Open Parliaments, Results and Expectations. by Transparencia Mexicana

RESULTS AND EXPECTATIONS EDITED BY EDUARDO BOHÓRQUEZ

OPEN PARLIAMENTS RESULTS AND EXPECTATIONS EDITED BY EDUARDO BOHÓRQUEZ

TRANSPARENCIA MEXICANA Transparencia Mexicana (TM) is a non-profit civil society organization that promotes public policies and personal behaviour against corruption and in favor of a culture of integrity, legality and accountability. Founded in 1999, TM is the Mexican chapter of Transparency International, the most important global anti-corruption network operating in more than 100 countries. It is one of the founding organizations behind the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in Mexico, promoting also other global initiatives for openness and accountability, such as: Open Contracting (OCP) and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). Facebook.com/TransparenciaMexicana @IntegridadMx @ParlAbiertoMx

General Coordinator: Eduardo Bohórquez Graphic Design: Andrés de Miguel, Marcela Rivas Translation: Kate Saunders, Zoralis Pérez Proofreading: Greg Doane, Vanessa Sylveira, Bárbara del Castillo, Mariana Flores The first edition of this book was published in December 2013 as “Parlamento Abierto: Hacia una nueva relación con la ciudadanía” [“Open Parliament: Toward a New Relationship with Citizens”]; it was coordinated by Eduardo Bohórquez and supported by the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District. The copy in your hands is an update titled “Parlamento Abierto: Retos y Oportunidades” [“Open Parliaments: Results and Expectations”], which also includes the experiences and knowledge of new authors on the topic. The publication of the book “Open Parliaments: Results and Expectations” was made possible thanks to the support of the Hewlett Foundation for the group of civil society organizations that promote the Open Government Partnership in Mexico – Article 19; Cidac; Cultura Ecológica; Fundar Centro de Análisis e Investigación; Gesoc; Instituto Mexicano para la Competitividad; SocialTic and Transparencia Mexicana – that provided funds for the production of this book in order to further the study and analysis of our experiences on the subject at a global level, and to promote parliamentary openness in this country. The total or partial reproduction of this book is authorized as long as the information about the source and the author is cited. Transparencia Mexicana believes that free exchange of information is the best way for knowledge to flow and grow, which is why we encourage readers to share this product. This publication includes the opinions and ideas of various authors and experts on the subject who have generously contributed their knowledge and experiences. The texts are published in full, and each one of them reflects the richness of a plural and inclusive society, and do not necessarily share Transparencia Mexicana’s views. Our commitment is to keep a communication channel open, so that this book is open to receiving concepts or experiences in an online version. Every day there are new voices talking about this topic, and we would like to make them a part of our project. Your comments are welcome. Please write to us at Transparencia Mexicana at info@tm.org.mx

CONTENTS

OPEN PARLIAMENTS ACHIEVEMENTS & CHALLENGES

CONTENTS Prologue Open parliaments, effective democracies Eduardo Bohórquez, Editorial Coordinator

Challenges The Open Government Partnership and the Legislative Openness Working Group

Dan Swislow, Senior Partner, National Democratic Institute, USA John Wonderlich, Policy Director, Sunlight Foundation, USA

Open and transparent parliament, an approach to the inevitable

Pablo Secchi, Fundación Poder Ciudadano, Argentina

Open parliament and the challenges of evaluating legislative bodies

Fernando Dworak, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, Mexico

Citizen participation in legislative power: an argument to strengthen representation

Guillermo Ávila, Fundar Centro de Análisis e Investigación, Mexico 57 8

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OPEN PARLIAMENTS

CONTENTS

ACHIEVEMENTS & CHALLENGES

Experiences and Achievements Open parliament in Georgia’s OGP Action Plan

Giorgi Kldiashvili, Director of the Institute for Development of Freedom

of Information, Georgia

Parliament and public participation in Kenya

Muchiri Nyaggah, Executive Director at the Local Development Research Institute, Kenya 89

The work of the Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency

María Jaraquemada and Agustina De Luca, Coordinator at the Red Latinoamericana or la Transparencia Legislativa 97

A True Partership Involves two

Eduardo Bohórquez y Alejandra Rascon, Transparencia Mexicana, Mexico

The impact of legislative channels on open parliament: the case of the Mexican Congress’ Channel Leticia Salas Torres, Mexico 135

Towards an open parliament in Mexico: an evaluation experience

María Del Carmen Nava Polina, Visión Legislativa, Mexico 145

Remote online media: fundamental tools to guarantee access rights Diego Ernesto Díaz Iturbe, Impacto Legislativo, Mexico

165

The experience of Qué Hacen los Diputados Vicky Bolaños, Co-Founder of QHLD, Spain

185

About the authors: to maintain a dialogue

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203

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PROLOGUE

OPEN PARLIAMENTS ACHIEVEMENTS & CHALLENGES

OPEN PARLIAMENTS, EFFECTIVE DEMOCRACIES By Eduardo Bohórquez

Democracy has failed. It has been a deep and painful failure.

