Integrating partnerships to open parliaments: OGP’s meeting in Santiago

Coming out of the regional meeting of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) held in Santiago, Chile, from January 10-11, it’s clear that the movement to open the world’s parliaments has a number of allies outside of civil society and parliamentary monitoring organizations (PMOs). Bringing these actors together may offer a huge opportunity to bring about democratic reform and more open, responsive and accountable parliaments — and governments as a whole.

The Santiago meeting

The regional OGP meeting in Chile brought together representatives from international organizations, governments, and civil society from nearly 20 countries in the Americas, holding panel discussions on five main topics related to open government (for more information, check out OGP Chile’s website, the full agenda from the event, and many of the presentations given). Among them was a panel on Parlamento Abierto (Open ParliamentEnsuring access to legislative information and creating mechanisms for public participation are critical to building an open, trusting relationship with citizens. Technical specifications: Commitments... More), led by leading MPs from Latin American countries and representatives from international organizations. For me, the panel illuminates two points:

1. Strong champions of openness already exist in many parliaments, international and regional organizations. MPs from Colombia and Chile gave presentations on the important internal reform of their national parliaments towards greater openness. Moisés Benamor, representing the Organization of American States (OAS), cited last year’s Santiago Declaration on Transparency and Integrity in Parliaments and Political Parties as a starting point for parliaments in the region — an OAS document that mirrors many of the broad principles of the PMO-authored Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. Benamor listed a number of other concrete initiatives that the regional collection of parliaments can begin to take to become more open. And Vicki Baxter, Global Task Force Advisor for the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption (GOPAC), an international network of MPs dedicated to good governance from more than 40 countries, indicated in her presentation that GOPAC “fully supports” the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness — perhaps the first formal endorsement of the document from a major international organization of MPs. One panelist, Senator Hernán Larraín, a former president of the Chilean Senate, emphasized the need for parliaments and MPs to play a greater role in broader open government work like OGP (a point also emphasized in one of my past posts) to strengthen efforts towards openness in all branches of government.
2. More work needs to be done to bring civil society and parliamentary actors together. A major missed opportunity of the meeting’s Open Parliament panel — evident not just from the list of panel participants, but also from the expressions of many of the civil society attendees of the meeting on Twitter — was the lack of participation of local PMOs. Even before the event, attempts by organizations like theLatin American Network for Legislative Transparency (LALT Network) to participate as panelists in the discussion were rebuffed. Unfortunately, timing also did not allow for a question-and-answer period after the panel’s presentations. In the future, open parliament events should stress the importance of a collaborative dialogue among local PMOs and civil society, MPs, and international organizations.

The need for more integrated global partnerships

We have already seen many MPs embrace the PMO-authored Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. At events like the IPU’s 127th Assembly and the 2012 World e-Parliament Conference, members of parliament from countries as diverse as Canada, Namibia, Korea, Australia, Japan and Indonesia, commented positively on monitoring groups’ effort to create the Declaration. It’s encouraging that the conversation begun by GOPAC at the OGP meeting in Chile on the Declaration may continue at their global conference in Manila at the end of January. And we’ve heard words of support for these PMO-led initiatives by leaders of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament — participants in the conference that first discussed the Declaration — including an expressed desire to work directly with PMOs to create tools that support parliaments on issues of open government and open data. These examples and many others show that champions of opening parliaments exist in the global parliamentary community, and wish to work with PMOs dedicated to improving the quality of representative democracy.

But so far, coalitions and partnerships are lagging behind in integrating these efforts to most effectively harness the interest and capacity of all actors and advocates by working together. Organizations like GOPAC, the IPU, the Global Centre, and regional organizations like the OAS and others, should continue to embrace and create opportunities to work with PMOs to address the provisions of the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness and other standards for openness. They should collaborate with PMOs to bring parliaments up to speed with increasing citizen demand for good governance and accountability. And in turn, PMOs should work with the open parliament champions in their home parliaments. Furthermore, broader movements to open up governments — like OGP — will be most effective only if they recognize and work parallel to similar efforts on the parliamentary side. As the fundamental representative institutions of democratic systems, as well as the primary institutional providers of executive oversight, parliaments are a crucial part of the open government equation. Parliaments should stay up to speed on OGP as it moves forward and work to create similar efforts to move towards openness — even integrating with the OGP process, when appropriate. Indeed, in his remarks in Santiago, Senator Larraín suggested the addition of a formal committee within OGP’s structure to give MPs a concrete space for participation, and many countries have already incorporated parliaments into their action plans. 

In the coming months, the partners of OpeningParliament.org and its supporting organizations will continue to contribute to the conversation to help accomplish these goals by working with a variety of partners and organizations, as well as many of the “champions” identified by PMOs around the world, to most effectively create integrated avenues for openness that include all levels of government. If you’re interested in joining, please get in touch.

This post originally appeared on Opening Parliament.

Photo credit: OGP Chile 2013 Flickr