Introducing the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness | Open Knowledge Foundation Blog

“In joining the Open Government Partnership (OGP), governments have been going on record in support of more open, participatory and accountable public institutions. To date, 55 governments have agreed to develop national action plans, with civil society input and monitoring, that commit them to this agenda. Although the quality of commitments made and intensity of civil society engagement may vary by country, OGP has stimulated a valuable discussion about the importance of citizen engagement in the political and governance processes—one that the international community of parliamentary monitoring organizations (PMOs) is advancing in the legislative realm through the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness... OGP has largely ignored parliaments and the issue of open legislative data, despite an increasing recognition that open data policies should be designed to support improved democracy, not just improved service delivery.  Yet, as the institution responsible for approving laws, representing citizens and overseeing executive performance and policy implementation, parliaments are essential sources of public information. They are also critical venues for giving voice to citizens’ interests and ensuring that their needs are reflected in laws and their implementation.  Recognizing the potential for improved collaboration with parliaments to deepen their commitments to openness and to citizen engagement in parliamentary work, more than 70 PMOs from over 50 countries — and counting — have expressed support for the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. They have also established a network at OpeningParliament.org. In recent years, PMOs have commenced monitoring of legislative institutions around the world to improve citizen understaning of parliaments, and to advocate and support parliamentary efforts to become more representative, accessible, accountable and responsive... Given the variety of challenges faced by PMOs in accessing parliamentary information, the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness highlights measures parliaments can take to promote a culture of parliamentary openness — recognizing the basic principle of public ownership of parliamentary information. The Declaration also specifies the categories of parliamentary information that should be made available to the public and the channels through which parliamentary information should be made accessible to ensure non-discriminatory public access. Recognizing the importance of providing parliamentary information in open and structured formats, the Declaration also contains specific ‘open data’ provisions to enable electronic analysis, reuse and sharing of parliamentary information.  Forthcoming commentary, which will accompany the Declaration’s launch, highlights a number of instances of parliaments making concerted efforts to become more open. Italy’s Chamber of Deputies, which is co-hosting this year’s World e-Parliament Conference, is a leader in linked open data for parliaments, while Brazil’s lower house has had success generating citizen participation in the legislative process through it’s e-Democracia website. The U.S. and U.K. are among small group of parliaments making select information available in open and structured formats. Most excitingly, several parliaments in Africa and Latin America are playing with a promising open source software based on the Akoma Ntoso schema for legal documents that is