Since its launch in 2012, OpeningParliament.org has served as an online hub for the world’s parliamentary monitoring organizations. Along with many other regional or thematic networks, OpeningParliament.org has helped create a global, collaborative network of organizations dedicated to legislative transparency and citizen participation.
Of course, that community has evolved significantly since 2012. It has grown from fewer than 30 members to more than 200, ranging from small, volunteer-run organizations to large, global transparency advocates. Global Legislative Openness Week and the Global Legislative Openness Conference are now regular events with participation from across the network. With the launch of the Open Government Partnership’s Legislative Openness Working Group in 2014, parliamentary champions of openness have increasingly engaged with the global open parliament network.
As the community expanded, the online presence of our network has become more dispersed. There are now several websites for different community events and initiatives. In order to more effectively share information and harmonize these various sites, the National Democratic Institute and partner organizations intend to launch a fully revamped version of OpeningParliament.org in the coming months.
But we need your help. Please take a moment to complete this survey. Your insights and ideas will help ensure that the new online home for the global open parliament community is useful.
It is our hope that a new community website will make it easier for new members to become engaged, simpler for those not familiar with the network to learn about our work, and easier to track down relevant information. The new site would pull together content from OpeningParliament.org, the OGP Legislative Openness Working Group page, the Global Legislative Openness Week and Conference websites, the Legislative Openness Data Explorer, and others. The new site would also feature a new logo, design, and look and feel.
Please take a moment to complete the survey. We look forward to hearing from you!
Happy Valentine's Day! Today, Quorum, a DC based public affairs software platform, hosted their second annual #CupidOnTheHill Bipartisan Valentine campaign. They made valentine cards for every member of the US Congress to send to the colleague they share the most cosponsorships with across the aisle.
Here are a couple of highlights:
Data Got It Right
Rep. Jim Renacci (R-OH-16) matched with Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA-6)—they also happen to be co-chairs of a Bipartisan Working Group. Here's a video of their card exchange.
Be Kind on Valentine's
Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN-3) and Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI-6) both sent bipartisan love to their match Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI-3).
From the Diamond to the Heart
Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-CA-44) and Rep. Ryan Costello (R-PA-6) matched as bipartisan valentines—they also shared the field last June at the 2017 Congressional Baseball Game.
Follow #CupidOnTheHill for a full overview of the campaign.
This post was written by Matt Jukes of mySociety and originally appeared on their blog here.
As you’ll remember from our previous blogpost, the Global Legislative Openness Week — AKA GLOW— provided us with a great opportunity to support events and spread the word about our ambitious Wikidata project with groups around the world.
In the end we sponsored nine events (in Slovenia, Sweden, Croatia, Bulgaria, Italy, Greece, Spain, Wales and, amazingly, Nepal) and sent representatives to support seven of them in person. This meant that Tony, the lead for the EveryPolitican project, had an interesting 10 days getting the most out of budget airlines and managing to attend six of the events. He would have liked to have made it seven but EasyJet don’t go to Nepal! Also special thanks to Lucas who represented the project in Greece and Bulgaria taking a little of the pressure from Tony.
Five of the countries (Croatia, Greece, Italy, Slovenia and Spain) moved from very little or no coverage of political data in Wikidata to our two-star (or better) indicator — this is a (very) rough guide to how good the data is in a country; we are tracking what information already exists for the primary house of a national legislature which you can learn more about on our Wikidata project page. Wales was already a ‘three-star’ country and the others are coming along nicely.
We couldn’t be happier with the response and contributions made to the Democratic Commons by the participants — and we’re extremely keen to do more events early next year, collaborating with Wikimedia communities to make this happen. If that sounds interesting take a look at our original blogpost about the events and get in touch if it seems up your street.
All in all these events really felt like a culmination of all the learnings and activities undertaken in the project so far. The strides we have taken in understanding the best way to model this kind of data in Wikidata and the tools that have been built are what made it possible to make such a big impact in each of the countries in just a day or two. Not all of these lessons were easy to learn but they are really starting to pay dividends now.
We really want to keep this momentum up and build even more relationships with Wikimedia communities who are interested in contributing to the Democratic Commons in their countries so I can’t reiterate it enough – please do get in touch if you would like to get involved.
10 Days in 30 Countries: Global Legislative Openness Week
The fourth annual Global Legislative Openness Week once again demonstrated the breadth and diversity of the global movement for open, responsive legislatures. With more than 30 events in 20 countries, this year’s events showed the opportunities that exist globally to strengthen parliamentary transparency and innovation. Civil society organizations and parliamentarians around the world used a variety of approaches to take advantage of opportunities for democratic reform, from hackathons and online tool launches to policy meetings and parliamentary floor speeches, to public events and advocacy activities.
This year’s GLOW was anchored around Open Government Partnership’s (OGP) Americas Regional Meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which brought together international organizations, civil society organizations and representatives of the private sector from 18 participating countries. With over 60 sessions, this regional meeting provided an opportunity for peer exchange within the Americas to discuss topics of parliamentary openness, civic technologies and open data, and anti-corruption ideas. As a complement to the OGP Regional Meeting, the House Democracy Partnership (HDP) engaged members of parliament (MPs) from the legislatures of Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti and Peru in a set of meetings and discussions on parliamentary openness. Held in collaboration with ParlAmericas, this program focused on opening legislative data, building platforms for citizen engagement and strengthening accountability.
Global Legislative Openness Week provides a snapshot of the types of activities that are happening around the world every day to strengthen the accountability, responsiveness, and openness of legislatures.
Highlighting Issues of Inclusion and Representation
During GLOW, the Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency released the results of a large study that analyzes public perception of legislatures in Latin America. In survey responses from 11,000 citizens in the region, the Network found that a vast majority of citizens in surveyed countries believe that their legislature does not sufficiently represent the diversity of the population. Perceptions that legislatures represent only certain segments of society can erode the democratic legitimacy of parliamentary institutions. Member organizations of the Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency are working with congresses in the region to try to strengthen the representativeness of their institutions.
In Georgia, the Institute for the Development of Freedom of Information and the Parliament of Georgia’s Permanent Council on Open and Transparent Governance hosted an event focused on access to parliament and parliamentary services for the differently abled. At the event, a group of advocates from the disabilities community presented a concept note to the Speaker and members of the Permanent Council that made suggestions as to how the parliament could make its services more broadly accessible.
Cooperation across borders
One of the most exciting features of the open parliament and open government movements is that they allow civil society organizations to support fellow organizations in other countries. GLOW provided yet another opportunity to share information across borders, particularly as it relates to technology and access to data. As parliaments release more data in open formats, and as parliaments increasingly utilize international technical standards for structuring this data (such as Akoma Ntoso), tools for visualizing and sharing data that is easily exported internationally.