t was not for lack of trying. During the second half of the twentieth century, we fought for universal suffrage, against electoral fraud, to strengthen the division of powers, to bring down authoritarian regimes, and to end dictatorships. We the citizens have taken to the streets and protested against bad government. We have demanded peaceful political transitions in Latin America and Eastern Europe for years, and we have participated in movements all over the Arab world. We have voted, denounced, demanded, and negotiated. We write editorials, we talk on the radio, and we complain at the table after dinner. We have turned politics into an instrument for civil society, and we have criticized both violence and terrorism. Democracy failed despite civic engagement. It has not taken us by surprise. We knew that democracy was an imperfect political regime, because all regimes are. Democracy has failed because it only works for a few, because in practice, it contradicts its essence. Democracy works well for those who have the upper hand or the political influence that money can buy. It works for those who already have access, a voice, money, and power. It does not work for those who are far from the capital cities and fancy restaurants; for those who are still afraid of speaking out in isolated communities because dissent is synonymous with risk. Democracy does not work for migrants, for the silent crowds

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that only have time to work and make a living. Democracy does not only coexist with inequality; it is part of inequality. Democracy has failed because every day we are further and further from our government, even though cell phones and the internet bring us closer. The government hides from citizens behind speeches on national television, twenty-second “spots”, sound bites, or tweets. The government is still based on edicts and decrees. A distant, one-way government; a government reluctant to engage in dialogue. Thus, it should not be surprising that large crowds of people are needed to make the voice of citizens heard. It is so hard to make them heard that they must be amplified. Loudspeakers are a staple in every protest, much like successful hashtags on Twitter. While democracy has failed, it has been due largely to the fact that it has not been able to represent and give coherence to all these voices. We knew about the crisis of representation by political parties, but every day there is more evidence on the challenge of bringing the citizens and their parliaments and congresses closer. Formally, congresses strive to represent population groups, but in reality they are very disconnected from the citizens’ interests and needs; they work hard to legislate, but there are few successful recorded efforts to transform parliament into a structure that represents voters better.

“General distrust toward legislators keeps growing all over the world.”

Even though some congresses in consolidated democracies perform their legislative duties relatively well and oversee executive power, the gap between congress and voters grows wider. General distrust toward legislators keeps growing all over the world. People feel that congress works for other interests but not for theirs.

Parliaments are closed to the public and public scrutiny. Like in David Easton’s “black box” metaphor, we know there is something going on inside, but we do not know exactly what. Today, we have the necessary tools to start a period of parliamentary openness. In many countries there are legal frameworks that ensure that  13 

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PROLOGUE

ACHIEVEMENTS & CHALLENGES

the information produced by parliaments is public and accessible to all citizens. We also have the technology. The cost of sharing and processing information has gone down dramatically, and today, there are as many platforms and applications as there is creativity in our societies. This openness will be impossible to achieve if those in congress are not willing to revitalize democracy; if politicians do not adopt truly democracy’s participative and representative ideals. Parliamentary openness is much more than uploading information to the congress or parliament website. It is not just about “showing” what legislators are doing. Open parliament is a foundation on which to build a new relationship with society and rebuild failed democracies. “In order This book is about how to start opening congresses and parliaments throughout the world. It contains experiences, interpretations and failures. By collecting these stories, we have sought to show that apart from the unrest produced by democracy today, there are also those who are trying to escape from this labyrinth: legislators, citizens, organizations, countries.

to push parliamentary openness forward, we must be able to learn quickly from what others are doing right in other parts of the world.”

In order to push parliamentary openness forward, we must be able to learn quickly from what others are doing right in other parts of the world. In this book there are examples and stories from people who have managed to persuade their parliaments to start becoming more open, and from people who are still fighting to accomplish this. There are analyses about people who have achieved very concrete goals, and people who are still coming up with ambitious plans. The content shows the work of people who dream and encourage us to dream, but who are also set on making their ideas become feasible parliamentary practices. There is common denominator. We all agree that democracy must be reinvented, and that the legislative branch, due to its nature and essence, is an ideal place to start. Without open parliaments, not only will democracy have failed, but we will also have given up on trying to change it.  14 

CHALLENGES

OPEN PARLIAMENTS ACHIEVEMENTS & CHALLENGES

THE OPEN GOVERNMENT PARTNERSHIP AND THE LEGISLATIVE OPENNESS WORKING GROUP By Dan Swislow, SENIOR PARTNERSHIPS OFFICER, NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTE, USA & John Wonderlich, POLICY DIRECTOR, SUNLIGHT FOUNDATION, USA

A changing public and the need for parliamentary innovation Trust in political institutions is in global decline. Only 17 percent of the global public feel that their governments listen to them.

ore than any other branch of government, parliaments have borne the brunt of this decline. Cristina Leston-Bandeira, professor of parliament at the University of Hull, has gone so far as to say that “parliaments have come to portray the face and cause of political disengagement.” The Inter-Parliamentary Union’s Global Parliamentary Report established that not only has trust in parliaments been in steady decline across all world regions for more than a decade, but that parliaments rank near last in citizen confidence among all public institutions. Decreasing trust in parliaments, and in government more broadly, can be traced in part to fundamental shifts in citizen expectations in the digital age. Technology is empowering individuals in ways never before possible. New platforms allow citizens to instantaneously customize the information they receive and the networks with which they share it—and increasingly, citizens are demanding the same level of delivery, accountability and opportunities for engagement from their governments and parliaments.

