The 2015 Global Summit of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), held in Mexico City from October 28-29, represented a major step forward for the 69-country partnership. Whereas the OGP has typically focused on engagement between civil society and the executive branch, the Summit broadened its scope to include engagement with other parts of government. The event offered sessions on openness in the judiciary branch and marked the beginning of OGP “going subnational.”

Welcoming more than 50 members of parliament to the event, the Summit also saw the partnership’s first legislative track.

Beginning at Civil Society Day on October 27, voters awarded the inaugural OGP Government Champions Award to the Inter-Factional Group of the Parliament of Georgia, represented by Hon. Tamar Kordzaia. The honor acknowledged their successful collaboration with civil society in drafting a legislative action plan. Working with parliaments, strengthening legislative transparency through technology, and the launch of a new book, Open Parliaments: Results and Expectations by Transparencia Mexicana, were all covered during workshops that day.

During the Summit itself, the Legislative Openness Working Group, which supports legislative participation in OGP and is led by the Congress of Chile and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), organized a legislative track that included five key sessions.

NDI President Ken Wollack moderated a mainstage panel on the critical role of legislatures in the open government conversation. “Legislatures are vital in moving the open government agenda forward, by engaging political leaders across party lines and by strengthening the link between OGP, ordinary citizens, and their elected representatives,” remarked Mr. Wollack. “Legislatures also offer a mechanism to help promote continuity and sustained engagement by an OGP country, even when elections result in a change in government.”

“What we’ve been trying to achieve is to have a full membership of parliaments within OGP,” said Chilean Senator Hernán Larraín, who also participated on the panel. “For the next step of OGP, we need to include parliament in the structure—and all authorities that are elected: governors, mayors—because this will bring more strength in relations with the people and engagement with citizens.”

The executive director of Fundar Centro de Análisis e Investigación, Haydeé Pérez, echoed the importance of openness to parliaments as they struggle to deepen public trust. “The most powerful way to retrieve trust and overcome this representation crisis is for parliaments to open up, to begin making bridges with citizens and to listen and talk to them.”

With the help of the Legislative Openness Working Group, many countries have already begun involving the legislative branch on their own. More than 15 percent of commitments made in government action plans involve legislative action. This includes commitments to change laws, such as developing a Whistleblower’s Law in Albania or passing a Right to Information Law in Ghana. It also includes commitments to revamp the legislative branch, with, for example, a pledge to offer new ways of releasing legislative data and calendars in the Netherlands, or a commitment to develop greater citizen participation in lawmaking in Indonesia.

Some countries have even taken it a step further. A different panel at the Summit, organized in partnership with UNDP, highlighted examples of countries that have authored separate legislative action plans. Beyond the successful Inter-Factional Group of the Parliament of Georgia, the Senate in Mexico joined an Open Parliament Alliance in 2014 with the intent (albeit, so far, slightly delayed) to draft an action plan with civil society. Chile’s Congress drafted an action plan in 2013 led by its Bicameral Commission on Transparency. In the week before the Global Summit, Costa Rica became the latest country to launch a legislative action plan as the National Assembly announced a partnership with civil society to accomplish specific commitments. At the Summit, the President of the National Assembly, Hon. Rafael Ortíz, and representatives from Costa Rican civil society organizations shared this plan with the OGP community.

Alongside the Global Summit, at events hosted by the Working Group with ParlAmericas and the Senate of Mexico, members of parliament from more than 20 countries met to discuss shared experiences in advancing openness and formally engaging with OGP. Among them, Hon. Souhail Alouini from Tunisia supported the idea of including more MPs on the OGP Steering Committee. President of the Pan African Parliament, H.E. Roger Nkodo Dang, endorsed the creation of opportunities within OGP for South-South sharing of legislative openness experiences. A network of MPs from Latin America, focused on parliamentary openness, also met at the margins of the Summit. These meetings were complemented by a public panel at the Summit which included several MPs, among them, Sen. Marcela Guerra, president of ParlAmericas and member of the Senate of Mexico, and Hon. Luis AIbérico, president of the Congress of Peru.

President Enrique Peña Nieto, OGP’s outgoing lead chair, had highlighted inclusion of the legislative branch as a priority in 2014. We expect incoming government chairs of the OGP Steering Committee, South Africa and France, to carry this priority forward. Showing its dedication, the National Assembly of France was among the first OGP country parliaments to enact their own plan, Toward a National Assembly of the XXI Century. In addition, Chilean Senator Larraín took part in OGP Steering Committee meetings at the Summit as the first official representative of the legislative branch since OGP was founded in 2011.

The Working Group’s 2016 Workplan, which will launch in January 2016, will compile all of the input collected during the Summit. Comments and suggestions for this plan can be submitted through the Working Groups’s page on OGP’s website.

The Working Group also continues to execute projects from its 2015 Workplan. At the Summit, a panel launched the Working Group’s Common Ethical Principles for Members of Parliament, an effort to create international benchmarks for moral and transparent behavior by individual MPs. Early next year we can expect the launch of a data explorer detailing the levels of transparency of legislatures around the world.

As OGP broadens its reach, the partnership will face a range of additional questions. How might OGP more formally integrate the legislative branch? What is the best process for reviewing open parliament action plans commitments and plans? How can we ensure civil society participation in these efforts moving forward? And what about political parties? The Working Group plans to wrestle with these critical issues in the coming year, especially at OGP’s next Steering Committee meeting in May.

Input from the OGP community as a whole in this process is vital. To provide comments or thoughts on how to proceed, please visit the Working Group’s website: http://www.opengovpartnership.org/groups/legislative.

Published on November 9, 2015