In Albania, Bosnian PMO Zasto Ne, in collaboration with Albanian organization Lex Ferenda, launched a new platform (pictured above) that connects citizens to policymakers was launched during GLOW. The platform was based on a Bosnian site whose success in Bosnia -- 250,000 unique visitors per year -- encouraged Zasto Ne to seek other countries in which to deploy the site. By sharing their code and experiences with the Albanian organization, Zasto Ne is increasing the likelihood that the tool will ultimately increase citizens’ access to information and political engagement. They will also significantly limit the time and overhead costs required to develop such a tool from scratch. In addition, the Sinar Project in Malaysia developed improvements to their parliamentary monitoring platform, which a partner organization in Myanmar later used for its own purposes.
This year, as part of their EveryPolitician project, mySociety celebrated Global Legislative Openness Week by helping to organize a series of workshops dedicated to collecting standardized information on politicians around the world. Locally organized workshops took place in nine countries, and all the compiled data will be publicly available as open data on the EveryPolitician website. Like the examples above, mySociety and their partners demonstrated their dedication to the creation of open source data and technology resources that support the activities of actors around the world -- a type of “democratic commons”, according to mySociety.
Open Parliament Commitments and the Open Government Partnership
As in previous years, many of this year’s GLOW events and activities focused on the legislature's role in the Open Government Partnership (OGP). In Argentina, Georgia, Ghana, Kenya, Paraguay and elsewhere, civil society organizations, MPs, and legislative staff explored greater legislative engagement in OGP. Civil society organizations in many countries pushed their legislatures to develop official commitments under OGP’s parliamentary engagement policy. In Chile, the Congress released their second open parliament action plan, which they developed in close consultation with civil society and will add to Chile’s National Action Plan.
The OGP Legislative Openness Working Group also launched a new resource to support civil society groups and parliaments that want to develop open parliament commitments of their own. The Toolkit for Advancing Legislative Openness is now available in English, French and Spanish, and includes an analysis of parliamentary commitments, discussion of mechanisms for civil society collaboration with parliament and other useful information.
The organizers of Global Legislative Openness Week -- the OGP Legislative Openness Working Group and members of the OpeningParliament.org community -- thank everyone who helped make GLOW a success once again this year. NDI would also like to thank the Ford Foundation, without whose support much of this would not have been possible. We look forward to carrying the success of GLOW forward into 2018!
In Latin America, citizens are asking for more than transparency
This post was written by Octavio del Favero of Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente, current chair of the Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency.
The Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency has released the results of a public consultation in which more than 11,000 people from 14 countries in the region participate.
The results show that there is interest in many aspects related to legislative work. For example, in response to the question about how much one is interested in legislative work, most of the people surveyed were concentrated around the highest score (5 points), with the exception of Bolivia where the 28.5% of respondents gave 3 points.
On the other hand, those consulted felt that the parliaments and it’s members were neither connected nor interested in the needs of citizens. The responses were concentrated in the lowest score in 13 of 15 countries: Guatemala (85.9%) and El Salvador (83.9%), followed by the Dominican Republic (77.4%), Colombia (76.6%) and México (74.6%).
Questions related to the representativeness of the parliament show more variety. In many countries, the people consulted said that members of parliament do not represent the diversity of the population. With the exception of Bolivia and Venezuela, in all the countries the majority of citizens answered that the parliament is not sufficiently representative. The option “No” was the vast majority of responses in México (89.9%), Chile (89.5%), El Salvador (87.5%), Paraguay and Dominican Republic (87.4%), Perú (84.7%), Guatemala (84/1%), Colombia (82.3%), Uruguay (81%) and Costa Rica (79.5%).
Finally, respondents indicated that the biggest difference between their parliament and the one that they would like to exist is the probity and transparency of their members and activities. Another relevant difference was related to the representativeness in the composition of the parliament.
In response to these results, our first thought was that citizens are asking for more than transparency and representativeness: they want parliaments with more representation, in which women, indigenous people and sexual minorities, among others, have the space to participate. The survey also reveals that people are asking for more information, which reveals the necessity that parliaments explore more ways to communicate their work to the people.
This survey is part of a broader project that the Network has been developing in 14 countries with the support of Open Society Foundation. The project includes survey experts and workshops with different actors from different sectors that are related to the legislative process. All this effort has the objective of thinking -- with the help of the people, experts and civil society -- about new forms to improve the legitimacy and efficacy of the parliaments of the region.
All the information about this project will be available soon at: http://www.transparencialegislativa.org/.
As Global Legislative Openness Week begins, parliaments and civil society organizations around the world are preparing for events, gearing up for advocacy activities, and launching new initiatives, all with the aim of increasing legislative openness. We invite you to follow their great work on the GLOW calendar, which will continue to be updated with more events and activities. So please check back often!
Among other activities and events, GLOW 2017 will include:
1. Meetings to bring together parliamentarians, staff, civil society representatives and members of the public to find a way forward on openness reform efforts in Argentina, Georgia, Kenya, Myanmar, and elsewhere.
2. Tool launches and releases, including a new participatory tool from the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, enhancements to a widely used citizen initiatives platform in Latvia, and a revamped API for parliamentary information in South Korea.
3. Floor speeches from leading Members of Parliament in Ghana to mark Global Legislative Openness Week and encourage their colleagues to embrace transparency and citizen participation.
4. Events dedicated to easing access to parliament and parliamentary services for the differently abled, including a public meeting on the issue in the Parliament of Georgia and a training for disability rights groups on parliamentary advocacy in Haiti.
Check out the GLOW calendar as we continue to update it and highlight the amazing work being done globally to advance legislative transparency. And please contribute to the conversation online using #OpenParl17!
Still want to participate? It’s not too late! Email [email protected] for more information or to discuss opportunities to get involved.
Join the GLOW: run a Wikidata workshop in your country
This post was written by Gemma Humphrys of mySociety and originally appeared on their blog here.
Global Legislative Openness Week (GLOW) celebrates open, participatory legislative processes across the globe.
Back in 2015 we marked GLOW by setting up a challenge: could we get politician data for 200 countries up on EveryPolitician within the week, with the help of the global community? The answer was a resounding yes, and the challenge was a massive success. We ended up with data for 201 countries in the end, thanks to help from awesome people from all over the world.
This year, we’re running another challenge: to get as many Wikidata workshops focusing on political data to happen during GLOW as possible.
Fancy helping with this challenge? Read on…
Why?
This is all part of our Wikidata/EveryPolitician project.
The project aims to improve political data in Wikidata, so that it can be used more easily for projects, research or investigations that hold politicians to account. Examples of where good political data is vital include in parliament-tracking websites (like in Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Ukraine) and in cross-border journalistic investigations (like the Panama Papers).
Providing this data in consistent and structured formats across countries means the people running these accountability projects spend less of their time gathering the data and more on actually using and interpreting it, to keep tabs on those in power. This project is all part of our mission to contribute to the Democratic Commons.
One of the best ways to improve and use political data on Wikidata is to get people together in person to work on their country’s data. So, that’s the aim with this latest GLOW challenge, and we’d love for as many groups around the world to host Wikidata workshops as possible!
The aim of these Wikidata workshops is to:
Improve political information in Wikidata so that developers, researchers and journalists (or anyone!) can use the data in their investigations and accountability projects.
