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.  

Click here to read more.

Updated 1/17/14: Parliament Watch is currently requesting funds to continue operations. To contribute, click here. 

Interview with Parliament Watch founder Gregor Hackmack:

Organization: Parliament Watch
Project: Parliamentary monitoring in Germany and around the world
Country: Germany, Luxembourg, Austria, Ireland, Tunisia, France
Government Level: National

Overview: Launched in 2007, ParliamentWatch website seeks to introduce a new element of accountability and awareness of the activities of parliament to German political culture. ParliamentWatch compiles and organizes legislative information and allows citizens to publically question their elected officials. The platform works with legislatures across Germany. It is being implemented in 5 other countries by partnering organizations as well.

Click here to read more.

(This news update, by Dustin Palmer, is a continuation of that posted last week. Be sure to check back next week for news from this week (which isn’t covered in the update below… got it?))

News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

In Pakistan, during a citizens forum hosted by the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT), the Speaker of the Provincial Assembly of Punjab praised the role of PILDAT in improving the performance of the Punjab Assembly. The forum marked the release of a report by PILDAT on the performance of the provincial assembly over the last five years, including recommendations to further strengthen it.  The report is available in English and Urdu.

In Colombia, Congreso Visible released its yearly report on the legislature, examined the inadequate division of labor in the Congress, and considered the challenge of making legislative information visible. Additionally, Transparencia Por Colombia helped citizens to create a mural of transparency during a public meeting with the local planning council of the Bosa district of Bogotá. Citizens and local authorities renewed the Bosa Pact for Transparency and Governance. Transparencia Por Colombia also presented at the Andesco National Congress.

In Mexico, the LALT Network recently called on the international community to oppose efforts by the Mexico House of Representatives to restrict access to information and transparency. More context on these efforts - and the opposition’s response - is available from FUNDAR here and here. One factor is the lack of historical legislative data and research, which hampers the legislative process. Also in Mexico, Visión Legislativa urged legislators to to make more legislative information available, even as the Supreme Court ruled against disclosure requirements.

Click here to read more.

Here’s some news from the last two weeks:

In Ireland, the PMO KildareStreet, which has been without data since September 18 because of the Irish Parliament (Houses of the Oireachtas) ceasing to publish XML data, has started a fundraising campaign to raise money to support a redevelopment of their website that will allow them to independently scrape parliamentary data. Click here to support KildareStreet’s resurrection.

In Africa, a regional network of PMOs met for the first time in Accra, Ghana, in September after first coming together at the PMO conference in Washington in April/May. One participant, the Institute for Empirical Research in Political Economy in Benin, wrote a short post about the event. The conference was led by the Ghana Center for Democratic Development and allowed for discussions on the formal creation of an African network, creating a study that maps existing PMOs in Sub Saharan Africa, and the use of the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. Participants from Kenya, Uganda and Malawi, among others, were also involved. (It’d be great to hear a report from any members here who attended!)

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.