La Iniciativa Latinoamericana de Datos Abiertos se planteó desde el primer momento como un espacio no sólo de reflexión en investigación, sino fundamentalmente de conversación e interacción. La participación activa por parte de nuestro equipo en Abre Latam y ConDatos fue un gesto claro en ese sentido, pero nos quedamos con ganas de seguir charlando.

Para sacarnos un poco estas ganas de conversar que nos quedaron, y para tener la oportunidad de romper las barreras geográficas de nuestra región estamos comenzando con un ciclo de webinarios que comienzan este jueves 6 de noviembre a las 16:30 (horario de Buenos Aires). Allí estaremos haciendo un análisis sobre el estado de la apertura parlamentaria en América Latina, contando un poco la experiencia y los aprendizajes de la semana de los datos en México y debatiendo alrededor de los desafíos que se vienen.

Contaremos con los comentarios de María Jaraquemada de la Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente y estaremos completamente abiertos a todo tipo de aporte por parte del público. Para registrarse hay que entrar  aquí. Existe un cupo limitado de asistentes. El evento será grabado y eventualmente difundido a través de www.idatosabiertos.org.

News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In India, national elections closed on May 16, with Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party anticipated to win more than the 272 seats required for a parliamentary majority. In advance of the election, Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS) developed report cards for members of the Lok Sabha. The report cards provide citizens with information gathered through the Right To Information Act and other government websites and assess MP performance on factors like attendance and efforts to introduce new development within their districts. See here for more information on SNS’ methodology.

Last month, PRS Legislative Research provided a historical comparison of the number of bills passed to ordinances declared during each Lok Sabha since 1952.

In Chile, delegates from 27 countries gathered in Santiago on April 29-30 for the first Poplus Conference, organized by mySociety and Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente. Participants shared goals for the future of the Poplus network, a nascent project with the goal to create and share open source code that helps civic organizations around the world.

In the European Union, voting for European Parliamentary elections will take place May 22-25. Election results will be available in open data format, allowing interested users to retrieve raw data, use filters to present the information in custom ways, and publish it on their own online platforms.

In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Kohovolit.eu launched an election calculator for the European Parliament that allows users to browse voting data of European MPs from 2009 to 2014. The calculator allows users to curate the data by selecting issues important to them and reviewing how closely the voting records of different EMPs match their views.

Click here to read more.

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.

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News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

In Germany, Parliament Watch described efforts to get candidates to sign a transparency pledge ahead of the September elections. Parliament Watch also recently worked with their media partner Der Spiegel to create an interactive election website for citizens to guess the outcomes of upcoming elections. Elsewhere, the German branch of the Open Knowledge Foundation visited the Code for America offices in San Francisco to begin the “Code for All” international partnership. A monthly report of all OKF Germany’s July activities is available here.

In Peru, the Congress faced a battery of criticism over appointments to a number of key posts in the country, with President Ollanta Humala calling on some of the new appointees to step down. Entorno Parlamentario suggested four areas of reform (and Transparencia Peru a further three), while La Republica criticized the ethics committee for lack of sanctioning members who receive formal complaints.

In Afghanistan, the Free & Fair Elections Forum (FEFA) released their June 2013 parliamentary monitoring report, which highlighted a number of positive developments, including on the activities of the Oversight Committee on Performance of the Government and the Committee on Women’s Affairs.

In Argentina, a new voting record tracking app, the winner of an April 2013 hackathon won seed funding to further develop and scale. An interview with the team is available and the source code is available on GitHub.

Click here to read more.

Last Wednesday in Bogotá, Colombia, Senator Hernán Larraín, Chair of the Chilean Congress’s Bicameral Commission on Transparency, announced efforts to create a new thematic working group on legislative openness within the Open Government Partnership (OGP). This effort to address openness of the legislative process through OGP will be led by Chile in partnership with the National Democratic Institute (NDI).

The announcement came amidst the fourth meeting of La Red Parlamentaria Latinoamericana Pro Transparencia, Acceso a la Información Pública y Probidad, which brought together parliamentarians from nine Latin American countries at the Colombian Congress to discuss advancing an agenda for open legislatures in the region. The OGP working group aims to enable constructive engagement between parliaments, governments and civil society on issues of legislative openness and citizen participation in the legislative process.

The Minister Secretary General of the Presidency of Chile, representing Chile to OGP, is extending invitations to all OGP Member Countries to participate in the group.

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Over the past few years in Latin America, access to public information and transparency have stopped being exclusive concerns of the executive branch and have expanded to the legislature and other arenas. More and more organizations focused on monitoring and bringing transparency to the work of congresses and parliaments have appeared in a short period of time. And certainly, Latin America is not the exception. It has now been three years since the creation of the Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency (LANLT or LALT Network) as a mechanism of cooperation, association and collaboration on advocacy and research projects, as well as the promotion of access to congressional activity, accountability and the strengthening of networking between representatives and their constituencies. Today, the LANLT includes 16 organizations in 8 countries in the region: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.   

During the last annual meeting of the LANLT, which took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, between June 17 and 18, important actions were taken towards consolidation and enlargement, along with measures to strengthen the network’s efforts and capabilities. Among these actions, we can emphasize the launch of the network’s new web site, www.transparencialegislativa.org, which consists of publications, goals, actions and basic documents on the different political contexts of the region. Another fundamental achievement of the meeting was the review of the Legislative Transparency Index, which was first released in 2011 and will once again be carried out in 2013 with the inclusion of best practices of legislative behavior and the principles enunciated in the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness.

Click here to read more.

News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

In Spain, Fundación Ideas and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) hosted a number of organizations in a discussion on the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness, which included participation by Miguel Angel Gonzalo, webmaster of the Spanish Chamber of Deputies, and Michal Skop of KohoVolit.eu . Participants discussed various aspects of the Declaration, in particular how the Spanish parliament meets or fails to meet its provisions, including on issues of access to information and using search engines and alert services. Qué Hacen Los Diputados posted an informative article about the Declaration in the Spanish context (for current affairs, see this blog post) and also an article on the Spanish legislative process more generally. Qué Hacen Los Diputados is currently fundraising to expand their website and services. Finally, La Fundación Ciudadana Civio called for political parties and the Spanish Congress to make their finances public.

In Latin America, the Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency (LALT Network), alongside International IDEA Peru and others participated in a seminar on information technologies and citizen engagement with parliaments. Participants discussed turning technologies into civic education, the concept of “digital citizenship”, and efforts toward parliamentary transparency and integrity. The presentation by Manuel Arís on the mission of the LALT Network is available here. For more information on transparency efforts in the region by LALT and OpeningParliament.org, see this recent article by Ernesto Diaz Diego-Iturbe. The Nieman Journalism Lab recently covered open data and transparency efforts in the region.

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