Use and query existing political data in Wikidata to see what interesting questions can be answered when data is available in consistent and structured formats.
Workshop attendees will go away with:
Increased knowledge of how Wikidata works and how to contribute to it
A better understanding of why good political data is so vital and how it can be used
New connections to the global community of people who care about accountability issues
A warm, fuzzy feeling of satisfaction that they’ve helped with the global accountability movement (We hope so anyway!)
Not sure what such an event might look like? Read up on our recent Wikifying Westminsterworkshop: it really showed us how much can be done when a few people get together in a room.
Funding and support available
Thanks to the Wikimedia Foundation, we’re able to offer some support to individuals/groups who are interested in running Wikidata workshops like these during GLOW. This will differ on a case by case basis but includes:
A small amount of funding to help cover event costs
A review of your country’s existing political information in Wikidata and some pointers about possible next steps
Ideas for how you and your attendees can:
a) Use the data for interesting research and projects, and
b) Improve the data for future research queries/projects
In-person support during your event – if you’d like one of our EveryPolicitian/Wikidata team to come to your event to present and participate, we can do this (if our budget allows!)
Access to a dedicated Slack channel which connects you with other groups around the world who are also running events during GLOW.
Workshops can take place at any time within GLOW week, which is from 20th-30th November 2017 (yes, that is a long week!).
Get involved!
So, if you’d like to be part of this global challenge to improve and use political information in Wikidata, we’d be thrilled to hear from you. Please do get in touch: [email protected]
Public Participation in Parliament - A Survey of Participants in South Africa
This post was written by Parliamentary Monitoring Organization (PMG)
The ability of the South African Parliament to ensure adequate public participation is uneven. The current process is flawed, diluted and regarded by many commentators and participants as a mere "window dressing exercise.” In fact, the Parliament has to be reminded periodically either by the courts, the President or civil society about its failure to meet its obligation.
Public participation is entrenched in the Constitution and the rules of the Legislature and has been affirmed by numerous court judgements. In the famous Doctors for Life vs The Speaker of the National Assembly (2006), the constitutional court established the reasonableness test to assess the appropriate extent and nature of public participation.
At a minimum, the national legislature is meant to be a forum that actively encourages and supports real participation. In view of the emerging trend and growing concerns on this topic, the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) reviewed public participation in parliament through a survey of 77 individuals and organizations who gave an oral submission to a parliamentary committee during the period between July 2015 and June 2016. In this report, PMG examines the importance of public participation and the shortcomings of the current system, and offers recommended interventions that can improve the process.
The following points present some of the report’s key findings:
During the survey period, only 15% of public hearings were on “issues of national importance” relevant to that committee’s portfolio compared to 72% dealing with legislation and 13% with policy.
Based on the parliament's average comment period, which is 17 days from the date of announcement to the deadline, 46% of respondents were satisfied with the amount of time allocated while 32% were “sometimes satisfied” with the time period and the remaining 22% were not pleased. However, when probed about the ideal amount of time required to prepare a submission, 44% of respondents said one month was the ideal time and 35% felt that more than one month was required. Responses indicated that there is no uniform standard for preparation time as it depends on the scope of the hearing topic.
30% of the survey respondents believe that the Parliament takes public input seriously, 33% said it sometimes does while 37% of survey participants said that the Parliament does not take public input seriously. Comments were raised about the limited amount of time for committee members to engage with each submission (with one participant pointing out that he/she could not even make the oral submission to the committee as time ran out). Also, respondents indicated that not enough members of Parliament show up for public hearings and that they felt a general impression that the public input was not valued. Interestingly, several respondents believed that some decisions were established in advance and that the view of the dominant political party would be adhered to. Several respondents also pointed out that this was just a “window dressing exercise”, that members of Parliament “simply seemed to be going through the motions” and that “it looked as if the result was predetermined”. This ties in with comments such as “the bias has been clear over many years”, that there is “a penchant for embracing the views of those already powerful and berates those without the experience”, and that “Parliament can do much more to ensure that the views of the public and interest groups...are taken more seriously.”
79.5% of respondents indicated that the feedback process on submissions, after the oral hearing was held by the committee, was inadequate. Providing feedback would tangibly assist in ensuring the public felt their submissions were considered and that they were not merely part of an obligatory showpiece. Dissatisfied participants stated that substantive reasons were not given for why their submissions were not accepted. One participant stated that the organisation no longer prioritises engagement with Parliament. Looking at responses in detail, it is revealed that many felt members of parliament did not have regard for the fact that it takes a large amount of time and effort to present a submission. “I was interrupted by the chairperson who did not understand the burning issues of the lived experience. hey never considered that we had to get up early on behalf of communities who suffer,” said one respondent.“We should all be respected no matter the subject as we [leave] our homes to bring the voices of those who cannot be present”. Although the public acknowledge that not every input nor submission could be translated to a change in policy or legislation, they expect that the committee would provide feedback on how their inputs are considered.
One of the key impediments to participation was the lack of personal or organisational time to prepare a submission. When asked to select the main obstacles in engaging with Parliament, 50% of respondents selected the lack of time as the main obstacle. In addition, the lack of time for the oral public hearing was repeatedly mentioned in the survey and so is considered a significant impediment to effective public participation.
The second largest impediment for engaging with the Parliament was the lack of funds and capacity – 35% of respondents indicated “lack of funds” and 31% indicated “lack of capacity”. Many survey respondents stated that participating in legislative hearings and preparing inputs are time-consuming and costly in terms of the resources invested in preparation. In addition, the need for more participatory events closer to local communities and districts was noted.
Respondents’ suggestions for improvements included: the standardization of the participation process amongst the committees; the inclusion of public engagement as a standing item on the agendas of committees as this is often neglected by committees; the solicitation of input and interactions beyond the run-of-the-mill “call for comment”; the establishment of comment boxes in local municipalities, especially in rural areas, to ensure a wider reach. Another suggestion was that constituency offices should be centres where people can get access to information about what is going on and how they can participate. It is unclear if they are actually fulfilling this role. Parliament could make use of public opinion gauging exercises. Another proposal was that the Parliament should make better use of technology, not only providing information but also establishing two-way streams of information such as online surveys and teleconferencing via a town hall or a community centre.
Moving forward, the Parliament needs to dig deeper to encourage an even wider reach in soliciting input whether on legislations, policies or issues of national importance, that will include all corners of society thus ensuring that the process is not dominated by those with access to resources, funds and technical know-how. This is particularly relevant when the legislature is engaging with the public on key topical issues as the holding of this type of hearings by parliamentary committees was troublingly low for the period under review. PMG hopes to redo the survey in the future to assess whether the views of participants had improved or had changed.
