News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

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.

Click here to read more.

News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In India, a recent news article covered PRS Legislative Research’s organizational model. PRS Legislative Research recently published a report on the activities of the Lok Sabha, joined the debate on pending corruption bills, and explored parliamentary and constitutional issues of new statutory entitlement legislation. Elsewhere in India, the government launched an Accountability Initiative to provide resources for accountable governance and procurement. TechPresident covered CGNet Swara, a project aiming to empower citizens to address their problems using voice messaging. The Times of India detailed the lack of transparency in political donations. 

In Spain, OpenKratio became the 130th organization to endorse the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. OpenKratio supports a number of open government initiatives, including the Hummingbird Project, which aims to bridge the programmer/web journalist communities with the Spanish Congress to facilitate data access. Recently, OpenKratio announced a collaboration with the Andalucia Open Left political party and reported on a study on big data and political participation. A new app where users can express their opinion on current legislation is now available. Elsewhere, Global Integrity highlighted a “low-tech” approach to improving transparency in rural areas of Spain by Graba tu Pleno.

In Mexico, legislators in the Chamber of Deputies sought to change the content of transparency reforms in a way that civil society organizations said would be a major step back for government openness. Amid this vast criticism, legislators rolled back these changes at the last minute before passing the reforms through the Chamber late in the evening, September 22. Further commentary is available from Fundar here.

Click here to read more.

Interview with Al Bawsala founder Amira Yahyaoui:

Organization: Al Bawsala
Project: Marsad.tn parliamentary monitoring platform
Country: Tunisia
Government Level: National

Overview: Al Bawsala works to strengthen democracy in Tunisia by increasing public integrity and accountability. The activities of the Tunisian parliament are very difficult for outsiders to observe—the parliament does not officially publish votes, transcripts, or agendas. Al Bawsala seeks to remedy this lack of transparency by publishing parliamentary information on the website Marsad.tn.

Click here to read more.

Updated 1/17/14: Parliament Watch is currently requesting funds to continue operations. To contribute, click here. 

Interview with Parliament Watch founder Gregor Hackmack:

Organization: Parliament Watch
Project: Parliamentary monitoring in Germany and around the world
Country: Germany, Luxembourg, Austria, Ireland, Tunisia, France
Government Level: National

Overview: Launched in 2007, ParliamentWatch website seeks to introduce a new element of accountability and awareness of the activities of parliament to German political culture. ParliamentWatch compiles and organizes legislative information and allows citizens to publically question their elected officials. The platform works with legislatures across Germany. It is being implemented in 5 other countries by partnering organizations as well.

Click here to read more.

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.

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.

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.

Click here to read more.