

Thanks to María Baron for filling the gap last week with some great news updates from Latin America. If you missed it, you can view her post here. Also, if you want to view the discussion that took place among the PMO community at the Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki at the end of last month, a streaming version of the 90-minute session is now available online.

Onto some news:

In the U.S., a collaboration of eight nonprofit organizations released a report on what they call the “advocacy gap” – the disconnect between how activists mobilize to engage Congress and how Congressional staff say they should mobilize to be most effective. This is a survey of nearly 4,000 activists and top legislative staffers in Congress, with some very interesting conclusions. Also stateside, the Participatory Politics Foundation unveiled a new initiative to bring OpenGovernment.org down to the local level. Read more about it on the OpenCongress blog.

In Ireland, the parliament (Oireachtas) suspended their XML feed, effectively killing, at least temporarily, the PMO KildareStreet. Check out this blog post about this seemingly huge step backwards for the Irish parliament. After some backlash, it looks like KildareStreet and the Orieachtas are working out a solution, according to the most recent update on KildareStreet.com. Stay tuned for more news on this…

I’m not sure if this has already been sent out to the group in the many articles we’ve seen in the past few weeks on the Declaration, but In Mexico, an article was published which includes a look at the regional distribution of the signatories of the Declaration.

Click here to read more.

I will be out of the office next week at the Democratic National Convention (a shameless plug: follow my Twitter feed at @DanSwislow for updates), so we’ll be skipping next week’s news update email. Luckily, there’s a lot of news for you to read this week! As always, please share your own.

Colombia‘s Congreso Visible has won the Luis Carlos Galán Medal for their fight against corruption in Congress, given by the Colombian Congress’ Joint Board of Ethics Committees.

In India, PRS Legislative Research released a number of reports about the Indian Parliament’s lack of productivity, garnering news coverage by the BBC, Hindustan Times and the Financial Express, among others. The research shows both houses of the Indian Parliament sitting and debating bills far less than in previous years, and a rise in the number of disruptions. The 15th Lok Sabha is being called the “most disrupted House ever.” PRS also released a report on the number of days that state assemblies are seated per year.

In Pakistan, PILDAT, a parliamentary monitoring and support organization and member of this community, facilitated an initiative to bring together MPs from both India and Pakistan for a fourth round of dialogues. This is a pretty remarkable example of a PMO working cooperatively with parliaments to strengthen their work, especially in light of the tensions between India and Pakistan. Read about the dialogues in The Nation, Business Recorder and Gulf News.

In Uganda, the Uganda National NGO Forum launched its citizens assessment of the 9th Parliament, the Parliament Watch Bulletin. The report was undertaken in consultation with citizens, civil society and MPs, and collected data through interviews, questionnaires and media reports. It includes an analysis of parliament on issues like performance, oversight, anti-corruption. The report was featured in a television story by NTV, and detailed in numerous print media outlets, including Newvision, UG Pulse and Daily Monitor. The bulletin also addressed the issue of MP attendance.

Click here to read more.

It’s been a few weeks since my last update email – I’ve been on vacation. Before I share some of the news that I’ve been reading over the past few weeks, I just want to mention a few things: (1) The deadline for comment on the Declaration is coming up very soon on July 31. If you have any more comments to share, please make them online or send them my way. (2) Please send me your organization’s logo if you’d like it to be included on the OpeningParliament.org website and with the official release of the Declaration on September 15. On to the news:

In India, PRS Legislative Research and the legal news outlet Bar and Bench announced a partnership to publicize analysis of parliamentary action and proceedings, and up-to-date information on legislative developments. This is a great example of a PMO partnering with the media to enhance the availability of parliamentary information.

In the US, the PMO POPVOX is involved in two new major partnerships with Congress. The House Oversight Committee announced that it would use POPVOX’s “Write Congress” tool to receive input on five pieces of legislation from citizens. Further, House Democrats announced that they would be integrating citizen input provided through POPVOX into information provided to the Democratic members of Congress on bills.

There is an interesting dialogue in progress about mySociety’s new “Components Strategy” – the UK PMO’s new project that aims to build components that store and share information (such as lists of people, maps, etc.) so that they can be reused by other groups who want to replicate or build upon the websites mySociety has created (like TheyWorkForYou and FixMyStreet). I would recommend taking a look at David Eaves’ post at TechPresident, followed by Tom Lee’s response on the Sunlight Labs blog, then Tom Steinberg’s response back at TechPresident. It’s great to see that Ciudadano Inteligente is building the 4th component in the strategy: “Bill-It” (yes, for storing bills).

On that note, Felipe Heusser, founder of Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente in Chile, posted a fantastic blog article (in Spanish) about the impact of government transparency and NGOs’ role. Definitely check it out.

Click here to read more.

One quick reminder before I share some interesting articles: comment on the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness and the accompanying commentary here. The document would benefit greatly from your input, including your own country’s parliamentary practices and progress towards openness. Also, if you’d like your organization to be associated with the Declaration, both on the web and in print, shoot me an email with your logo. Now onto the news:

In Tunisia, organizations that are members of the group OpenGovTN, including the PMO Al Bawsala, are launching formal complaints against the National Constituent Assembly for failing provide parliamentary information like voting and attendance records and commission reports, as required by law. Read more about that in a blog post from OpenGovTN and an article from the Tunis Afrique Press (both in French).

In the United Kingdom, the group MySociety announced that they have received a $2.9 million grant from the Omidyar Foundation to fund efforts to internationalize their websites and help organizations around the world to promote transparency and accountability in government by building their own websites and apps. Check out Tom Steinberg’s announcement on the MySociety blog or this article in techPresident to read about it.

Click here to read more.