News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

In Argentina, CIPPEC, with support of a public TV channel, organized a series of dialogues between young voters and five candidates running to become Mayor of Buenos Aires. To increase reach, each dialogue was broadcast using Google Hangouts and provided opportunities for interaction over social networks.

In Germany, Parliament Watch won a lawsuit calling on the parliament to disclose information on lobbyists who have registered with the Bundestag.

In Uganda, Parliament Watch released a report entitled “Assessment of the Accountability Committees of Parliament”. The assessment found that accountability committees struggle to review and respond to Auditor General reports in a timely manner, creating a large backlog of reports. The assessment concludes with a number of institutional, administrative, and political recommendations to help accountability committees deal with these challenges.

In Croatia, GONG and Code for Croatia launched a new website that allows citizens to request information from more than 6000 public authorities, including the Croatian Parliament.

In Norway, Holder de Ord launched Sagt i Salen (Said in the Parliament), a new feature that shows how many times a certain word has been used in parliamentary debate. This tool facilitates political speech analysis by showing how many times a word has been used in a given year, by a political party, or by an individual MP.   

In Ghana, the Center for Democratic Development began to implement a project called “Building Transparency, Participation and Feedback around Local Government Budgeting and Planning Systems.” The project aims to promote change in “attitudes and behaviors of both the Assembly staff and the citizenry for improved transparency and accountability in the management of local revenue.”

In Georgia, Transparency International released a policy brief calling for the creation of a verification system that would review public officials’ asset declarations. Evidence gathered by TI suggests that a verification system would help ensure that public officials’ asset declarations are complete and accurate. TI also released and assessment of Georgia’s national integrity system.

In Tunisia, Al Bawsala issued a press release with recommendations for improving the draft right to information bill that is currently being considered by the parliament.

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News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

In Guatemala, Congreso Transparente is promoting an online campaign to press the Congress to adopt a Manual on Legislative Transparency, which is based on the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness.

In Chile, Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente, Fundación Pro Acceso, and Chile Transparente released an open letter raising concerns about a bill before Congress that would  amend the Chilean FOI law. In light of the current scandal, Sunlight Foundation and other regional PMOs also released a statement calling on the government to reform political finance regulations and the relationship between the public and private sectors.

Also in Chile, Fundacion Ciudadano Inteligente released a study reviewing Chilean president Michelle Bachelet’s first year in office. The results showed that after one year in office she has introduced 41.8% of the laws promised during her campaign.   

In Morocco, Sim Sim Participation Citoyenne launched a new tool on its Nouabook.ma website that allows citizens to ask questions and get answers from their MPs using video. In particular, the new feature will help illiterate citizens interact directly with their MPs.    

In Uganda, Parliament Watch held a tweet chat with young MPs to discuss youth representation and how to make legislation more relevant to young people. Participants highlighted the importance of social media in bringing discussions about governance to the citizens and improving communication between youth and their representatives.

In Colombia, Transparencia por Colombia released results for the fourth national survey on anti-bribery practices in the private sector as well as an assessment that considers the transparency of sub-national government agencies.   

In Ecuador, Observatorio Legislativo presented a report analyzing the performance of  Ecuador’s National Assembly over the last two years. The report reviews laws discussed, MPs’ individual performance, government oversight, and institutional transparency.   

In the UK, following recent elections, MySociety has updated WriteToThem.com to allow citizens to contact newly elected MPs.

In Georgia, Transparency International Georgia won a freedom of information case against Georgia’s Ministry of Interior. This court decision sets a precedent that would make it more difficult government agencies to refuse information requests based on personal data protection claims. The organization also released its annual report.

In Cambodia, the Committee for Free and Fair Elections released an educational video to raise awareness about electoral reform, specifically looking at reforms that will improve elections in the country.

In Mexico, Borde Politico, in association with Harvard University and New York University, released an infographic that summarizes the results of a study which tracked the use of funds earmarked for infrastructure by municipal governments. The study reviewed audits from Mexico’s Supreme Audit Institution to identify how much money municipal governments had to invest in infrastructure and to find out what proportion of those funds was used to develop infrastructure projects that meet the needs of the poor.

In Spain, Fundacion Civio, in association with el  El Confidencial, Tecnilógica, Iron Hack, and CartoDB, hosted a hackathon exploring new ways to use, create, and share electoral information.  