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These characteristics are at the essence of open government and open parliament. While this new tech-driven interconnectedness can sometimes cause unintended consequences, creating new incentives that are both constructive and destructive, it’s part of our new political landscape. Parliaments are struggling to keep up with the new demands and expectations of the citizens they represent. They are also struggling to ensure that greater openness is not instituted for openness’ sake, but to drive improvements in government performance and citizen engagement. Their success in these endeavors is vital.

“The ability of citizens to engage the representatives they elect and to hold them accountable is critical to the health of a political system.”

Parliaments are the representative branch of democratic governments, meant to provide citizens with a direct link to the policymaking process and a method of accountability and oversight of other branches. The ability of citizens to engage the representatives they elect and to hold them accountable is critical to the health of a political system. Citizens are no longer content to wait to channel their expectations into the next election. In our more inter-connected world, citizens increasingly expect their demands to garner a response much more quickly. These increased expectations add new volatility to legislative systems, creating new opportunities for public pressure and altering the balance between countries’ politics and their legislative agendas.

An open parliament can be a conduit of government information, a microphone for citizens’ needs, and a guarantor of citizens’ rights. At their strongest, open parliaments provide substantive information about debates and policymaking that informs elections, effectively oversee executive power, and form a foundation for good public policy. A closed parliament can inhibit the ability of citizens to access sufficient information to hold public officials to account. The strength of parliaments is crucial, and their openness renders governance and democratic reform in all sectors more permeable to citizen interests. Without ongoing, democratic representation in lawmaking and oversight, the link between public will and the legal system can be eroded. Legislatures, rep 17 

THE OPEN GOVERNMENT PARTNERSHIP AND THE LEGISLATIVE OPENNESS WORKING GROUP OPEN PARLIAMENTS ACHIEVEMENTS & CHALLENGES

resenting public will, through elections, provide the legitimacy necessary for democratic reforms that meet public approval, and uphold the rule of law. Democratic legitimacy is the most acute concern for the long-term effectiveness of reform initiatives of all kinds, from transitions of power between regimes, to sector-specific initiatives on trade, natural resources, or human rights. And legislatures are the only institutions capable of providing the ultimate validation—democratically representative legal reform. Laws form the basis for rules, regulations, and executive power; they persist between elections; and they are the ultimate representation of a society’s power to structure itself.

“An open parliament can be a conduit of government information, a microphone for citizens’ needs, and a guarantor of citizens’ rights. ”

In the face of increasing demand for effective and open governance, tradition-bound parliaments have been slow to utilize technology and new ideas to create opportunities for greater citizen engagement and representation—and to rise to the expectations of 21st century citizens. This has had fundamental effects on confidence in legislatures and overall democratic legitimacy.

Parliaments are, however, increasingly adapting to the open, digital age. Increasingly, many parliamentary actors have begun to realize the importance of overcoming these challenges and have begun adopting new tools to engage citizens. Leston-Bandeira has observed: “Not only have MPs never worked so hard, but also transparency has never been so high and there has never been so much information or access to parliament.” However, it is not the absolute level of accessible information which is important—indeed some argue it may be the cause of declining confidence—it’s ultimately the quality of representation and the strength of the democratic process that matter. The need for parliaments to respond to shifting public expectations is clear, as are some opportunities for significant improvements. The 2012 World e-Parliament Report noted however, that parliaments have been only “slowly advancing.” The report, which surveyed 156 national parliamentary bodies in 126 countries found that “technological improvements that relate specifically to citizens—more  18 

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interaction with citizens and more information provided to citizens— were noted by only one fourth or fewer of all parliaments.”

Civil Society steps in As parliaments have moved slowly to improve the connection between citizens and government, civil society organizations (CSOs) have become increasingly active. In recent years, the role of civil society in monitoring and disseminating the work of parliaments has increased dramatically throughout the world. Parliamentary monitoring organizations (PMOs), CSOs that monitor and assess the function“Informatics are ing and activity of parliaments, operate at the nexus of civil society, the media, parliament and citizens. These organizaused by some tions are increasingly recognized as playing an important organizations role in helping citizens to understand and participate in the legislative process, improve public access to parliamentary to create more information and strengthen parliamentary accountability. engaging A 2011 National Democratic Institute-World Bank Institute visualizations of study identified an increasingly active, technology-savvy parliamentary group of more than 190 PMOs engaged in monitoring parliamentary performance and advocating for greater parliawork, such as mentary and government transparency in nearly 100 couninfographics tries. The number of active PMOs has continued to grow showing since the time that document was published.

changes to a legislative text over time. ”

In recent years, PMOs have increasingly sought to develop and implement innovative technologies that provide new opportunities for citizens to explore parliamentary information, from data on attendance, to floor speeches, votes or bills. Some PMOs aggregate and analyze parliamentary information, presenting it in ways that are more easily digestible by the broader public. Others create scorecards and indices that use information about MPs (Members of Parliament) and their parties to evaluate their levels of activity in parliament and, in some cases, in their constituencies. Many organizations track and explain legislation in order to educate citizens and MPs about issues coming before parliament; whereas, others prioritize  19 

