This post was written by Maria Hermosilla and Julia Root and originally appeared on The GovLab’s blog. 

On September 24th, The GovLab held its third online global conference on #CrowdLaw. Practitioners from 16 countries discussed the challenges and lessons learned when crowdsourcing legislation and constitutions. The session including lightning talks by practitioners with projects from Austria, Brazil, Chile, Finland, United States, Morocco, Libya and Spain and then a broader group discussion on three themes:

• Outreach strategies
• Designing to overcome barriers; and
• Measuring impact.

The goal of the conference was to deepen our collective understanding of what works, what doesn’t, how to assess impact, and accelerate the implementation of more effective and legitimate participatory lawmaking practices.

The full video is available here. Featured speakers and projects included:

• PODEMOS, SPAIN – Victoria Alsina, visiting researcher at Harvard, is working with 5 leading politicians of the Spanish political party Podemos to research how they are using technology to increase citizen participation in politics from voting every four years to a more day to day basis. She discussed two tools: the Plaza Podemos, that is based on Reddit and is a place of contact and debate for their followers, organized by thematic and territorial circles. It is used regularly by 15,000 people. They also use Appgreefor massive brainstorm sessions and doing quick surveys and for approving proposals. They have had up to 60,000 participants voting on Appgree.

• NEOS, AUSTRIA – Josef Lentsch, Managing Director of Neos Lab and Karl-Arthur Arlamovsky from Austrian political party NEOS discussed the tools they are using to implement their vision of making politics more open and participatory. Thematic groups at a local, regional and national level composed by thousand of volunteer policy advisors draft policy proposals on “Policy Forge”, a customized collaborative drafting platform. Neos has a cockpit composed of tools such as a calendar, customer relation management system, wiki, meeting software, among others.

Click here to read more.

This post originally appeared on NDI’s DemocracyWorks blog.

The Third International Open Data Conference in Ottawa last week brought together more than 1,000 open data advocates from a diverse array of countries and professional backgrounds to discuss open government and open data. Compared with the First International Open Data Conference – a small gathering of technologists at the World Bank in 2010 – the event’s growth constituted a clear statement that open data is here to stay and the global community of advocates is growing.

The conference demonstrated that the global open data movement has matured and is more focused on the relationship between open data, power and politics. Open data is most transformative and impactful when it improves the relationship between government and the public. Consider legislatures: when used appropriately, open data makes it easier for citizens to access information about the activities of their lawmakers, which helps build public trust and citizen engagement in government. Open legislative data can also empower citizens to effectively monitor and evaluate the performance of their legislature. Unequal access to public information can distort the relationship between citizens and their government; open data can help correct this, empowering broader participation and increasing accountability and understanding.

Click here to read more.

This post originally appeared on the Congressional Data Coalition’s website. 

The House of Representatives recently held its fourth annual Legislative Data and Transparency Conference. The conference provides a unique opportunity for members of Congress, congressional staff, legislative support office staff, legislative support agency staff, and the public to meet and discuss efforts to make congressional information more useful and more widely available to stakeholders inside and outside Congress. As in prior years, it was a significant success.

This blogpost covers highlights of the conference, but if you want more, here are video, slides, and the agenda for the day’s activities.

To start, I would like to note that a representative of the Secretary of the Senate’s office was one of the presenters. Although the Senate has had staff attend in the past, this is the first time a representative participated in the panels. It is an indication of the Senate’s increasing involvement in efforts to open up legislative data.

Below is the video from the conference.

Click here to read more.

Around the world, technologists, policy makers, and openness advocates are employing creative solutions to help their legislatures solve difficult problems. Over the next few weeks, Harvard’s Ash Center and The OpenGov Foundation are hosting a series of events in the US to create solutions to the difficult problems facing the US Congress. 

#Hack4Congress, a series of “not-just-for-technologists” events, brings together political scientists, technologists, designers,  lawyers, researchers, Congressional staffers, and lawmakers to create new digital tools, policy innovations, and other solutions to address the dysfunction in the US Congress.  

To get a sense of what a #Hack4Congress event is like, take a look at this great recap video from the first hack: 

There will be a total of three #Hack4Congress events. The first took place at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in January; the second will be this weekend, March 21-22 at Code for America’s headquarters in San Francisco; and the third will take place in DC, April 29-May 1, at Google’s new headquarters. The winning team from each event will come to DC to present their ideas to members of Congress and their staff.

Click here to read more.