Read the full report here: Public Participation in Parliament - a survey of participants
Guatemalan Congress passes Open Parliament Action Plan
This post was written by Blair Scott
To address root causes of endemic corruption that sparked massive protests in 2015 and strengthen a pillar of Guatemalan democracy, civil society organizations are working to make their country’s legislative branch of government more open, accountable and accessible to citizens. A significant step was taken in this regard on January 10, when the country’s Congress and a coalition of Guatemalan civic organizations publicly presented the Open Parliament Action Plan, a consensus roadmap for boosting internal and public transparency.
The Action Plan was developed in a participatory process that included representatives from Congress and the Alliance for an Open Congress (ACAG), a coalition of eight local, non-governmental parliamentary monitoring organizations. Member organizations and Congress held working sessions, which NDI helped facilitate, to create the Action Plan and ensure that it addressed government and civil society priorities. These dialogues resulted in five Congressional commitments to:
Produce and publish legislative information, including the legislative calendar, congressional bulletins, and daily schedules, in open data formats to increase its utility by legislative and other government entities, journalists, academics, parliamentary monitoring organizations (PMOs) and concerned citizens;
Train staff on open government, legislative transparency policies and procedures to help ensure they are put into practice;
Make professional information about legislative staffers public, such as their names and curriculum vitae, to prove and illustrate their qualifications;
Improve procedures for legislative accountability and citizen participation, including through digital tools and in-person sessions, to provide civil society a space for interaction and discussion during policy debates and greater access to information in order to conduct civic oversight; and
Publish information on legislative affairs more proactively and in more engaging and interactive formats to improve citizens’ understanding of Congress’ functions.
The Action Plan’s significance extends globally and regionally – it is only the fourth of its kind in Latin America and the seventh in the world, including action plans from Chile and Georgia. The plan also provides a clear response to high-profile corruption scandals that shocked Guatemala in 2015 and 2016, ultimately leading to the resignation and arrest of the president, vice president and other senior officials. There are currently more than 300 open investigations into corruption in Guatemala. The cases exacerbated widespread citizen mistrust of the government and helped lead to the surprise election of an outsider candidate and current president, Jimmy Morales, who based his campaign on an anti-corruption platform. Still, the first year of Morales’ presidency has not been free from corruption allegations, which have implicated his family members and vice president. As old cases continue and new cases arise, citizens have emerged to demand greater transparency and accountability in all branches of government.
"Congress is one of the most important institutions in a representative democracy," said Gabriela Ayerdi, a representative from ACAG member organization Citizen Action (Acción Ciudadana), who was one of the presenters of the Action Plan with Congress and ACAG on January 10. "We recognize and applaud the progress made by the current congressional governing board regarding institutional transparency and access to public information."
The Open Parliament Action Plan is unique not only in its standing as one of the only of its kind in the world, but also in its promotion of relationships between civil society organizations and the Congress. Traditionally, these sectors of Guatemalan society have had a tense relationship. The renewed commitment to bridge this gap and encourage dialogue between civil society organizations and the Congress is one of the many steps taken towards improving relations between Guatemala’s citizenry and the government as a whole. According to Ayerdi, “Congressional leaders have shown greater willingness to work with citizens, recognizing the principles of open government as a tool to leverage citizen demands to make structural changes in our systems.” The Action Plan was also launched amidst a transition of power between presidents of Congress from different parties, but has been adopted by both, signaling strong cross-party support for the plan and principles of open parliament.
To support the Action Plan’s development, NDI facilitated exchanges with experts from across the region to inform the commitments and draw from other countries’ experiences. The focus of the legislature and ACAG now turns to the challenging process of implementing the plan and its individual provisions. “It will be crucial for civil society organizations and citizens to remain involved to ensure the success of implementing the plan’s short term goals and its long term viability,” said Eduardo Núñez, NDI’s Senior Country Director in Guatemala. “They must also raise awareness of this initiative so that more citizens are better able to stay informed of legislative affairs and take interest in actions to strengthen Congress, in turn improving congressional oversight and policy development processes, which are key to protecting citizens’ rights in Guatemala.”
Guatemala’s efforts to develop a legislative openness action plan were inspired in part by the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an international initiative with more than 70 member countries. OGP members are required to work closely with domestic civil society groups to develop a two-year National Action Plan. In partnership with the Congress of Chile, NDI serves as co-chair of the OGP Legislative Openness Working Group, which provides participating legislatures with technical assistance and opportunities for peer learning and exchange. In recognition of the importance of legislative openness, OGP recently passed a new legislative engagement policy that clears the way for a more formal role for legislatures in the national OGP process.
NDI’s assistance to the Guatemalan Congress on the Open Parliament Action Plan is funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency through the United Nations Office for Project Services.
New smartphone app to give Colombian citizens unprecedented access to legislative information
This post was written by Carl Vosloh
Colombia’s Congress has taken several steps to improve transparency and make legislative affairs more accessible to citizens in recent years. After Congress approved historic peace accords to end the longest-running internal armed conflict in the western hemisphere late last year, there is widespread public interest in how Congress will act to put the accords into effect with new legislation. On February 27, the Colombian Senate released a new smartphone application to allow citizens greater access to legislative information and improve transparency during Senate deliberations. This occurs just as both houses of the Congress begin to debate peace legislation under special “fast track” procedures.
The app, which is called “My Senate” (Mi Senado), allows citizens to participate in Senate sessions in real-time, including a feature allowing citizens to cast symbolic votes in favor of or against measures during debates. It also provides citizens with a range of tools that help empower informed citizen participation and engagement, including:
a feature to livestream video of floor and committee debates;
a list of senators, their voting histories, profiles, committee assignments, social media accounts and contact information;
a list of laws pending upcoming votes;
a list of political parties and their elected members;
the latest press releases in the Senate; and
a feature allowing users to send messages to the Senate’s Citizen’s Assistance Office.
“My Senate is the first application in the world that allows citizens to view Senators’ attendance and voting record in plenary sessions,” stated the President of the Senate, Mauricio Lizcano. “This is a measure to boost legislative transparency, as it allows citizens to find out firsthand how senators are voting on the most pressing issues facing the country and hold them accountable for their decisions.”
The application is the first product resulting from Colombian Senate’s Action Plan for an Open and Transparent Congress, an initiative led by Senate President Mauricio Lizcano. The Action Plan, which was designed with NDI technical assistance and in consultation with local civil society organizations, was announced last November and seeks to promote legislative transparency, accountability and citizen political participation. Senator Lizcano presented it internationally at the fourth global Open Government Partnership (OGP) Summit, which took place in December 2016 in Paris, France. Its signing made Colombia the third country in Latin America and the sixth globally to have such a plan.
The use of new technological tools and applications such as “My Senate” have the potential to open new channels of communication between citizens and members of Congress and help improve citizens’ understanding of legislative affairs. A recent study showed that 62 percent of Colombians are Internet users, and the Colombian Congress estimates that 70 percent of them access the Internet through their smartphones.