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parliamentary accountability by tracking MP campaign pledges and asset declarations, party voting patterns or even parliamentary adherence to rules of procedure. One of the earliest and most influential parliamentary monitoring websites is mySociety’s TheyWorkForYou.com. Launched in 2004, the website has evolved to provide visitors with easy access to a variety of information about the work of members of the UK Parliament, Northern Ireland Assembly, Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, receiving 200,000 to 300,000 visitors each month. Other PMO websites enjoy similar success. During the first half of 2012, it is estimated that 5-10 million individuals accessed information from GovTrack.us, a PMO that monitors the U.S. Congress, and its partners. In Colombia, the organization Congreso Visible saw their website visited by more than 120,000 people per day in the weeks before the March 2014 elections. PMOs have also become critical sources of information for journalists. To encourage effective and responsible use of information accessed and created by PRS Legislative Research in India, the organization has conducted trainings for hundreds of members of the media. Informatics are used by some organizations to create more engaging visualizations of parliamentary work, such as infographics showing changes to a legislative text over time. In the Czech Republic, Kohovolit.eu has developed a variety of data visualizations that help make sense of complex vote data and understand trends that would be otherwise difficult to fathom. In addition to forging connections between citizens and the work of legislatures through data, many CSOs are developing technologies that enable citizens to directly engage their MPs or participate in the legislative process. Evidence suggests that these approaches are often successful in facilitating greater citizen engagement and building more constructive relationships between parliaments and citizens. Through its Marsad.tn website, Al Bawsala in Tunisia helps citizens to ask questions of their MPs through an online platform that posts the conversations publicly. SimSim-Participation Citoyenne in Morocco offers a similar platform at Nouabook.ma, and couples this website with in-person civic education  20 

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trainings around the country and live-streamed Q&A sessions with MPs. In Germany, a website that facilitates discussion between citizens and parliamentarians receives 350,000 unique visits per month, while 80% of the more than 150,000 questions that have been asked to parliamentarians through the platform have been answered. According to an interview with one parliamentarian, the website, Abgeordnetenwatch.de, provides him with “...one of the only chances to get to know the people in my constituency.” There is increasing evidence that civil society can encourage accountability of parliaments to the electorate, facilitate citizen participation in parliamentary processes and improve citizen access to information about parliaments and their work. In India, an assessment of a campaign to create report cards of parliamentarians found that the project had helped to decrease cash-based “There is vote buying and to increase voter turnout, among othincreasing er positive results. A study of a parliamentary scorecard evidence that campaign in Uganda found that voters were sensitive to civil society the information provided in the scorecards and that the scorecards attracted widespread media attention and were can encourage accountability of “hotly debated” by MPs. An Afrobarometer poll conducted close to the 2011 elections indicated greater citizen parliaments to awareness of the scorecards than recognized by the study. the electorate.” Publishing data on parliamentary attendance in the Czech Republic also had an impact on MP behavior. That PMOs can have significant behavioral impact is cause for both celebration and concern. It’s characteristic of a responsive institution to show concern for rankings and measurements, but that also suggests that poorly designed metrics could have a counterproductive impact, causing grandstanding, attending meetings to avoid a negative rating when time may be better spent elsewhere, or other unintended consequences. The potential for these interventions, which are now in use in every region in the world, to help reach new audiences and deepen our understanding of the inner-workings of our representative institutions are being increas 21 

THE OPEN GOVERNMENT PARTNERSHIP AND THE LEGISLATIVE OPENNESS WORKING GROUP OPEN PARLIAMENTS ACHIEVEMENTS & CHALLENGES

ingly realized. In recent years, PMOs and other civil society groups working on the transparency and accountability of parliament have also begun to have impact at the global level, driving a dialogue on parliamentary openness.

A global movement to open parliaments Over the last 10 years, legislative transparency and reform has undergone a significant transformation, developing promising new regional and global networks working together. While legislative reform remains a fundamentally national-level phenomenon, a variety of new initiatives has developed to connect like-minded reformers, share best practices, and strengthen an emerging consensus.

“Legislative transparency and reform has undergone a significant transformation, developing promising new regional and global networks working together.”

In April 2012, PMOs from around the world joined forces to create the OpeningParliament.org network, at a conference hosted by the National Democratic Institute (NDI), in partnership with the Sunlight Foundation and the Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency. The groups drafted the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness, which outlines the information parliaments should make available and how, openness standards for parliamentary data, and principles to which parliaments should aspire to create a culture of openness throughout society. The declaration has since been endorsed by nearly 180 organizations from 80 countries, and has been translated by volunteers into 25 languages.

