5 ways the Global Legislative Openness Survey can strengthen OGP action plans

Perhaps the greatest benefit of the Open Government PartnershipThe Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a multi-stakeholder initiative focused on improving government transparency, ensuring opportunities for citizen participation in public matters, and strengthen... More (OGP) is that it provides a forum for openness advocates in government and civil society alike to share information in order to learn what works and what doesn’t when it comes to opening up government. At its best, OGP can facilitate a productive, global exchange of information on openness issues that encourages countries to craft increasingly ambitious national action plans. 

To facilitate the sharing of information on legislative openness — an issue that is increasingly being addressed through the OGP process — the OGP Legislative Openness Working Group (LOWG) is embarking on a survey-based research effort to gather and disseminate comparative information about parliamentary openness. The LOWG, which is co-anchored by the Government and Congress of Chile and the National Democratic Institute, is in the process of conducting a series of surveys. The first survey will identify what information parliaments make public. Comments on the survey have been received from many working group participants and from the broader legislative openness community; data collection on the survey will begin shortly. The second survey in the series is intended to gather information about citizen engagement and mechanisms for public participation in the legislative process. The survey process will be discussed in greater detail at several upcoming events during the Global Legislative Openness Week, from September 15-25. 

One goal of the survey is to support the OGP process by increasing the number of meaningful legislative openness commitments in national action plans. There are a number of ways that the working group’s research efforts could positively affect the OGP process. 

1. Compiling examples of good practice provides inspiration and guidance

Did you know that the Chamber of Deputies in Brazil has a permanent hacker space that promotes digital innovation in parliamentary work? Are you familiar with the way the Italian Senate uses Akoma Ntoso XML to publish bills and dossiers? Have you heard about the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy in the UK? If not, then a comprehensive survey on global parliamentary practice would make it much easier for you to track down good examples of parliamentary openness practices, such as those listed above. By making these good practices easier to find, the survey will encourage parliaments and civil society organizations to be inspired by — and improve upon — the good work of their peers. Such inspiration and guidance can help shape action plan commitments that are realistic, achievable, and consistent with global good practice. The survey data will complement existing resources, such as the Open Government Guide’s chapter on legislative action plan commitments.

2. Identifying good practice encourages consultations between parliaments 

Identifying examples of good practice may also encourage informal consultations between parliaments. The LOWG has already played a role in facilitating an exchange that brought members of the Honduran Parliament to Mexico to meet with the Mexican Senate and Mexican civil society organizations that are leading on parliamentary openness issues. Going forward, we hope that the survey will help encourage additional opportunities for peer learning — including both informal consultations and bilateral exchanges — by helping to identify relevant counterparts in other parliaments who would be of assistance. For example, if a parliament is interested in learning more about publishing documents using Akoma Ntoso, the survey data will hopefully be helpful in identifying the Italian Senate’s use of Akoma Ntoso. 

3. Comparing parliaments helps inform the action planAction plans are at the core of a government’s participation in OGP. They are the product of a co-creation process in which government and civil society jointly develop commitments to open governmen... drafting process

Our survey effort aims to collect current comparative data on parliamentary openness practices, in part to facilitate comparison of practice among different parliaments. Such comparisons will help identify areas where a particular parliament excels and where it underperforms. Knowing how a particular parliament compares to other parliaments around the world and in a specific region can help to identify reform priorities, which in turn can help shape the national action plan drafting process. 

4. Gathering information from both parliaments and civil society creates space for dialogue

It is the LOWG’s hope that the survey will be completed by both parliaments and civil society organizations that monitor parliament. By having both parliaments and civil society organizations provide information, the survey can create opportunities for productive dialogue about parliamentary openness by highlighting areas where there may be a divergence of views. By helping to clearly identify areas where there are differences of opinion between parliament and particular civil society organizations on a specific issue, the survey can help generate productive dialogue. 

5. Providing comparative information on parliamentary openness encourages greater engagement on these issues within the OGP community 

The survey may also help the OGP community focus more closely on data that improves the accountability of political institutions. While transparencyAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, transparency occurs when “government-held information (including on activities and decisions) is open, comprehensive, timely, freely available to the pub... More of information about service delivery is important, for government to be open, citizens must be able to understand how government decisions are made. By providing easily accessible, relatively comprehensive information on legislative openness, the survey, and the database of comparative information that it generates, may increase the focus on “open politics” within the OGP community. Increased understanding and greater recognition of the importance of legislative openness may translate to a greater number of relevant commitments in national level action plans. 

The LOWG hopes that these research efforts can contribute significantly to a growing global movement working to make governments and parliaments achieve greater transparency and increased citizen engagement. It is also hoped that the research can facilitate the inclusion of ambitious parliamentary openness commitments in OGP action plans. However, the LOWG needs your assistance to make this effort a success. If you are interested in contributing to this research effort or are interested in following the work of the LOWG by subscribing to the LOWG email list, please contact gbrown@ndi.org.