As the peace accords are legislated in Congress, the application provides an additional tool for these millions of Colombians to understand the contents of the accords and watch their members of Congress debate accord provisions. To support the application’s development, NDI facilitated a technical consultancy through the House Democracy Partnership (HDP), a bipartisan commission of the U.S. House of Representatives. The technical consultant, Stephen Dwyer, is the Senior Policy Advisor and Digital Director for the Office of Democratic Whip, Rep. Steny Hoyer and is well-versed in smartphone app development, as one of the key designers of Rep. Hoyer’s legislative tracking application, “Whip Watch.” Mr. Dwyer met with Colombian Senate staff and the technology firm that is developing the application for the Congress of Colombia, during which he provided feedback and recommendations to the design and functionality of the application. While not all of the suggestions were able to be accommodated in the first iteration of the app, it nonetheless represents a significant step forward in legislative openness for the Colombian Senate.
NDI’s assistance to Congress for these efforts is possible with funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, which has supported NDI’s legislative transparency programming in Colombia since 2014. The HDP exchange was supported by the United States Agency for International development.
New open parliament website launched on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of open parliament initiative
This post was written by Jovana Djurbabic of the Center for Research, Accountability and Transparency.
On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of our Open Parliament initiative, CRTA presented a new, improved "Open Parliament" website. A newly introduced feature -- “legislative online tool” -- gives citizens of Serbia an opportunity to gain insight into new legislation through easy to understand bill summaries and to comment and vote for or against the key changes that are proposed in the bill. This feature will also be useful for MPs since it will provide them with insight to public opinion regarding certain bills.
Open Parliament Initiative, which CRTA launched with several civil society organizations in 2012, monitors and analyzes the work of the National Assembly and MPs in order to provide citizens with quality information on events in Parliament. Researches showed that only one third of citizens of Serbia are aware of the role of the National Assembly and MPs. This fact signaled that something must be changed. Therefore, For five years CRTA has been trying to inform citizens about the work of their representatives and to offer the National Assembly and individual MPs solutions for better performing their representative role, not just their legislative and oversight functions.
During its five years, the Open Parliament website has made publicly available over 250 thousand speeches of MPs, from 1997 until today. The site has also made available – for the first time -- submitted amendments to draft laws and information about activities of all 250 MPs, which is released on a monthly basis.
Now, through improved Open Parliament website users are provide with automated statistics regarding MPs activates and legislation but also they are allowed to create their own analysis. For example, users can filter information regarding MPs activities at plenary sessions by different criteria: period of time, parliamentary party group or gender.
Also, users can get automatized statistics regarding adoption of laws by urgent procedure and additional analysis with explanation, provided by the sponsor of the bill, why certain law should be adopted by this procedure.
One of novelties of new Open Parliament website is “Compare MPs”. Citizens are now able, to choose two MPs and compere their performance at the parliament by certain criteria: activities at plenary debates, voting records, performance at amendment submission as well as by provided answers to citizens questions. Even more, now users are provide with API that enables direct access to data for further reuse.
In 2015 in partnership with the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia CRTA launched "Parliament Week", program of events and activities that connects citizens with the Parliament. European Commission, in its report on Progress report for Serbia in 2016 recognized Parliament Week as a significant step forward in terms of parliamentary transparency and participation.
The Greek Parliament: Perennially flirting with the absurd
This post originally appeared on Medium and was written by Vouliwatch.
This might not sound flattering, but the Greek Parliament is no stranger to absurdity. The perennial problems of the Greek political system have been impacting Greece’s top legislative institution for decades. Indeed, the economic crisis of recent years has served as a “magnifying glass”; the legislative process and the self-monitoring systems are the two main problematic areas for the Greek parliament, and the difficulties it has had in adjusting to the crisis intensified these problems.
But let’s look at this in more depth.
Parliamentary Inquiries without any results
The ability of parliament to investigate issues of concern to the public through the scrutiny mechanisms provided for in parliamentary regulation and in the Constitution, has proven for decades to be the “Achilles heel” of the institution. Since 1986 when an Inquiry Committee into the issue of responsibility for the invasion of Cyprus was established, up until the recent completion of the committee investigating the series of events leading up to Greece’s submission to the memoranda, shows that the inability to determine political and especially criminal responsibility is an ongoing issue. The case of the Koskotas scandal, which resulted in a special court in 1989, essentially turned out to be an exception to the rule. In recent years criminal responsibility was not attributed to ministers or members of the Government in the following matters: TORM1 armament programs; the Vatopedi scandal, the case of SIEMENS bribery, the stock market bonds scandal, and the events leading up to Greece’s submission to the memoranda. In all these cases, committees of inquiry issued as many findings as political parties were involved in the committee. Not even in cases where there were public admissions of squandering public money could a common conclusion be agreed between even two of the parties on the committee!
The results of the largest ever investigation of government by chartered accountants challenge the limits of credulity. It was announced by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras in 2013 and was completed in October 2014 and concerned all those involved in governments and ministries from 1974 to 2013. The otherwise thorough survey which looked at 3 decades over which more than 40 scandals were reported, identified only some “minor” problems in 26 individual cases whose names were never disclosed. None of these were considered appropriate for referral to the justice system. Bear in mind that such offenses can’t be prosecuted after the lapse of two parliamentary sessions under the existing law “on ministerial responsibility.”
Over-regulation
In the Ministry of the Interior, a committee has begun proceedings to address the issue of legislative fragmentation and over-regulation, the roots of which are naturally to be found in the parliamentary legislative process itself. We still don’t know if they’ll come to any conclusion but it highlights a key problem of the parliamentary system in Greece, the dimensions of which are…ludicrous. According to the official website of the government, around 1,500 laws have been passed in the last 15 years. In order to implement them, around 20,000 authorizations are required in the form of ministerial decisions and other mechanisms, whilst the real chaos is to be found in the regulatory — administrative instruments for their implementation, for which in excess of 40,000 authorizations are required! Here’s a characteristic example in July, the Greek parliament was informed that the current legislation concerning contracts for public procurement allows… 412 different types of contracts! As a result a law was passed limiting the type of contract to 10 in order to ensure consistency with the European average!
Greek Parliament and Greek Crisis
The overwhelming majority of political forces in the country would be quick to admit that the economic crisis exacerbated all the existing ills in the Greek Parliament. Since 2009 when the country began its adventures with loan agreements with the IMF and other European institutions, several parliamentary paradoxes began in parallel. Fast tracked legislation proliferated and this controversial period saw 67 acts passed using extra-ordinary procedures out of a total of 80 that have been agreed in the postwar history of the country. The institution of over-regulation became permanent, as well as the existence of legislation consisting of thousands of pages… for a single article, as famously happened with the Medium Term Plan 2012–2016 or the so-called “second Memorandum”. So the Greek parliament over the last seven years has been driven into conditions far from the norm, and even from logic itself: Phenomena were recorded such as acts that were never approved, even at a later date, by Parliament (like the bill converting ERT (Greece’s national broadcaster) into NERIT (a national broadcaster under a different name and administration); ministerial amendments without the constitutionally prescribed report from the Court of Auditors due to lack of time; bills that were withdrawn even though they’d been approved by Parliament (Parallel Programme, December 2015) and many other things.