The development of this community—and the shared advocacy of members of the community around the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness—have had a significant impact in many countries around the world. In Argentina, a coalition of PMOs used the declaration to help sign a memorandum of understanding with the president of the Chamber of Deputies resulting in the release of some desired information and commencement of an ongoing working group. In the Czech Republic, a coalition led by  22 

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a PMO lobbied and sent the declaration to parliament, where information-tech staff responded by releasing all voting records and bill proposals since 2010 in an open format. In these countries, as well as in Liberia, Germany, France, Poland, Croatia, and regionally in Sub-Saharan Africa, civil society coalitions have formed to advocate for the declaration, demonstrating potential for future openness reform. In some countries, including Georgia, Mexico, Portugal and others, organizations have even been successful in gaining official parliamentary endorsement for the declaration. Hearing the voices of citizens and civil society groups around the world, many parliaments have begun focusing energy on the issue of parliamentary openness. At the global level, organizations like the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, and the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Meeting of Presidents of Legislatures have supported the principles “Hearing the contained in the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. voices of At the same time, parliamentarians in Latin America came citizens and together in 2012 to support the Santiago Declaration, similarly calling for greater efforts towards transparency and civil society citizen engagement. And on the occasion of the VII Summit groups around of the Americas, parliamentarians from across the region the world, many joined together, led by ParlAmericas, to declare the imporparliaments tance of the issue.

have begun focusing energy on the issue of parliamentary openness. ”

At the domestic level, many legislatures have begun sometimes experimental projects to attempt to better release information about their work and represent citizens. In Brazil, building off of the great work of its e-Democracia project to collect citizen input on legislation, the Chamber of Deputies in 2014 launched a permanent hacker space. The HackerLab invites developers and civil society activists into the legislature work directly with legislative staff and members, and has already created dozens of new technology solutions to the challenges facing the legislature. In Ghana, Parliament’s Government Assurances Committee joined with the group PenPlusBytes to build a platform to  23 

THE OPEN GOVERNMENT PARTNERSHIP AND THE LEGISLATIVE OPENNESS WORKING GROUP OPEN PARLIAMENTS ACHIEVEMENTS & CHALLENGES

allow citizens to interact with the committee using the web, WhatsApp or SMS. Not all of the experiments like these will ultimately be successful, but the willingness of parliaments to undertake these types of projects illustrates an increasing recognition of the unique challenges faced by parliaments in the digital age. The most successful of these initiatives combine perspectives from the various parliamentary stakeholders. Reform initiatives excel when they include political leadership, news media, CSOs (especially PMOs), legislative staff, technologists, and others. Legislative institutions are rather unique in this regard, since they, by their nature, tend to value tradition and precedent. In addition, by design, reform often requires broad consensus that has support from a range of constituencies. For these reasons, broad, open processes that include different communities can best create novel discussions, political space, and creative approaches to modernizing and reforming legislative processes and information.

“Reform initiatives excel when they include political leadership, news media, CSOs (especially PMOs), legislative staff, technologists, and others.”

At the global level, the drive for collaborative solutions has been strengthened by the work of the Legislative Openness Working Group (LOWG) of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), led by the Congress of Chile and the National Democratic Institute. OGP was founded in 2011 as an executive branch-led multilateral partnership of eight countries, agreeing to work directly with civil society to draft and implement open government action plans. It has since grown to 65 countries and has seen governments work with CSOs to make thousands of commitments toward more transparent and accountable governments. In 2013, for the first time, OGP invited parliamentary participation through the LOWG, and has in two years offered the opportunity for collaboration between parliamentarians and civil society in more than 40 countries in fulfilling its goal of providing technical assistance and peer exchange opportunities related to OGP commitments. In September 2014, members of the LOWG and the parliamentary openness community held the first annual Global Legislative Openness Week, which saw events held by civil society groups and par 24 

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liaments in more than 30 countries, from the UK to Jordan to Myanmar and Burkina Faso, over a ten-day period. These global efforts at networking have intersected with strengthened efforts at the domestic level as well. In Paraguay, after more than a decade without an Access to Information Law, the legislature successfully passed a law drafted by key civil society groups and a caucus of reform-minded senators in 2014. In the United Kingdom, the Speaker of the House of Commons created a Commission on Digital Democracy, bringing together civil society and academic experts with parliamentarians to develop recommendations addressing “There is a the challenges brought by the digital age. In Mexico, Consignificant gress joined with a coalition of civil society organizations to movement launch the Open Parliament Alliance in 2014, which offered toward a global a viable mechanism for dialogue in advance of the passage of significant transparency reforms. In 2015, the Parliament parliamentary of Georgia invited civil society partners to develop an Open network Parliament Working Group, which is working together to that bridges draft a parliamentary action plan. Both dialogues in Mexico legislators, CSOs, and Georgia were based off of endorsement of civil society’s Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. philanthropy,

and other relevant actors.”