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News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

In Montenegro, the Center for Democratic Transitions (CDT) was selected as one of the four winners of the UNDP competition “Technology for Citizen Engagement.” The award provides small grants to support ideas for using technology to expand opportunities for citizen engagement. CDT’s  winning idea was Ask for Data, a tool that will allow citizens to easily request information from public institutions.

In Kenya, Muslims for Human Rights released a video raising awareness about the right to know how MPs are spending constituency development funds. The constituency development fund, which is intended to support development projects in MPs’ constituencies, lacks meaningful oversight.

In Greece, Vouliwatch recently released its first annual report, highlighting the role of digital technology in allowing citizens to follow parliamentary issues, ask questions to MPs, and to share ideas and proposals. The organization also announced that it will begin to provide information about the activities, discussions, and decisions of the European Parliament related to Greece and other key policy issues.

In Pakistan, Pakistan Institute for Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT) released two scorecards measuring the quality of governance at the federal and provincial levels of government.   

In Chile, Chile Transparente released a report on the transparency of political parties. The report concludes that although there was overall improvement compared to previous years, political parties still have weak programmatic and financial transparency.

In Georgia, Jumpstart Georgia’s Gender Pay Game was selected as a finalist for the Data Journalism Awards 2015. Winners will be announced during the Data Journalism Awards Ceremony at the General Editors Network Summit in Barcelona on June 18.

In Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, and Nigeria, Open Knowledge and Code for Africa announced the 2015 cohort of Open Government Fellows. The new fellows will promote increased government transparency and improved dialogue between citizens and governments.

In Europe, more than 100 groups issued a letter to urge the European Commission to make the lobby register legally binding. The letter also calls on the Commission to ban meetings with unregistered lobbyists and to allocate appropriate resources for monitoring and enforcement of this rule.

In Kuwait, Kuwait Transparency Society celebrated its 10th Anniversary.

In Mexico, the Senate, in cooperation with the National Democratic Institute, hosted a three day workshop on Promoting Legislative Transparency. The training covered several tools and methodologies to improve civil society’s capacity to use data to monitor parliamentary activities.  

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News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

In Ghana, CDD Ghana organized a meeting of African parliamentary monitoring organizations that focused on regional approaches to parliamentary monitoring and considered how a regional network of parliamentary openness advocates and champions can be most effectively leveraged to advance legislative transparency and citizen participation.

Also in Ghana, the Parliament of Ghana in collaboration with Penplusbytes and with support from the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) launched the “Connecting Citizens to Parliament” digital platform. The project aims to provide citizens with another avenue through which they can engage with MPs and monitor government performance on certain issues. Citizens can engage with members on the web-platform or via SMS, mobile app, or social media.

In Morocco, the country’s first web platform for public engagement with parliament is off to a strong start. Nouabook has built a solid user base and a number of MPs are responding to citizens’ questions on the platform. Over 40% of the questions posted on the platform have been answered by the member of parliament in question.

In Italy, OpenPolis and ActionAid launched a web-based advocacy tool called U-Act that allows citizens to enter into a dialogue with policy makers. U-Act allows users to submit and support new ideas, which are then sent to members of parliament.

In Kenya, a joint initiative of the Parliamentary Initiatives Network in partnership with and Transparency International Kenya, Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice (KPTJ) and Africa Centre for Open Governance (AfriCOG) recently came out with a study titled, “Towards Hazy Horizons.” The study found that that the slow pace of institutional reform and low levels of public awareness and engagement is slowing the implementation of constitutional provisions in chapter six of the constitution.  

In the UK, mySociety is helping constituents track how responsive their MP is on WriteToThem, a tool that allows users to quickly look up who represents them and send those representatives a message. Here, mySociety ranks MPs based on how responsive they were to messages sent using the tool. Some MPs have responded only a handful of times while others have responded to all messages sent over WriteToThem.

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As always, please feel free to send updates through the OpeningParliament.org contact page for inclusion in the News Brief.

News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

Globally, the OGP’s Legislative Openness Working Group organized GLOW, or Global Legislative Openness Week. GLOW consisted of events and activities focused on transparent, participatory legislative processes organized by members of the parliamentary openness community in 30 countries. Further details about event outcomes can be found on the blog.