The top ten Parliamentary paradoxes of 2016:
So let’s see how some of these ongoing problems influenced the year that just ended. During 2016 it was anything but rare that the Greek parliament appeared paradoxical, ludicrous, and even absurd. It’s worth presenting the ‘Top Ten’ of these moments:
1. The testimonies of two witnesses to the Parliamentary Inquiry on loans to political parties and the media stand out. And not for their seriousness. The committee minutes record one witness’ account of the events that led to the closure of the ALTER TV station with the phrase: “You should have seen what was going on! It was crazy …”.
Another particularly cynical moment was Editor Panagiotis Psiharis’ answer to the President of the Committee, Socrates Famelos, when asked how loans to the Journalistic Organization, Lampraki, were guaranteed, “with thin air…” he replied.
2. The Parliamentary Plenary session on 30 June presented a somewhat ludicrous picture when they discussed the contract for the acquisition of 67% of the port of Piraeus by the Chinese multinational, Cosco. The bill had already been passed by parliamentary committee and discussed in the plenary body, when the legal adviser of the company gave notice asking for changes in the final text. Most of the changes were incorporated into the text and then tabled by the government just a few hours before the legislation was put to the vote, making it impossible for parliament to scrutinise the additions.
3. The ‘unparliamentary’ behavior of the Golden Dawn party has become well known in recent years. On May 8, however, they outdid their reputation. MP Yiannis Lagos’ extreme behavior forced the parliamentary chair at the time, Giannis Lamproulis, to order his expulsion from the room. Lagos did not comply, and the rest of his parliamentary group, Golden Dawn, backed him up. Police forces entered the room in order to implement the decision of his expulsion. Eventually things calmed down after an hour’s disruption of Parliamentary business.
4. The non response to the Potami party’s question about the number of staff employed per ministry (not as civil servants but as external advisors, ministerial private office, etc.) provides an excellent example of… avoidance. The Potami party tabled this question in October 2016 to all ministries. Only 8 answered! Indeed, the same question was submitted for 2015 also without any substantial answer. A question that every citizen must wonder about…
5. One thing went in… another came out. The infamous Katrougalos social security bill, whose adoption was completed in May 2015; between the discussions held in the Committee on Social Affairs, and the vote held in the Parliament Plenary session… 261 changes were made to its provisions. A number which deviates wildly from usual procedure.
6. A statement by the head of the main opposition party, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, on July 22 provoked strong responses both positive and negative, “I was a political prisoner,” said the president of the New Democracy Party during the preparation for the daily agenda discussion in parliament, provoking laughter on the benches of government MPs, followed by an intense confrontation with opposition MPs.
7. Lots of MPS became independent this year but certainly the most striking of these was the parliamentary representative of the Potami Party, Haris Theoharis, and this is so mainly for reasons of continuity, as he was subsequently removed from the political party, Social Responsibility, which he had himself reportedly founded.
8. Upon hearing the remarks of the rapporteur, a member of the ANEL party, (part of the governing coalition) when Parliament discussed the issue of the extension of civil partnerships to same-sex couples, one might wonder if Greece is in fact a modern country, or one stuck in the dark ages, “The emerging alternative family structures prove that Western society has been secularised and ‘de-Christianised’,” said Katsikis, provoking a variety of comments.
9. There are many ways to achieve consensus in legislative debates in Parliament. But only in 2016 did we observe the phenomenon of … splitting up articles (into a number of smaller articles) to gain greater support for the legislation. Here’s an example: in the legislation on Proportional Representation in summer, one article in particular proposed both keeping the quota of 3% of the vote for a party to get into parliament, and dropped the voting age from 18 to 17. PASOK and the Communist party would both have voted against this article, each objecting to 1 of it’s 2 points. So the government split it up, placing each point in its own article to ensure that the article as it was would not receive ‘double the opposition’, as it were, and improving each article’s chance of passing into the final legislation.
10. Finally the classic phenomenon of adding a great number of (unconnected) amendments to the final legislation of the year was repeated in 2016. A total of 53 amendments (Ministerial and Parliamentary) were voted in on legislation for the Spatial Planning of the Ministry of the Environment. It would be difficult though to “outdo” the record of 2014 where the final bill of the year was voted in with 102 amendments.
First Action Plan for a Transparent Congress in Colombia
This post originally appeared on DemWorks.org and was written by Christian Benito.
On November 30 in Constitution Hall of the Honorable Congress of the Republic of Colombia, an important event took place for the country’s democracy, particularly its legislative institutions. Leaders from the Senate and Chamber of Representatives came together to publicly present the first Open Parliament Action Plan of the Colombian Congress, which lays a series of benchmarks toward making the congress more visible and accessible to citizens.
Representatives attended from the President’s Transparency Secretariat, parliamentary monitoring organizations such as Visible Congress, Transparency for Colombia and the Institute of Political Science (all member organizations of the Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency and the OpeningParliament.org network of parliamentary monitoring organizations), congressional offices, media outlets and special guests from the Chilean and Paraguayan legislatures.
This demonstration of political will by the Congress to make the institution more open, modern and transparent through the Action Plan is part of a process that began last year. In November 2015, the Senate and Chamber of Representatives signed a Declaration of Commitments for Transparency. One of the agreed upon provisions within the Declaration was the development of the Action Plan.
Since November 2015, the Colombian Congress has undertaken important efforts to fulfill its commitment to engaging in a two-way dialogue with citizens from all parts of the country. This effort has not been taken solely by legislators or congressional leaders or staff. As part of making legislative affairs more transparent, a process now formalized in the Action Plan, Congress facilitated a collaborative development process with different members of civil society organizations and the legislature. Together, they helped structure and flesh out the points of the plan, some taken from the OGP, to promote integrity, accountability, citizen political participation and the use of information and communication technologies in government.
The Congress’ work in this area was inspired in part by the Open Government Partnership, an international initiative that brings together public sector institutions and civil society in each of the 70 member countries to develop National Action Plans on open government. As a member country, Colombia’s government has worked with civil society to develop two National Action Plans, which make commitments that relate to the openness of the executive branch. The Congress’ activities were intended to adhere to OGP principles and procedures—namely, collaboration and co-creation with civil society. Along with the Congress of Chile, NDI serves as co-chair of the OGP Legislative Openness Working Group.
This initiative was also presented internationally at the fourth global OGP Summit, which took place between December 7 and 9 in Paris, France. President of the Senate Mauricio Lizcano attended the summit representing the Colombian Congress and spoke on a panel discussion on open parliament organized by NDI and the Congress of Chile. Senator Lizcano presented on Colombia’s progress and the Action Plan alongside Ken Wollack (president of NDI), Mukelani Dimba (executive director of the Open Democracy Assistance Centre in South Africa and civil society co-chair of the OGP Steering Committee), Chilean senator Hernán Larraín (president of the bicameral committee on ethics and transparency of the Chilean Congress), Hon. Kaja Kallas (member of the European Parliament elected by Estonia), and Vuka Crnjanski (director of the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability in Serbia). These other panel members applauded the work and effort of Colombia’s legislative authorities and encouraged continuing with these efforts and fulfilling these commitments.