As these legislatures take on new reform initiatives, and as the work becomes more international, there is a significant movement toward a global parliamentary network that bridges legislators, CSOs, philanthropy, and other relevant actors. This new network, building off of the success of regional work and initiatives like the LOWG, will play an essential role in coordinating legislative reform work and elevating parliamentary openness to strengthen other initiatives and issue areas. The challenges that parliaments face are daunting. However, citizens and civil society around the world are committed to working constructively with parliamentarians to develop solutions. This collaboration, and efforts to institutionalize it, offer an important opportunity to help rebuild citizen confidence in strong representative institutions in the 21st century.  25 

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OPEN PARLIAMENTS ACHIEVEMENTS & CHALLENGES

OPEN AND TRANSPARENT PARLIAMENT, AN APPROACH TO THE INEVITABLE By Pablo Secchi (@PabloSecchi) EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF FUNDACIÓN PODER CIUDADANO [CITIZEN POWER FOUNDATION], ARGENTINA

Where is the contract that we, the citizens, signed with the representatives in which we the former gave the latter absolute power over what goes on in the State?

t some point in history the citizens made a pact —for necessity, for safety, for order— in which between themselves they would elect others to represent them and make decisions that would involve everyone. At some point in history this became distorted and that space for decision-making became dark, along with everything else taking place in the State. For a long time, we the citizens accepted these conditions, we didn’t ask ourselves about what would happen in this black box of decisions, nor did we demand too many explanations. Only tragic incidents called us to ask for the opening of specific information. Today the situation has changed. Thanks to the work of thousands of organizations and citizens around the world, we are becoming accustomed to ask for more and better information, we call for State proactivity regarding published information, we call for laws that protect us from secrecy, we expose those that want to continue having the privilege of information and we especially call for openness and greater citizen participation in public matters.

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These new tendencies of active citizenry and of the demand for major opening began naturally through petition to the executive powers. Thus, the majority of countries began to draw up laws or other types of regulations that regulate access to public information, produce spaces for citizen participation, and unlock the functioning of state secrecy. Note that it was written “the majority of countries”, others still have the challenge of beginning the discussion or, in the best of cases, delving into the topic.

“Parliaments are seen poorly by the citizens in the majority of the indexes that are developed in relation to the quality or probity of institutions”

Some countries, within the regulation of the access to public information, have included the three powers of the State, or at least the executive and legislative. However, many challenges still exist around the opening of parliaments (and of the judicial power). We must ask ourselves in this article what parliaments (congresses) should do so that their administrative and parliamentary functioning is open in all of its structure and that it works especially focusing on transparency and citizen participation.

Parliaments are seen poorly by the citizens in the majority of the indexes that are developed in relation to the quality or probity of institutions (see Latinobarómetro or International Transparency Corruption Barometer). Many times this view of the citizens is biased because of the lack of awareness of the functioning of parliament, but beyond whether or not they are complex institutions, parliaments are opaque institutions, hardly accessible to the citizens, and reactionaries to any type of citizen control and opening. How can we open parliaments? This question will surely change depending on the country that we are situated in, the level of its democracy, and the openness of the political class. In some countries it was an arduous task to start this openness, but it was achieved mainly through the pressure of civil society. The closure was such (and in some places is) that the challenge began in being able to enter parliaments and assembly meetings, where accessing  29 

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them was not prohibited (or it was) but mainly it had occurred to no one to attend a meeting. In those moments we asked ourselves: What do the parliaments do? Where do they make decisions? Where and how do they discuss projects? “Let’s go see!” said some civil society organizations and they achieved it, with effort, but they achieved it. There were many qualms, but it began to be understood that citizens have the right to know what goes on within the congresses. It was then achieved, in some countries, to enter into the committee meetings, where not even television cameras entered There were the most pivotal debates. Once more, the qualms emerged many qualms, again. In these cases, the alliances with the smallest political but it began to parties were of key importance. The big challenge then was to institutionalize those citizen rights— for the regulations of congresses or directly, for specific regulations to allow access to the congresses, to be able to know the bills that the members of congress present, to know the budget, to contact the authorities.

be understood that citizens have the right to know what goes on within the congresses.

However, added to these first generation advances, which are not yet established in every country, are new challenges of openness. We the citizens no longer want to only be present in meetings and obtain general information about the legislative processes, today we want more and better information about everything taking place in parliamentary life. How much does a legislator charge? How many advisors do they have? Who are they and how are they chosen? How does our congress invest money? How and who decides on the purchased goods for the everyday legislative tasks? Today we demand accountability and, today thanks to technological advances, it is easier to both be accountable and to encourage citizenry to demand such accountability. Some years back, a congress website was considered innovative when having information about those who were legislators and, with much  30 

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luck, some information about the authorities, projects, and meeting dates. Today this information is considered limited and the citizenry demands parliaments to be much more proactive in the publication of information and the generation of channels for participation.

