News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In India, one of the newest PMO endorsers, Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS), was featured in an article on right to information efforts. Here is an older article on their important efforts. Elsewhere in India, Chaksu Roy of PRS Legislative Research published an article about the need to simplify the language of legislation. The Hindu recently considered the impact of open government data in India.

In Mexico, Eduardo Bohórquez from Transparencia Mexicana and Melissa Ortiz from Fundar appeared on the Congressional Channel’s Pesos y Contrapesos (checks and balances) to discuss Open Parliament.  A study done by Visión Legislativa and Animal Político found that the Senate failed to release complete information to a request about the amount of contracts made between September 2012 and July 2013.  Visión Legislativa wrote an article about budget transparency and how to apply its principles in the context of Mexico. Curul501, in partnership with Visión Legislativa and Borde Político, launched Presupuesto Abierto (Open Budget). We recently highlighted the work of Curul501 in a case study on OpeningParliament.org

In Italy, citizens are demanding more transparency in the work of parliamentary committees. TechPresident recently covered participatory democracy efforts in the country.

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News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Ukraine, protests against the government were met with brutal force. TI Ukraine expressed “burning indignation” at the government’s response. CHESNO offered dramatic videos from the legislative chamber on a no-confidence vote in the Parliament, as well as a vote to keep former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko imprisoned. Opora demanded action against the culprits and called for a support for the no-confidence vote.

In the United Kingdom, mySociety requested input on a survey about the UK Parliament’s online services and wrote about how critical research is key to the “civic power” sector. The UK Parliament recently held a hackathon (list of projects here, collected tweets here), while the House of Lords launched a new website to engage members. A number of CSOs participated in an “Open House” event on reforming the House of Commons. Simon Burall of Involve has follow-up thoughts here.

In Uruguay, DATA announced its recent membership in the Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency (LALT Network), particularly relevant now that Uruguay is part of the Open Government Partnership’s Legislative Openness Working Group.

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News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Ukraine, Chesno has had a busy month. In early September, Speaker of the Parliament Rybak pledged more transparency and openness in parliamentary proceedings during a civil society meeting led by Chesno. Then, Chesno called on the parliament to pass access to information legislation, highlighted the failure of one-third of MPs to file parliamentary inquiries, reported on the barring of journalists from committee meetings, and examined so-called “independent” MPs. Chesno also released a new series of studies on MPs who vote outside of party lines. This high level of activity came even as one of their employees was assaulted.

Also in Ukraine, Transparency International Ukraine called on the parliament to pass bill 0947, which would increase access to information, as well as a potential anti-corruption bill.

In Switzerland, Politnetz.ch developed a new webpage to publicize data around parliamentary voting, in addition to a new survey for the German national elections in partnership with the national broadcasting network. Politnetz.ch, along with local partners, has also expanded its parliamentary monitoring to cantonal parliaments, including St. Gallen and Basel-Stadt. The organization recently won a Grimme Online Award and called for e-voting. OpenData.ch covered efforts by the Swiss government to increase the availability of government data.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Thanks to NDI project assistant Greg Brown for his help in compiling these updates. Please send us your own news – it makes these updates much easier to compile.

News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

In Mexico, apart from the Senate’s endorsement of the Declaration, a group of activists and civil society representatives presented the five winners of the #App115 contest. The initiative convinced the Congress to cancel an unnecessarily expensive contract to build an app by mobilizing hackers to build the app for almost no cost at all, saving more than 110 million pesos. Read all about the story on TechCrunch.

This week in Poland, the PMO ePanstwo Foundation re-launched their comprehensive parliamentary monitoring website, Sejmometr. Back in February, an open source version of their platform called OchParliament was made available on GitHub.

In Italy, OpenPolis has launched a campaign to lobby members of parliament to make information about committee activity available to the public.

In Lebanon, a new coalition of civil society groups was launched, the National Civil Society Parliament Liaison Unit, with the aim of making parliament more transparent and responsive to citizens.

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