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Posts tagged "Kyrgyzstan"

PMO News Update: Vol. 8

Posted August 13, 2012 at 8:27am by danswislow

If anyone has their own news to share, please send it along, but here are a few stories that may be of interest:

I would highly recommend taking a look at this blog post from Oxfam. It takes a look at eight case studies of campaigns on access to information, budget transparency, and government accountability from different countries around the world, and draws conclusions about what types of strategies work best for advocacy. The case studies are from the International Budget Partnership, and explore stories in MexicoIndia (2), South Africa (2ArgentinaPakistan, and Tanzania

In South Africa, an article appeared in the Mail and Guardian detailing the importance of an open parliament to democracy and improved quality of life, highlighting the issues of public participation, consultation and accountability of MPs. The article appears in the context of the People’s Power, People’s Parliament conference, which begins today in Cape Town and lasts until August 15, hosted by, among others, PMO Network member Parliamentary Monitoring Group. We look forward to hearing about the results of the event. Speaking of PMG, an academic paper was released recently that details and analyzes civil society participation in the South African Parliament, using a significant amount of data and information from PMG. Furthering the topic of last month’s conference in Paris, this is yet another example of PMO work informing and enhancing academic research—and vice versa.

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PMO News Update: Vol. 4

Posted July 2, 2012 at 10:04am by danswislow

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.

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