The voting period for Making All Voices Count’s Global Innovation Competition began October 22 and concludes November 23. The competition includes 241 ideas, many of which were submitted by members of the OP community. The public is encouraged to review these ideas and vote for those they believe will most effectively empower citizens and secure more accountable, open governance in the program’s 12 key countries.

In Latin America, the LALT Network released their 2014 Index of Legislative Transparency, with detailed analysis on the congresses of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, México, Perú, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

In Mexico, the Open Parliament Alliance launched as a collaboration between Congress, the Federal Institute for Access to Information and Data Protection (IFAI), and a coalition of civil society groups with the purpose of ensuring that Mexico’s 32 state legislatures and national congress comply with principles of parliamentary openness.

Mexico also hosted AbreLatam and Con Datos, two important events organized around open government, legislative transparency, and citizen participation. A short Spanish language summary of the conversations that took place at these events can be found here.

In Portugal, the parliament passed a resolution supporting the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness with near identical language to the Declaration itself. The resolution progressed through the entire legislative process, from committee to plenary, before ultimately being passed on July 10.

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Photo credit: Making All Voices Count

On September 15, Making All Voices Count (MAVC), a global initiative that aims to create opportunities for new ideas and technologies that strengthen citizen engagement and government responsiveness, is launching its second Global Innovation Competition (GIC). In this year’s competition, Making All Voices Count is seeking ideas relating to four themes, including legislative openness. 

£300,000 in grants are available to winners who propose projects in a limited set of countries: Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Indonesia, the Philippines, Liberia, Tanzania, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mozambique, Uganda and Nigeria.

This announcement comes on the heels of the Global Legislative Openness Week (GLOW), being organized by the Legislative Openness Working Group of the Open Government Partnership, that will see events and conversations relating to legislative openness happening around the world. The GIC offers an important platform to help translate many of these discussions into new tools and innovations to help parliaments better represent citizens, and to help citizens better engage and communicate with their elected representatives.

You can read more about the competition at MAVC’s website.

News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Germany, the Open Knowledge Festival took place in Berlin from July 15-17. A good summary of the event can be viewed here. Members of the OpeningParliament.org community that attended include Foundation ePaństwo, DATA Uruguay, Sunlight Foundation, Fundar, Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente, KohoVolit, K-Monitor, Holder de Ord, Hvem Stemmer Hvad, Open Ministry, Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, Open State Foundation, Open North, OpenKratio, Hasadna, mySociety, and Access Info.

Elsewhere, Parliament Watch recently announced an online survey that documents the positions of Germany’s 96 MEPs on important policy issues. In addition to the survey, the organization also collected voting behavior of the elected officials during the last parliamentary term.

In Greece, the Ministry of Administrative Reform and E-Government submitted the country’s Action Plan to the Open Government Partnership (OGP). The plan contains ambitious commitments on parliamentary openness and legislative transparency, including the introduction of a system for tracking bill changes, improvements in the usability and functionality of the parliament’s website, provision of historical parliamentary documents, and enhancements of social media policy.

In Ireland, the government launched data.gov.ie, an open data portal that currently supports 419 datasets. The Minister of Public Education and Reform announced the end of application fees for FOI requests. And the government approved the country’s Action Plan for OGP which includes several components to increase citizen participation during the pre-legislative process through consultation with committees and scrutiny of draft bills.

In France, Regards Citoyens initiated a crowdsourcing project that converted declarations of interests for all 925 MPs into open data. The declarations were previously scanned into PDFs by the High Authority on Transparency in Public Life (HATVP). The conversion of these files to open data brings the declarations into line with standards established in October 2013 by France’s law on the transparency of public life.

In Italy, OpenPolis and others have been drawing attention to the country’s need for an FOI law with the #FOIA4Italy campaign. Despite the growing momentum around FOI in recent years, there has been a lack of progress on the issue in parliament. FOIA4Italy plans to submit an FOIA bill based on legislation in countries with advanced access to information laws after crowdsourcing improvements from the Italian public.

In Tunisia, Al Bawsala unveiled a new project, Marsad Baladia, a platform that will monitor the activities of municipalities to generate greater citizen awareness before municipal elections scheduled for 2015. The project has already created a transparency index from the 24 municipalities it has so far observed.

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