News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Argentina, a group of NGOs and members from both houses of congress launched a working group on legislative transparency in May. Shortly after, a summit was held in Buenos Aires to showcase regional experiences regarding legislative transparency. At the summit, members of both chambers agreed to introduce legislation to modernize their access to information policies.  

In Paraguay, an access to information bill was passed in the Chamber of Deputies after a controversial amendment making it easier for the government to withhold certain types of information was removed. The bill now returns to the Senate, which passed a similar version earlier this year.

In France, Regards Citoyens and Sciences Po launched a new project, La Fabrique De La Loi, which hosts tools to analyze parliamentary debates and track the evolution of bills throughout the legislative process. The project utilizes public data in order to shed light on parliamentary procedures and their impact on the lawmaking process.

In Morocco, SimSim-Civic Participation will launch Nouabook.ma this week, Morocco’s first website to facilitate citizen engagement with parliament.

In Hungary, the government included K-Monitor on a list of “problematic” NGOs that are routinely critical of the government. The list follows a disagreement between the government and Norway Grants, the organization that funds many of the organizations, several of which were recently raided by government officials.

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In Portugal, a petition that began to circulate in March calls for more comprehensive information access on the voting records of Members of Parliament on the parliament’s website. While the website currently holds a record of activity for each member, determining how an individual votes for a particular measure can be difficult. The initiative is similar to another petition, that would create an electronic registry on the votes of each representative in the National Assembly. Transparencia Hackday, a Declaration endorser, has supported these measures.

In the United Kingdom, mySociety interviewed Flavio Zeni about the Akoma Ntoso metadata format for the recently launched SayIt platform (for more on Akoma Ntoso implementation around the world, see Robert Richards’ list here). mySociety reviewed the UK Parliament’s online services last month (report available here), while Computing.com recently provided a look at technology in the British Parliament, including widening access to parlaimentary information (H/T Robert Richards).

In Hungary, the Public Policy Institute (PPI) released its report on parliamentary activities in 2013, drawing attention to several important issues, including the quality of projects initiated by parliamentarians, chronic absenteeism, abuse of tacit adoption procedures, failure to exercise legislative power to rein in the executive branch, and encouragement of political migration by some parties.

In Nigeria, CISLAC outlined various advocacy positions and strategies for engagement during the recently convened National Conference. CISLAC emphasized that beyond discussing contentious historical issues at the conference, the government needed to set the agenda “inclusive, participatory democratic governance beyond 2015.”

In the United States, the Sunlight Foundation analyzed the White House Office of Management and Budget’s opposition to portions of the DATA ACT and changes to the Senate version of the bill which weaken the bills data standardization provisions. It also has continued a webinar series on enhancing transparency in political finance, with past webinars viewable here. Elsewhere, GCN profiled the GovLab and its new public interest lab network.

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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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In the Netherlands, more than 400 municipalities will go to the polls on March 19. Research conducted by Open State, in collaboration with students from the University of Utrecht, recently concluded that information about local council voting records remains difficult to find or nonexistent for most municipalities across the country.  

In the United States, the Governance Lab at New York University announced the formation of a Research Network on Opening Governance, which will seek to develop blueprints for more effective and legitimate democratic institutions. The project was made possible through a three year grant of $5 million, from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, as well as a gift from Google.org.

Elsewhere In the United States, GovTrack.us released comprehensive report cards on a range of subjects, including government transparency, for Members of Congress for 2013. In February, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) completed its efforts to provide House of Representatives bill summaries in XML format for bulk data download. While GPO already makes available House bills, the Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, and other documents from the executive branch in XML, the new feature will increase the availability of objective descriptions of complex legislative text, and is thus an important step in the House Leadership’s goal of increasing transparency.  

In Venezuela, Transparency Venezuela launched a report on the activities of the National Assembly in 2013, focusing in particular on the committees of Finance and Comptroller. Transparency also released a report in January on the latest developments in the Petrocaribe Energy Cooperation Agreement, detailing issues with Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  

In South Africa,  the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) published an article about shrinking the accountability deficit created by a system where voters cannot directly call on individual public representatives on the basis that their votes put them there. The article highlighted a recent CSO initiative, the People’s Assembly website, to facilitate public participation. The website provides critical information in an easily understandable format to members of the public.

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In Chile, Chile Transparente celebrated the passing of new legislation to create a public register of lobbyists and lobbying. Previously, Chile Transparente marked the new year with articles looking at the accomplishments of the transparency movement worldwide, and commented on the specific challenges facing Chile that lay ahead.

Poplus, the network founded by mySociety and Ciudadano Inteligente, launched a new platform called SayIt. SayIt makes it easier to launch websites to track and publish politicians’ speeches, interviews, and the proceedings of trials.

In Azerbaijan, the International Human Rights Protection Association condemned the arrest of Anar Mammadli, Chairman of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center (EMDS), on charges of tax evasion and abuse of office as baseless, illegal, and suspect, given EMDS’ reports of abuse during the October Presidential Election. You can find the final report of OSCE’s election observation mission on Azerbaijan’s Presidential Election on the EMDS website. A timeline is available here.

In the United States, the Sunlight Foundation announced a new initiative to increase political finance transparency, including a free webinar series. Sunlight also launched a new version of the Congress app, incorporating legislative district maps with Mapbox technology. The Economist published a neat data visualization on polarization in American politics, drawing on Govtrack.us data.

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News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Mexico, Visión Legislativa took on the task of reviewing fast track legislation and the legislative process as established by la Ley Orgánica del Congreso. The article gives a brief overview of some of the best pieces of legislation between the years 1917 and 2000. Visión Legislativa also recently published a history of legislative elections and political parties.

SayIt, a new component of the Poplus network, launched this week. The goal of Poplus, which mySociety and Ciudadano Inteligente founded, is to collaboratively build pieces of technology that make it quicker and cheaper for people around the world to build websites and apps designed to empower citizens.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Centre for Civil Initiatives reports that parliamentarians and citizens participated in 27 public meetings in 2013, providing a forum for parliamentarians and citizens to talk about the current situation on a given topic.

In Georgia, Transparency International Georgia issued a statement urging the Georgian Parliament not to vote for the postponement of a new rule related to witness interrogation during investigations, a process seen as unconstitutional.

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In India, PRS Legislative Research released two very interesting documents: a concept note entitled “Rethinking the Indian Parliament” and a series of data visualizations of parliamentary activity. These accompanied PRS’s annual conference on effective legislatures, the lectures of which are available here. The visualizations were constructed from their firsthand data gathering, available here. The latest PRS report on parliamentary performance is available here. The Indian parliament passed a bill to form a new anti-corruption agency.

In Nigeria, CISLAC published a guide to understanding the parliamentary ethics and conduct regime, defining the problems that exist, and identifying the role of MPs. CISLAC also provided an overview of the two-day Seminar on “African State Legislatures: Subnational Politics and National Power” organized by Landmark University Omu-Aran in collaboration with National Endowment for Democracy and University of America in Omu-Aran, Kwara.

In Tunisia, Al Bawsala, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Carter Center issued a joint statement on urging the National Constituent Assembly to ensure the new constitution of Tunisia is brought into conformity with international human rights standards and obligations of the country under international law.

In Zimbabwe, a new parliamentary monitoring platform was launched: KuvakaZim. The founders state, “The KuvakaZim project was born from a general concern regarding the accountability and activities of Zimbabwean members of Parliament and their duties in regard of their representative roles.” mySociety also wrote a post about this new platform, as KuvakaZim is utilizing their Pombola platform.

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