What do we want to see in parliaments today? The “Red Latinoamericana por la Transparencia Legislativa” [Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency] carries out work regarding transparency indicators in the parliaments of congresses in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Colombia (and it is including others in the next report). It basically analyzes four topics that can help us see what we are talking about when we talk about open congresses. The first point has to do with regulations. Essentially, regulations and laws that regulate institutional practices. The framework in which the citizen can rise to demand transparency and openness. Why start with regulations? Fundamentally to know where we are standing when speaking about open parliaments. If there are no regulations, there are no positive practices, however, it is the first step given that even when there are regulations the practice can often be distant from theory. Secondly, work is done on legislative work regarding transparency and the publicizing of legislative acts. What do legislators do, what happens in the committees, how much information do we have on the roles of our representatives. We know the path of a project from its initiation to approval or rejection. How many times does a committee gather? Legislative work is at the heart of the legislative power, today, knowing this process allows us to evaluate the procedures, control our representatives and to propose reforms. The citizen stops being passive in the face of a legislator that asked for her or his vote in an electoral campaign. Knowing their work allows us to pressure them into representing us well, and they should not feel threatened by that pressure. Thirdly, something essential arises when talking about corruption control and especially if parliament openness is to be understood. Various  31 

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congresses show the presented projects and it is increasingly known what happens in committee meetings, but how many congresses open up about their administrative plan and budget? Here we begin to place the magnifying glass over something really expensive, especially for the interests of political parties. We keep on asking questions (in case the reader hasn’t noticed, we like to ask questions): Do all legislators have the same economic resources? If I am the chief of a block, do I earn more than legislators? How many economic resources do legislators have besides their monthly allowance? Do they have airline tickets at their disposal? What happens if they don’t use them? Dear Mr. President of the National Congress of (enter country name), with my utmost consideration, it is through this letter that I request that you inform me of the amount of trips, and the cost of each, which the congressman (complete) has taken due to official activities as a congressman of the nation. I also request the amount of travel allowance obtained by the legislator and the final accountability of the activities undertaken. With nothing further, sincere regards.

“However, what we ask from parliaments today is PROACTIVITY.”

They will possibly reply to this request for information, possibly. However, what we ask from parliaments today is PROACTIVITY. We want parliaments that are open, committed, and transparent. The parliaments’ administrative management often raises questions of whether it is actually a box to “do politics”. Where politics are resolved through contracts with advisors who are rarely around to lend any service or work, and even fewer are hired through public and transparent competition. Often, the political parties “hacen caja” or stockpile money, with the available funds of the legislators, in some cases these can have institutionalized bonuses from trips not taken but charged (exchanged), extra charges on the commissions that are paid, blocks’ presidencies (all the way to personal blocks) that receive funds and extra employees, “donations” from advisors that are obliged to do so. Indeed, we are describing the worst practices, which do not take place in all congresses, and surely it is not the rule of thumb for legislators. However, we have to be aware and foremost, have information regarding this.  32 

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Lastly, the “Red Latinoamericana por la Transparencia Legislativa” [Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency] measures the congresses by citizen participation. That is to say, by the space given by the congresses to the citizens at the time of requesting information, discussing projects, entertaining public audiences, and promoting citizen participation through electronic means. Whoever wishes to see the results of this specific measurement for each one of the countries, login to www.tranparencialegislativa.org Open Parliament:

“The Declaration on Parliamentary Openness is a call to the parliaments or congresses to generate a greater commitment to transparency.”

• An open parliament allows everything happening within it to be observed and controlled by the citizens. • An open parliament will generate the necessary channels to include citizens and their organizations in the decisions that they make; when possible and reasonable. • An open parliament will be an innovator in the way of presenting information and will make the most possible effort to publish the most the information possible of parliamentary and administrative matters.

Close to 80 organizations from over 50 countries produced a document called “Declaración sobre la Transparencia Parlamentaria” [Declaration on Parliamentary Openness], which is a call to the parliaments or congresses, national and subnational, to generate a greater commitment to transparency and citizen participation. Some concepts are written in an accessible way so that we end up understanding what we are talking about when we talk of open parliament. Promote a culture of transparency: the document that is based on a sim-

ple but compelling premise: “the parliamentary information belongs to the public”. It also demands that information be reused and republished only under very specific legal restrictions. As a complement to the gen 33 

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eration of a culture of parliamentary transparency, the necessity arises for parliaments to adopt indispensable measures to guarantee citizen participation and that interested organizations and citizens are not limited in their role as overseers of parliamentary activity. Make parliamentary information transparent: the declara-

tion insists on the necessity for the parliaments to proactively publish parliamentary information, without the need for someone to request it. Information about roles and functions of parliament, information generated about the legislative process, texts, legislators’ votes, meeting agendas, meeting records, etc. The importance for the parliament to publish information about administration and management, about parliament staff and especially its budget is highlighted. Facilitate access to information: parliament should guaran-

tee that the access to information is assured to all citizens indiscriminately through multiple channels and in a free, timely, and truthful manner.

“Essentially, parliaments have a function beyond the classic ones, Legislate, Represent, and Control: and that is to inform.”

