As in previous years, Global Legislative Openness Week (GLOW) showcased the fantastic work being done around the world to realize the principles of open parliament. Organized by members of the Open Government Partnership's Legislative Openness Working Group, GLOW featured more than 20 events and activities organized by parliaments and civil society organizations in over 15 countries around the world. This year included a diverse range of activities, such as public events and private meetings, campaigns and advocacy, and hackathons and the development of new digital tools. The diversity of approaches and actors that made Global Legislative Openness Week a success also demonstrates that the global movement for open, responsive legislatures is broad, deep, and growing.
Recently, the
Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine joined a small number of parliaments around the world
and formally endorsed the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness.
On February
5th, the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Volodymyr
Groysman, endorsed the Declaration on
Parliamentary Openness. According to the Action Plan to implement the
Declaration of Parliamentary Openness, the Ukrainian parliament must take a
number of steps to improve transparency and accountability in terms of public
access to information, citizen inclusion in parliamentary processes, financial
accountability and ensuring convenient usage of the parliament’s web portal. Media Law Institute
(MLI), in partnership with other civil society organisations, became a civic
partner of the initiative monitoring the parliamentary performance and
implementation of the Action Plan.
Endorsing
the Declaration is not the first step of Ukraine towards transparency and
accountability. Since 2012, MLI, as part of the CHESNO civic movement, has
fought for parliament transparency, namely for disclosing information on use of
privileges by MPs, addresses of deputies` offices, minutes
of the parliamentary committees, and other types of information.
In
2014, sittings of Ukraine’s Parliament became open to any citizen for the first
time in its history. This became possible after Media Law Institution filed a court case against former speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Oleksander
Turchynov, and demanded public access to parliamentary sittings. Henceforth, the sittings of the Ukrainian parliament
are open to citizens.
A
few months earlier, Media Law Institute, through the court, secured property
declarations of the members of parliament of Ukraine. In 2013, the
journalist Oksana Kovalenko requested that the Apparatus of the Verkhovna Rada of
Ukraine provide her with the declaration of MP Oleksandr Yefremov. When the
Apparatus of the Verkhovna Rada rejected the request, Media Law Institute appealed to the court. In May 2014, the Court of Appeal declared the action
unjust and obliged parliament to open the property declaration of the MP.
Another great victory for civil society in Ukraine was
to open information about the assistants of the MPs. Until January 2015, their
names remained a mystery. However, as a consequence of an active
advocacy campaign and court action, the Speaker issued an order
that obliged parliament to publish information about assistants on the official
website of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
Regardless of these victories, the Verkhovna Rada of
Ukraine has only slightly opened the door for citizens, and, in general, it
remains closed. Despite newly adopted amendments to the law
that guarantee the right of NGO representatives to attend sittings of parliamentary
committees, there are committees that ignore the law and do not allow citizens
in without special passes. Additionally, the parliamentary budget information is
not available to the public. Currently, we do
not know the exact amount spent by the Apparatus of the Verkhovna Rada. This information is not released even when requested. We strive for the
Parliament to be held accountable for its parliamentary budget.
Media Law Institute, in partnership with other civil society organizations,
continues to strive for a truly open parliament. Recently, we filed a case to the
European Court of Human Rights, contesting the legitimacy of the denial of the
Central Election Commission to open autobiographies of the candidates for
deputies.
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine officially declared the 5th of February as a Day of Ukrainian Parliamentary Openness, announced during the presentation and adoption of Ukraine’s Open Parliament Action Plan.
On that day, the Chairperson of the Verkhovna Rada, Volodymyr Groysman, signed an order to officially endorse the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. Thus, Ukraine joined the global movement “to enhance transparency of representative legislative bodies and aiming to ensure readiness of Parliament to invite citizens into decision-making, make legislative processes clearer and easier to understand and provide more tools for interaction”, as it is written in the recently adopted Open Parliament Action Plan for Ukraine.
The process of the Open Parliament Action Plan for Ukraine started after Ukrainian civil society, UNDP, and MPs of Ukrainian Parliament attended the Legislative Openness Working Group conference in Tbilisi, Georgia last September. At the conference, Ukrainian activists and parliamentarians learned more about legislative openness action plans and their implementation in various countries. In particular, the Georgian experience provided guidance and motivation.
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 passeda 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.
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 Citoyensinitiated a crowdsourcingproject 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 Bawsalaunveiled 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.
In Argentina, a group of NGOs and members from both houses of congress launched a working group on legislative transparency in May. Shortly after, a summit was held in Buenos Aires to showcase regional experiences regarding legislative transparency. At the summit, members of both chambers agreed to introduce legislation to modernize their access to information policies.
In Paraguay, an access to information bill was passed in the Chamber of Deputies after a controversial amendment making it easier for the government to withhold certain types of information was removed. The bill now returns to the Senate, which passed a similar version earlier this year.
In France, Regards Citoyens and Sciences Polaunched a new project, La Fabrique De La Loi, which hosts tools to analyze parliamentary debates and track the evolution of bills throughout the legislative process. The project utilizes public data in order to shed light on parliamentary procedures and their impact on the lawmaking process.
In Hungary, the government included K-Monitor on a list of “problematic” NGOs that are routinely critical of the government. The list follows a disagreement between the government and Norway Grants, the organization that funds many of the organizations, several of which were recently raided by government officials.
In India, national elections closed on May 16, with Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party anticipated to win more than the 272 seats required for a parliamentary majority. In advance of the election, Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS) developed report cards for members of the Lok Sabha. The report cards provide citizens with information gathered through the Right To Information Act and other government websites and assess MP performance on factors like attendance and efforts to introduce new development within their districts. See here for more information on SNS’ methodology.
Last month, PRS Legislative Researchprovided a historical comparison of the number of bills passed to ordinances declared during each Lok Sabha since 1952.
In Chile, delegates from 27 countries gathered in Santiago on April 29-30 for the first Poplus Conference, organized by mySociety and Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente. Participants shared goals for the future of the Poplus network, a nascent project with the goal to create and share open source code that helps civic organizations around the world.
In the European Union, voting for European Parliamentary elections will take place May 22-25. Election results will be available in open data format, allowing interested users to retrieve raw data, use filters to present the information in custom ways, and publish it on their own online platforms.
In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Kohovolit.eulaunched an election calculator for the European Parliament that allows users to browse voting data of European MPs from 2009 to 2014. The calculator allows users to curate the data by selecting issues important to them and reviewing how closely the voting records of different EMPs match their views.