In this sense, the Action Plan does not just reflect political will on the part of the legislature to live up to its role as a member of this global alliance for more open parliaments. It is also a demonstration of joint work between legislators, citizens and civic organizations, and international bodies – a product of collaboration between diverse sectors working with a genuine common interest to strengthen participation mechanisms and make Colombian institutions more representative.
Colombia’s Open Parliament Action Plan is notable regionally and internationally – it is the third such plan developed in Latin America and the sixth in the world. The focus now turns to the challenging process of implementing the plan and its individual provisions, which include but are not limited to determining a process for publishing legislative information in open data formats and developing digital tools to facilitate citizens’ knowledge of and participation in policy development and other legislative tasks.
It will be crucial for civil society organizations and interest groups to remain involved to ensure the success of implementing the different strategies and processes outlined in the plan and secure its success over time. It is also important to raise awareness of this initiative so that more citizens are better able to stay informed of legislative affairs and take interest in actions to strengthen Congress and, therefore, congressional oversight and policy development processes. These processes are key to protecting and guaranteeing citizens’ rights.
Global open parliament community prepares for a productive 2017
Since its launch in 2011, many have urged the Open Government Partnership (OGP) to expand beyond narrow definitions of the term “government.” Legislators, mayors, and others argued that OGP’s transformational potential was tied in part to its ability to accommodate different branches and levels of government -- not only the executive, as is the case in many member countries. A truly open government includes an accountable executive branch, trusted legislatures, and responsive governance at all levels. This was an ambitious vision, but many argued that OGP’s ability to deliver better democracy and better governance was tied to its continued growth and expansion.
The OGP Summit in Paris, which took place last month and convened hundreds of open government champions and activists from around the world, clearly indicated that OGP is beginning to deliver on this ambitious agenda. This is particularly true with respect to parliaments, which are now an integral component of OGP in many member countries and are helping deliver real reforms at the country level. While the OGP Summit demonstrated that parliamentary openness is a mainstream issue in the OGP community, 2017 provides an opportunity to deliver even more meaningful legislative openness reforms.
Advancing the legislative openness agenda has been among OGP’s most important achievements, despite not having been a part of its original design. Numerous parliaments around the world have used the OGP platform to advance openness commitments, while many others have developed parallel processes inspired by OGP principles—such as co-creation with civil society—to develop their own legislative openness action plans. These commitments have called on parliaments to: publish more information about their work, create new avenues for citizen participation in the legislative process, and develop robust ethics systems to manage conflicts of interest and ensure public trust in the legislature. Participation in the Legislative Openness Working Group, which is co-chaired by the Congress of Chile and the National Democratic Institute, has also continued to grow, with parliamentary representatives or civil society activists from nearly every OGP member country participating in Working Group activities.
As a reflection of growing interest and demand, the Paris Summit featured a robust legislative openness track, with side events, main conference sessions, and valuable networking opportunities. During the main conference, there were seven sessions on legislative openness issues, covering a broad range of issues from open legislative data, to the creation of “hacker spaces” in parliament, to co-creation of legislation. (Video of the Legislative Openness Working Group’s mainstage panel is available here.) The French National Assembly and Senate also organized side meetings, providing a full day of legislative programming running parallel to the main conference. Legislative programming at OGP events is becoming a well-established norm, with robust legislative tracks at the last two OGP Summits and legislative programming at nearly all OGP regional meetings. Going forward, the Working Group encourages OGP to continue to include legislative programming at forthcoming OGP Summits and regionals events.
Of course, the participation of legislatures in the Summit is not an accomplishment on its own. Broad legislative participation in the Summit may reflect increased interest in this issue, but success should be defined by the number and quality of legislative openness commitments developed and implemented. With the recent passage of a legislative engagement policy, the number of legislative openness commitments developed is likely to increase. The new policy outlines more clear rules for legislatures that are interested in developing and implementing commitments through OGP, providing the space for increased parliamentary participation while encouraging coordination between different branches. As the policy was passed in September, “odd year” OGP member countries with National Action Plans due in 2017 are positioned to take advantage of the new legislative engagement policy in the coming months. The Working Group anticipates focusing its efforts in the first half of 2017 on supporting OGP member country governments and legislatures that are interested in including legislative openness commitments in their National Action Plan.
Over the coming weeks, the Working Group’s co-chairs will be working closely with all who are interested in shaping the Working Group’s workplan for 2017. The co-chairs intend to heavily support “odd year” OGP countries developing action plans, but will also provide support and opportunities to those countries currently implementing legislative openness commitments. There will also be additional work to provide technical resources in support of legislative openness champions. For instance, new information will continue to be added to the Legislative Openness Data Explorer, a website that compiles crowdsourced, comparative information on legislative openness around the world. The Working Group also intends to organize a global meeting this spring, which will provide another opportunity to convene leaders from around the world to discuss the new legislative engagement policy. Throughout the planning process, the co-chairs will solicit feedback from the Working Group and the broader OGP community, particularly with regards to issues or countries that should be a priority for the coming year. For more information on previous workplans, please see this page.
With the passage of the new legislative engagement policy, and building off the momentum generated at the Paris Summit, 2017 promises to be a productive year for OGP’s parliamentary community. By creating opportunities for peer learning and providing technical assistance and advice, the Working Group will support governments, parliaments, and civil society groups as they develop and implement even more ambitious legislative openness commitments. More information about Working Group plans for the coming year will be circulated shortly for comment. As always, please do not hesitate to reach out to the co-chairs.
New report by Openpolis: Index of parliamentary productivity
Through quantitative and qualitative elements, we looked at the work of Deputies and Senators of the Italian parliament to assess their political and legislative efficiency. The 2016 edition of the index of parliamentary productivity highlights even more the importance of specific key positions in parliament.
Index of parliamentary productivity. The first release in 2011 was the result of a urgent need to add a qualitative element in the assessment of the activity of elected representatives. Newer editions kept the original structure of the index, while trying to identify the main changes, both political and procedural, that took place with the following grand coalition governments.
The distribution of productivity. There are many points worth mentioning when analyzing the activity of the Italian parliament. First, the distribution of productivity is not homogeneous. Out of approximately 950 members of parliament, the vast majority have a little role in the legislative production of the two chambers. Most of them usually limit their contributions to attendance at voting sessions, an element that is not sufficient to achieve a high score in the index.
The importance of key positions. A high attendance rate does not equal a high score in the index of parliament productivity. What seems to really have an impact is the role or position held in parliament. Through our years of work on the index we discovered that specific key positions have more chances to influence legislative work. We are mainly talking about presidents and vice presidents of parliamentary committees and the chairman of each political group. These people usually end up being spokesmen/rapporteurs for the most important bills being discussed in parliament.
