It has been a busy few months for the global open parliament community! Below, we’ve compiled a collection of updates. With so much great work, we’re certain that we’ve missed some fantastic projects, initiatives, and events. As always, if you would like to see your work included in this News Brief, feel free to reach out to the site administrators on the contact page.

In case you missed it, Global Legislative Openness Week was a success around the world. More information can be found at OpenParlWeek.org, but highlights include:

• The Parliament of Georgia, the Legislative Openness Working Group, and a collection of local and international organizations organized a global legislative openness conference, entitled Committing to Openness: Parliamentary Action Plans, Standards, and Tools. The conference featured over 100 legislators, legislative staff, and civil society representatives from more than 30 countries who shared experiences advancing legislative openness and explored ways in which OGP can be most effectively leveraged to advance public access to legislative information and processes.
• Around the world, mySociety led a crowdsourcing campaign to collect structured, reusable data on politicians in 201 countries. This information is now public and available on their website.
• The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies launched a collection of new tech platforms to foster citizen engagement in the legislative process. To celebrate GLOW, the Chamber launched these new open source services for use outside Brazil.
• In Taiwan, Citizen Congress Watch (TWN) organized the 2015 International Conference on Congressional Reform and Watch, introduced for the first time in Taipei. Topics of discussion included best practices and experience sharing on congressional oversight and promoting transparency and reform in Congress. More information about the conference can be seen here.
• Open Knowledge Danmark, Foreningen Gennemsigt, and the Centre for Voting and Parties hosted an event on open parliamentary data in Denmark. The event, which was live streamed using Periscope, featured discussion of how best to make use of parliamentary data, how to turn it into usable information, and how to make it accessible to a broader audience. 

News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

In Mexico, from Oct 27-29, the Open Government Partnership’s Global Summit convened over 1500 open government advocates from civil society, government, and parliament. Speakers and participants shared experiences from their respective countries and provided real examples of how openness can improve public services, drive economic growth, reduce poverty and make governments more accountable to the people they serve. For the first time, the OGP Summit featured a “track” on legislative openness, which included a number of interesting sessions and a dedicated side meeting for MPs. A blog post sharing more information on the Summit will be posted shortly.

In Argentina, the government made strides forward in opening access to public information when the Chamber of Appeals ruled in favor of Poder Ciudadano, Fundación Directorio Legislativo, and other groups in their request to access administrative decisions made by the Chamber of Deputies. This ruling requires the Chamber to make the results of administrative decisions public by publishing them on its website.

In Kenya, Mzalendo conducted a comprehensive assessment of the contributions that women MPs made to the work of Kenya’s 11th parliament. In addition to a formal report, Mzalendo also published an infographic, which includes a word cloud on issues women MPs most commonly discussed in parliament.

Click here to read more.

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.  

Click here to read more.

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.  

Click here to read more.

News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Paraguay, the President of the Senate signed a cooperation agreement with Semillas para la Democracia and the National Democratic Institute, agreeing to collaborate on developing initiatives to increase legislative transparency. The agreement includes a commitment from the Senate to strengthen legislative measures against corruption and to help build the capacity of civil society to monitor its work.

In South Africa, People’s Assembly launched the Members Interests Browser, which tracks data on MPs’ interests. Its features enable greater analysis than the PDF files published by Parliament, including features that allow users to filter and count interest declarations and explore the third parties referred to in declarations.

In Italy, OpenPolis published an Index of Parliamentary Productivity for 2014 that assesses the efficacy of MPs in performing parliamentary duties and passing legislation.

In Jordan, the Al-Hayat Center’s RASED Program released its first weekly report on the 2nd Ordinary Session of Jordan’s Parliament. Among other items, it drew attention to MPs attempting to form parliamentary committees outside official parliamentary procedures, which stipulate that the executive office appoints committees based on proportional representation of parliamentary blocs.

In Spain, Access Info Europe outlined a series of concerns about the Council of Transparency and Good Governance, a new body tasked with upholding governmental transparency requirements and citizens’ right of access to public information. Additionally, Access, Que Hacen Los Diputados, and CIVIO are calling for the immediate implementation of a law on public access to information, following the recent discovery that several MPs have used public funds to pay for personal travel.  

In Nigeria, the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre participated in a forum at the National Assembly focused on the need to generate greater engagement between civil society and the legislature on four thematic issues, including local government autonomy, government/CSO relations, minimum wages, and the 2015 general elections.

Click here to read more.

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.

Click here to read more.

Last month, the Open Government Partnership (OGP)’s Legislative Openness Working Group issued an open call to parliaments and civil society organizations around the world: show support for open lawmaking, and help advance the cause. Thanks to “an incredibly strong network of national advocates,” the response to the first-ever Global Legislative Openness Week (GLOW) was tremendous, with 45 activities organized in 33 countries. See images, videos and stories from the week at openparl2014.org.

Clockwise from top: Brazil’s GLOW Hack Weekend; the OGP Legislative Openness Working Group’s global meeting in Chile; Mexico’s Open Parliament Alliance logo; and Open Australia’s Hackfest: GLOW Edition (photo by Lisa Cross Photography)

The GLOW campaign was anchored by two international OGP Working Group meetings aimed at expanding civic engagement and institutionalizing the open parliament agenda — in other words, making sure that citizens can actively participate in decisions that affect them, and making sure that the Open Government Partnership has reform mechanisms and resources that are for and by legislatures. In between these two meetings (a regional meeting hosted by the Parliament of Montenegro and a global meeting held by the Congress of Chile, a co-anchor of the OGP Working Group) a number of independent GLOW events brought legislators and civil society organizations together to discuss opening parliamentary processes and information — particularly open data.

Here are just some of the GLOW activities held between Sept. 15 and 25:

Click here to read more.

This article was cross-posted from the Sunlight Foundation's blog.

It’s time for an affirmative vision for the institution of Congress.

Congress currently serves as a punchline — an excuse for inaction, a symbol for what’s wrong with Washington.

The refrains have become familiar and ubiquitous: Congress is broken, DC is paralyzed, polarization is choking discourse, Congress abdicates its duties, “we all hate Congress.”

In its current form, though, this thinking has gotten us almost nowhere. Cynicism about Congress pervades our discourse without getting to remedies. Congressional defeatism has become the universal dead end for our government reform reflexes.

While no one is helped by magical thinking about what’s going to pass this Congress, frustration with the current Congress, for some reason, obscures our ability to think about what would define a good Congress.

We need to channel our frustration over Congress, and use our frustration to ask a more fundamental question: What would a strong, representative, effective Congress look like?

This question has been neglected far too long. And most of the thinking about it has been reductive. Congress is understaffed, lacks expertise, is surrounded by lobbyists, captured by moneyed interests, moves too slowly, is reticent to exercise its prerogatives and is cowed by expansive executive power. And its Members spend most of their time asking rich people for money.

Click here to read more.