News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Spain, the PMO Civio launched a new project called Quién Manda, or “Who Rules?”  The project aims to monitor the interactions of Spanish politicians and officials with corporate leaders by an innovative photo-tagging scheme. Thus far, they’ve identified over 2500 relationships. Recently, a Sunlight Foundation team member worked with Civio in the lead up to the launch. There is still an active crowd-funding campaign for the initiative on Goteo. 

Elsewhere in Spain, a Spanish lawmaker held an attempt at direct democracy related to a transparency bill, a vital effort given Spain’s recent ranking of 75 out of 96 countries on access to information issues. Last month, the Masters of Media project commented on the Spanish status quo and Que Hacen Los Diputados discussed what the Congress needs to provide to ensure transparency.

In Pakistan, PILDAT released a number of reports, including on: the first meeting of a senate parliamentary friendship group on Afghanistan; the first 100 days of governance at the national and provincial levels; and two reports on the Pakistan-Afghanistan Parliamentary dialogues.

In Venezuela, Transparencia Venezuela released a report on the nation’s budget for the first half of 2013, and condemned corruption in the country and noted the role of civil society in combatting it. Meanwhile Entorno Parlamentario discussed key upcoming bills and opposition to an anti-corruption law.

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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.  

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News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

The European Public Sector Information Platform published a report on parliamentary informatics, including how organizations can support parliaments in open data initiatives. Report author Karolis Granickas from TI Lithuania recently discussed the report and other topics on the OpeningParliament blog.

In France, Regards Citoyens updated the citizen open data catalogue at Nosdonnes.fr. The organization proposed an amendment to increase MP voting transparency, offered 10 proposals to increase transparency in light of a fraud scandal in the Minister of the Budget’s office, and weighed in on the debate over new lobbying rules in the National Assembly.

In Argentina, the legislature of the city of Buenos Aires endorsed the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. A video from the legislature is available here.

In South Africa, the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) published a case study entitled “Getting Information to the People: The Role of the Parliamentary Monitoring Group.” The report includes a description of PMG’s mission and activities, brief sections on what challenges and opportunities face PMOs around the world, and suggestions for future activities.

Click here to read more.

This update was compiled by my colleague Dustin Palmer, who will be taking over the regular duties of putting this post together. 

News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

In Bangladesh, Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) expressed optimism at the opposition party’s decision to join the upcoming budget session of parliament.

In Belgium, the software division of Gov2U was acquired by Scytl, a company focused on election modernization efforts. Also in Belgium, the Open Knowledge Foundation of Belgium took over stewardship of the OpenBelgium website.

In Egypt, the Egyptian Democracy Institute (EDI) released a report on the April 2013 activities of the Shura Council (or Upper House).

In India, a brief profile of the president of PRS Legislative Research was published, amid other news coverage of the country’s parliamentary stalemate.

In Kenya, the PMO Mzalendo published an article detailing the possibly illegal actions of the police during the recent “Occupy Parliament” protest.

In Malaysia, the Sinar Project posted an internship opening in Subang Jaya.

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News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

This section is devoted to news from parliamentary monitoring organizations (PMOs) listed as ‘Supporting Organizations’ of the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness and OpeningParliament.

In Peru, work from Asociación Civil Transparencia has been highlighted recently in the media. The publication La Republica cited figures from a recent Transparencia report that showed a large portion of the Peruvian population not feeling represented by their legislator. In another article, the organization’s Secretary General talked about the need to balance transparency and accountability with providing MPs the resources they need to complete their job.

The Israeli PMO Hasadna’s project Open Knesset was profiled in a recent piece in TechPresident, which detailed the website’s success in using monitoring information on MPs to inform voters in recent elections.

In Montenegro, the Center for Democratic Transition released a list of eight recommendations for improving governance and transparency in the country’s parliament. View it here.

In Taiwan, Citizen Congress Watch (CCW) announced that the previous year’s congress was ranked ‘useless’ after passing only about 10 percent of the legislation passed in previous years. CCW also announced the top ten news items about the legislature from the previous year. Check out the Taipei Times coverage of CCW’s report.

Click here to read more.