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.

Click here to read more.

News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Spain, Qué hacen los diputados released an analysis of the parliamentary website, using the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness as a base point. Qué hacen los diputados continued their series on forms of citizen participation in politics by looking at basic institutional norms of Spain’s Autonomous Communities. Fundación Ciudadana Civio reported that the new Quién Manda? platform already has 2,500 profiles and 3,200 verified relationships. Civio also published guidelines for republishing their content and projects, stating, “All of our articles are re-publishable. We do not compete with media. We want you to use our information.”

In Romania, the Institute for Public Policy called for public debate on the future of an MPs Code of Conduct, citing concerns that the current draft of the code does not take into account the perspective of civil society. The Ratiu Center for Democracy highlighted Roma activist Dr. Angela Koczi as the recipient of the Ion Ratiu Democracy Award by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

In Argentina, El Estadista published an article by the director of CIPPEC’s Local Development Program on how e-governance can help improve citizen participation. Directorio Legislativo conducted a series of interviews via Twitter with candidates from different provinces and parties in the lead up to legislative elections. The Executive Director of Directorio Legislativo wrote a guest post for the Sunlight Foundation blog, discussing the decade of struggle it took for Argentina’s Congress to publish the declarations of assets and conflicts of interests of its members.

Click here to read more.

News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Spain, the PMO Civio launched a new project called Quién Manda, or “Who Rules?”  The project aims to monitor the interactions of Spanish politicians and officials with corporate leaders by an innovative photo-tagging scheme. Thus far, they’ve identified over 2500 relationships. Recently, a Sunlight Foundation team member worked with Civio in the lead up to the launch. There is still an active crowd-funding campaign for the initiative on Goteo. 

Elsewhere in Spain, a Spanish lawmaker held an attempt at direct democracy related to a transparency bill, a vital effort given Spain’s recent ranking of 75 out of 96 countries on access to information issues. Last month, the Masters of Media project commented on the Spanish status quo and Que Hacen Los Diputados discussed what the Congress needs to provide to ensure transparency.

In Pakistan, PILDAT released a number of reports, including on: the first meeting of a senate parliamentary friendship group on Afghanistan; the first 100 days of governance at the national and provincial levels; and two reports on the Pakistan-Afghanistan Parliamentary dialogues.

In Venezuela, Transparencia Venezuela released a report on the nation’s budget for the first half of 2013, and condemned corruption in the country and noted the role of civil society in combatting it. Meanwhile Entorno Parlamentario discussed key upcoming bills and opposition to an anti-corruption law.

Click here to read more.

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.

Click here to read more.

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.

Click here to read more.

(This news update, by Dustin Palmer, is a continuation of that posted last week. Be sure to check back next week for news from this week (which isn’t covered in the update below… got it?))

News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

In Pakistan, during a citizens forum hosted by the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT), the Speaker of the Provincial Assembly of Punjab praised the role of PILDAT in improving the performance of the Punjab Assembly. The forum marked the release of a report by PILDAT on the performance of the provincial assembly over the last five years, including recommendations to further strengthen it.  The report is available in English and Urdu.

In Colombia, Congreso Visible released its yearly report on the legislature, examined the inadequate division of labor in the Congress, and considered the challenge of making legislative information visible. Additionally, Transparencia Por Colombia helped citizens to create a mural of transparency during a public meeting with the local planning council of the Bosa district of Bogotá. Citizens and local authorities renewed the Bosa Pact for Transparency and Governance. Transparencia Por Colombia also presented at the Andesco National Congress.

In Mexico, the LALT Network recently called on the international community to oppose efforts by the Mexico House of Representatives to restrict access to information and transparency. More context on these efforts - and the opposition’s response - is available from FUNDAR here and here. One factor is the lack of historical legislative data and research, which hampers the legislative process. Also in Mexico, Visión Legislativa urged legislators to to make more legislative information available, even as the Supreme Court ruled against disclosure requirements.

Click here to read more.

News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

The European Public Sector Information Platform published a report on parliamentary informatics, including how organizations can support parliaments in open data initiatives. Report author Karolis Granickas from TI Lithuania recently discussed the report and other topics on the OpeningParliament blog.

In France, Regards Citoyens updated the citizen open data catalogue at Nosdonnes.fr. The organization proposed an amendment to increase MP voting transparency, offered 10 proposals to increase transparency in light of a fraud scandal in the Minister of the Budget’s office, and weighed in on the debate over new lobbying rules in the National Assembly.

In Argentina, the legislature of the city of Buenos Aires endorsed the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. A video from the legislature is available here.

In South Africa, the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) published a case study entitled “Getting Information to the People: The Role of the Parliamentary Monitoring Group.” The report includes a description of PMG’s mission and activities, brief sections on what challenges and opportunities face PMOs around the world, and suggestions for future activities.

Click here to read more.