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.

News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

In Croatia, a new freedom of information law has been adopted. The law outlines the types of information that must be made public and calls for proactive publishing of this data by government agencies and bodies. GONG, a Croatian parliamentary monitoring organization, provided input and amendments to the law during its drafting, which were adopted.

In Botswana, the Botswana Speaks Parliamentary Initiative was recently launched with the help of Gov2u and other partners. The initiative, similar to the USpeak platform in Uganda, intends to improve governance and bring more voices into the policy-making discussion by connecting MPs directly with citizens through SMS messaging.

In Mexico, Fundar continues to work with MPs who are interested in redesigning the parliament’s website in order to make it more responsive to citizens. MPs cite the Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency’s index and the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness as guides for this work. MPs held a Legislative Dialogues for a Digital Mexico meeting with activists, civil society organizations, and scholars calling for the creation of a new federal agency that would address a growing digital divide, work towards universal access to information, and drive Mexico’s broad digital agenda.

Click here to read more.

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.

Just a few interesting news items to share that I’ve come across in the past week. If there have been any happenings in your own countries or if you want to share any recent work, please feel free to reply. Thanks to Maria for sharing some news from Latin America, and to Eric for an update on the great new Scout tool from the Sunlight Foundation.

In Hong Kong, SynergyNet released their report on the Governance Performance of the HKSAR Government 2012, a press release and the report are available here.

In Hungary, the government has expressed an intention to join the Open Government Partnership (OGP) after a long campaign by numerous NGOs. The PMO K-Monitor has released a set of recommendations for the government to become more open, detailed in this post on their blog.

India and the US launched a bilateral effort to utilize a new Open Government Platform. This open source software includes a data management system, web site, and social networking community support. More information is available on the project’s website at http://www.opengovplatform.org/.

Zambia: Constitution coalition asks government to publicise budget (Post Zambia)

Click here to read more.

I have some more news to share from the past week or so, including several success stories from PMO conference participants. Please reply with comments and share your own news as well. I’ve heard some great stories over the past couple of weeks from some of you in calls and emails about the work you’re doing around the world – it’s always inspiring to hear about. Here are a few examples:

In Tunisia, a coalition of open government organizations, OpenGovTN, which counts PMO Al Bawsala among its core members, has announced that, as of today, the Citizen Assembly should be publishing all committee meeting minutes and reports, and plenary roll call lists on the Assembly’s official website. You can read more about OpenGovTN’s efforts to unlock this information in this blog post from Nawaat.

In Serbia,a new website, otvoreniparlament.rs, was launched by the Open Parliament initiative, which includes the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA) among its leaders. The website will provide Serbians with the transcripts of all parliamentary sessions. You can read more about this in a press release from USAID.

In Kyrgyzstan, over the past month, the Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society has won two major court cases against the Parliament of Kyrgyzstan. The first, decided on May 11, will force Parliament to provide detailed information about the voting behavior of MPs. The second, decided last week on June 7, obliges Parliament to provide information on the business trips of MPs.

Click here to read more.