A quote from the Sunlight Foundation’s John Wonderlich, speaking on the keynote panel at last week’s ConDatos conference in Mexico City:

“The public institution with the most power to change how open data helps our societies to be more productive and accountable is legislatures. I think they have the most power to change this and they are the least well-equipped to deal with it.

There is the biggest gap between how the modern world works and how our legislatures function, and how our legislators understand technology, and know how to write laws, and regulate. No country is doing a good job of writing laws that deal with the modern world.

And so I think one of the biggest opportunities we have is to close the gap between the laws that dictate how our public institutions are structured, and our expectations and how the world actually functions. I think right now that’s like a 40-year gap between those two things. And I think closing that gap will be a huge lever in changing how data is released, how our laws are enforced and what our expectations are for accountability.” (39:34)

You can watch the full panel and the entire ConDatos conference above.

This post originally appeared on the Sunlight Foundation’s blog.

Sunlight is thrilled to mark Global Legislative Openness Week with our global legislative transparency campaign, which culminated earlier this week in a joint letter from the world’s parliamentary monitoring organizations (PMOs) sent to national legislatures across the globe. The letter calls for increased legislative transparency and parliamentary open data, and affirms the importance of legislative institutions and NGOs as partners in strengthening democracy. It is also an invitation for increased collaboration, offering help to legislatures in embracing new technology. In the short time since we solicited endorsements, we’ve been nothing short of astounded by the response we’ve gotten from the community of PMOs throughout the world. In part, that’s due to the unique strength of the PMO network we’ve built along with the National Democratic Institute and the Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency; it also demonstrates NGOs’ appetite for both transparency and for coordinated international advocacy. One hundred nine PMOs from 54 countries have endorsed the letter, along with a variety of other supporting organizations.¹ The letter has also been translated into 14 languages, for a total of 20 translations (including regional variations). With groups’ help from around the world, we have submitted the letter to 191 legislative bodies in 130 different countries and the EU.

Open Up Your Legislature!

Read the full letter that calls on legislatures across the globe to make parliamentary data “open by default.” Many legislatures are demonstrating an eagerness to respond. Our colleagues at Hasadna in Israel have leveraged the campaign to begin conversations with the Knesset about releasing an API for parliamentary data. The Al Hayat Center in Jordan had a personal appointment with the Speaker of the Jordanian parliament to hand deliver our community’s demands for openness. These early conversations mark a new opportunity for dialogue between PMOs and members of parliaments, and we expect to hear of many more examples in the coming weeks. In addition to these governmental responses, we’re also seeing a big response from our broader PMO community. National level actors are customizing the campaign to leverage it in their own context, through activities including organizing a coalition of civil society organizations (CSOs) for a strong coordinated promotional push (Spain, Burkina Faso, Croatia), crowdsourcing unique translations based on the national parliamentary situations or cultural nuances (Latin America, Netherlands, Chile) and even hand delivering letters to parliaments when contact information is difficult to find (Kenya). One development we’re particularly excited about is that our approach to legislative reform at scale internationally is also being translated to the subnational level. Sunlight is leading (and will soon be sending) a similar letter to every U.S. state legislature, and PATTIRO — an NGO based in Indonesia — has disseminated the letter nationwide, reaching out to the country’s 34 regional legislatures. OpenNorth, a PMO in Canada, and Public Policies Lab from Argentina have also sent the letter to local legislatures. We expect that these stories of direct legislature impact and national CSO activity are just a few of the many to come. To track these initiatives, we’ve put together a public document to help build a repository of success stories for the global legislative transparency community. However, to create a complete and inclusive repository, we need your help. If you know of any updates or activities that have resulted from this campaign on the national level, please add it to our spreadsheet. ¹ “Supporting” groups include parliamentary bodies or commissions within parliaments that are publicly supporting the initiative by promoting the letter or the message behind the campaign.

Click here to read more.

Originally posted at the Sunlight Foundation blog.

It’s 2013, and the Library of Congress seems to think releasing public data about Congress is a risk to the public.

The Library of Congress is in charge of THOMAS.gov, and its successor Congress.gov. These sites publish some of the most fundamental information about Congress — the history and status of bills. Whether it’s immigration law or SOPA, patent reform or Obamacare, the Library of Congress will tell you: What is Congress working on? Who’s working on it? When did that happen?

Except they won’t let you download that information. Instead, popular websites like GovTrack, widely used services like Sunlight’s, and world-class newspapers like the New York Times are forced to design complicated, error-prone systems that extract what data they can from the pages of the website of the Library of Congress. It’s a lot of work, but it’s a necessary burden for anyone outside Congress who wishes to use that data to inform and empower the public.

Click here to read more.

Repost from Rebecca Williams of the Sunlight Foundation.

When we talk about providing a transparent and legible legislative process, the first step is identifying all the moving parts that contribute to the passing of law. In Washington, D.C., this means not just following the city council, but also following D.C.’s Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, or ANCs, the hyperlocal government entities that advise the city council on community issues. Although the District’s city government structure is uniquely granular, it serves as an excellent model for understanding what a complete legislative data framework should consist of.

Understanding D.C. local government is almost as complicated as understanding the federal government. Washington, D.C. is divided not only into 8 wards, but also into 40 ANC districts, and each ANC is further divided into many Single Member Districts or SMDs. Each ANC is made up of 2-12 commissioners (based on the number of SMDs in each ANC) that are regularly elected in small, nonpartisan elections. ANCs hold regular meetings, hear presentations, and commissioners vote on matters that affect the local community, such as: street improvements, parking, liquor licenses, zoning, restaurant and business issues, and trash and sanitation. Each ANC is also allotted a small budget, based on the population size of their district. While ANCs do not have city law making powers, their opinion is highly influential over city council decisions. In order to fully participate in D.C.’s government and to fully understand D.C.’s legislative process – let alone hold it accountable – one must have access to information about ANC commissioners, meetings, votes, and spending.

Click here to read more.

Repost from Rebecca Williams of the Sunlight Foundation This map distinguishes five levels of legislative web and broadcasting comprehension on a sliding scale from “Best” (including all recommended elements: video formatting of floor proceedings and committee hearings, archived, and broadcasted via a variety of mediums) to “Worst” (missing several of these recommended elements). For more info (or to watch!) see the NCSL’s original roundup here.

Open legislative data is integral to a functioning legible participatory democracy. The legislative data canopy covers everything from information about who represents you to the nuts and bolts of the legislative process to final letter of the law, with each element carrying its own series of challenges and considerations when it comes to public access. Timely and archived legislative process data (i.e. bills, amendments, committee meetings, votes, and contextual information, such as: research reports, legislative journals and lobbying information) are crucial to supporting citizen participation and informed voting. Video documentation of the legislative process represents the barebones of open and accountable legislative process data – passive recordings of events as they happen for prosperity and public inclusion – and yet this information is still not comprehensively available in most U.S. states.

Click here to read more.