Ranking. The goal of this study is not to determine winners or losers, rather to create tools to better understand how the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate actually work. In this year’s edition of the index of parliamentary productivity, we attempted to further our analysis of key positions, adding to the previous study of single MPs. We calculated the average score of each group, as well as the difference between members that have a key role and those that do not.
Daily updates. The MiniDossier analyzed parliamentary data up until November 21, 2016. The score and general activity of each member of parliament is updated on a daily basis at: www.openparlamento.it.
For more information, please see the parameters used to calculate the index of parliamentary productivity.
América Latina se encuentra a mitad de camino en materia de transparencia legislativa
Este post fue escrito por la Red Latinoamericana de Transparencia Legislativa.
Latinoamérica muestra un escenario diverso en materia de transparencia legislativa. El promedio de los 13 países evaluados por la tercera edición del Ínidce Latinoamericano de Transparencia Legislativa nos arroja un resultado de 50%, es decir, nos encontramos a mitad de camino. Los países que se ubicaron en los mejores puestos fueron Costa Rica con un 72%, Chile con el 64% y Paraguay con el 62%, mientras que Argentina (39%), República Dominicana (37%) y Venezuela (21%) se ubican en los últimos lugares.
Los estándares que el Índice evalúa fueron consensuados por las distintas organizaciones de la Red Latinoamericana por la Transparencia Legislativa y representan un nivel que consideramos exigible para todos los congresos de la Región. Avanzar en dichos estándares tiene por objetivo fortalecer a los Congresos como el espacio de deliberación democrática por excelencia a través de la apertura del proceso legislativo para efectos de aumentar los niveles de legitimidad del mismo y de sus resultados. Nos imaginamos a los congresos como el espacio donde la ciudadanía y representantes tienen la oportunidad de debatir y tomar acuerdos de forma informada, dictando normas que sean representativas de la voluntad ciudadana respecto de los principales asuntos públicos que ocupan a los países.
Son múltiples las amenazas a la democracia en nuestro continente: el hiperpresidencialismo, la demagogia, la concentración de riqueza y poder e incluso los gobiernos de facto, entre otros. Entendemos que legitimar el proceso de deliberación en los congresos es fortalecer la política democrática. Reconocer como espacios de decisión aquellos que son representativos de la diversidad que habita en nuestros países por sobre el poder concentrado en figuras o grupos específicos. La opacidad y falta de control sobre los congresos y sus miembros son elementos que han mostrado ser dañinos para la legitimidad de los mismos, con esta investigación buscamos dar luces sobre los aspectos en los que es necesario avanzar para revertir dicha situación.
En cuanto a los resultados de esta versión del estudio, observamos que se han producido avances en regulaciones en la materia, por ejemplo, casi todos los países cuentan con leyes que garantizan el acceso a la información pública. Sin perjuicio de la necesidad de avanzar en la independencia de los órganos fiscalizadores. También se observan progresos, aunque en menor medida, con la regulación relativa a la declaración de intereses en el ámbito parlamentario.
Se han realizado esfuerzos por transparentar la actividad legislativa interna, como las tablas de las salas de sesiones, comisiones y de los resultados de las mismas. Sin embargo, quedan aspecto importantes en los cuales avanzar, especialmente en lo que es la transparencia de la relación de los congresos o congresistas con agentes externos. El ejemplo más notorio es la ausencia en la gran mayoría de los países de una regulación relativa al lobby o gestión de intereses. Situación similar ocurre respecto de las asesorías a parlamentarios y la información que se pone a disposición del público a dicho respecto.
La dimensión relativa al presupuesto es la con menor puntaje a nivel regional. Desde la RLTL consideramos que la opacidad en esta materia constituye un flanco muy riesgoso para la legitimidad de los congresos. La transparencia en el uso de los recursos públicos por parte de los congresos y parlamentarios es fundamental para evitar la percepción de que la actividad política está vinculada a privilegios u oportunidades de corrupción o nepotismo. Avanzar en la materia es fundamental para despejar una de las principales fuentes de desprestigio de la actividad política.
Por último, en materia de participación ciudadana encontramos que existe información disponible para la ciudadanía, pero es urgente avanzar en canales institucionales de participación ciudadana en el proceso legislativo. Es necesario entregar oportunidades claras para que los ciudadanos hagan uso de la información disponibilizada y puedan incidir de forma relevante y oportuna en el proceso de toma de decisiones.
En resumen, el Índice nos muestra que aún enfrentamos importantes desafíos en materia de transparencia y participación. Que nuestros congresos y congresistas aún tienen la oportunidad de avanzar con el propósito de construir nuevas relaciones y confianzas con sus representados. Al respecto, consideramos que no hay tiempo que perder, ya que el desafío es arduo e implica un trabajo que debe hacerse en conjunto con la sociedad civil, para que la visión de ésta sea integrada desde el comienzo y que, de esa forma, las soluciones apunten a las necesidades y expectativas que la ciudadanía tiene respecto de sus congresos.
OGP Summit includes robust program track on legislative openness
This week’s Paris Summit comes at an important moment in the growth of the Open Government Partnership (OGP). With the recent passage of an official legislative engagement policy, the OGP Steering Committee has more clearly outlined rules for legislative participation, clearing the way for deeper parliamentary engagement in OGP. This Summit provides an important opportunity to share information about this new policy, identify community priorities for the coming year, and develop a more concrete strategy for fully realizing the potential of legislative engagement.
If you are attending the Summit and are interested in legislative openness issues, please find an agenda for the Summit’s legislative track here.
As in previous years, the Summit program will include a number of sessions dedicated to legislative openness. These sessions will focus on a range of technical issues, from open legislative data, to the creation of “hacker spaces” and other institutional innovations, to efforts in France to facilitate co-creation of legislation. Other sessions will focus on the role of parliaments in the Open Government Partnership, including sessions on boosting legislative engagement in OGP and engaging political leaders and parliaments. Most of these sessions are intended to be interactive and inclusive and we hope that many of you will be able to attend and participate.
To complement main conference programming and ensure robust opportunities for those interested in legislative openness, the French National Assembly and Senate are both organizing open parliament side events. The National Assembly event will take place the morning of Thursday, December 8, followed by the Senate event that afternoon. These events will be valuable additions to the main conference program. In particular, these side events will expose conference participants to the French legislative branch’s innovative initiatives and projects, including efforts to provide open access to legislative data and to create new avenues for citizens and civil society to engage in the legislative process.
The Paris Declaration provides yet another opportunity for legislatures and civil society organizations to get involved. Rather than simply a collection of principles, the Declaration is intended to show that governments and CSOs are working together to push open government forward. All interested governments, parliaments, and civil society groups can indicate their support for different portions of the Declaration, and must list specifically what they intend to do to support progress, either at home or around the world. The Declaration includes a section on inclusive lawmaking, and we encourage all open parliament champions to show their support for inclusive lawmaking in advance of the December 5 deadline.
We look forward to seeing and hearing from many of you at the Summit. If you’re interested in getting involved in the Legislative Openness Working Group, please get in touch and follow our website for updates.