Allow electronic access and analysis of parliamentary information: par-

liamentary information must be published online in open formats for all citizens to use and reuse the information with new technological tools. In summary, what is this declaration telling us? Essentially that parliaments have a function beyond the classic ones, Legislate, Represent, and Control: and that is to inform. To that end, we need to change the “chip” of the institution. Parliaments are closed institutions where the opaqueness of politics moves like a fish in water. This opaqueness has allies, which need to be addressed or combatted. These are some of them: • Custom. “It has always been this way”. It is an enormous challenge to change institutions that are so ancient and have practices that, more than being opaque and corrupt, are institutionalized.  34 

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• Obsolete procedures. An exhaustive incorporation of informational procedures is necessary as well as to work converting case files to electronic forms. José Élice tells us: “From the use of computer equipment for simple word processing, calculations, and presentations, to the creation and implementation of information systems applied to legislative management and parliamentary administration —legislative information systems, electronic voting platforms, and administrative-integrated systems— as well as the use of available resources online, be it to obtain and share information or integrate processes, experiences, and data on collaborative sites.” • The geological layers of parliaments. Of utmost importance is an administrative reengineering and a reform of the organic structure of parliaments in order to achieve a model that is more dynamic and less bureaucratic adapting to the demand of openness. A break must take place with these layers that are stuck in an ancient structure and oiled for the convenience of a few. • Conservative parliamentary legislators and authorities. The legislators and authorities must change their minds and adapt to these times. Society should not adapt to the circumstantial administrations and officials, rather these must adapt to the new times. The instability, that by its own political logic is present in our parliaments, should be no excuse for the citizens to have to adapt to a new official. The importance of institutionalizing open parliament and its practices arises from this. To access determined information because today we have a good relationship with the Senate Chamber President, is the failure of the institutionalization of transparency policies. • The politicizing of parliament administrations. Today it is common to observe that reaching the administration of parliament is to arrive at a budget fund available for the party whose turn it is to be in charge. From there they distribute economic and political benefits in a discretional way. Therefore, some have more and better resources than others in terms of economic funds, better offices, access to trips, trainings, etc. The battle against these practices again passes through their institutionalization with clear regulations that do not leave space for the discretion of officials in charge.  35 

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• Closed parliament and the “who chose you?” For those of us working in civil society it is common to hear from the legislative dinosaurs (please allow me to use the term) the accusation that we do not represent anyone, that no one elected us, and that they are the voted representatives of the people. No one argues about it. But parliament must be open for debate with society and the organizations that form part of it. Citizens or organizations don’t want to assume the role of representatives, they want to raise their voice in order to have more open and transparent parliaments and that the decisions taken by legislators take place within an observable framework without obstacles for the citizenry.

Final Reflection The path that the institutions of democracy are beginning to take is inevitable and irreversible, pressured mostly by organized civil society.

“Everything open invites us to go in, to watch, to investigate, to control. ”

Parliaments will be open, and we mean it in every sense of the word. This kind of nobility that had economic, social privileges, and especially those of access to information, will transition towards a political class that is trained, transparent, and effective in its role of representing. This tendency is irreversible. There is a long way to go, it is clear. But today society demands it with strong tools and arguments. The challenges will go through the regulatory process, but especially through practice. Parliaments are geological structures that must be shaken up. And we, the citizens, have an essential role to play in that process so that it ends with personal-oriented practices or some that benefit certain sectors to the detriment of others. Let us work with the concept of “open”: there lies the key. Nothing closed will allow us to know what happens inside. Everything open invites us to go in, to watch, to investigate, to control. Likewise, if it is open it obligates to be transparent, to order, and it prevents covering up.  36 

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Bibliography • El Congreso Bajo la Lupa, Poder Ciudadano, 2004, 2005, 2006. [Congress under the Magnifying Glass]

• El Congreso y la Información, Poder Ciudadano. [Congress and Information, Citizen Power]

• Índice de Transparencia Legislativa, Red Latinoamericana por la Transparencia Legislativa. [Index of Legislative Transparency, Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency]

• La modernización parlamentaria en América Latina, José Élice. [Parliamentary Modernization in Latin America]

• Latinobarómetro, www.latinobarometro.org [Latino Barometer]

• Barómetro de la Corrupción, Transparencia Internacional, www.transparency.org [Corruption Barometer, Transparency International]

• Declaración sobre la Transparencia Parlamentaria, www.openingparliament.org [Declaration on Parliamentary Openness]

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CHALLENGES

OPEN PARLIAMENTS ACHIEVEMENTS & CHALLENGES

OPEN PARLIAMENT AND THE CHALLENGES OF EVALUATING LEGISLATIVE BODIES By Fernando Dworak (@FernandoDworak) LECTURER AT INSTITUTO TECNOLÓGICO AUTÓNOMO DE MÉXICO [MEXICAN AUTONOMOUS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY] - ITAM

Though imperfect, democracy is the regime that has been the most successful in guaranteeing accountability, the peaceful transition between governments, and individual freedoms. However, for these controls to work, there needs to be constant civic engagement, which should not have just one opinion or interest regarding a public issue.

ith this in mind, it would be best if the individual were as informed as possible when participating, given that voting is an act where a leader or legislator is either rewarded or punished. That citizens are completely informed about all issues is a myth, although one would hope that they would at least be interested in those that concern them the most. It is also necessary for there to be the greatest amount of information possible regarding a public issue for every individual to form his or her own opinion. In this way, democracy involves a permanent exercise of evaluation and comparison of postures, with elections being the moment when political rewards and punishments are assigned. Faced with this environment, institutions must provide mechanisms and procedures that make accountability possible regardless of who is in power or what views he or she holds.  40 

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Thus, evaluating our leaders and legislators will always be a political act, in which information sources will almost always have some kind of bias toward a party, ideology or interest group that promotes it. If there cannot be just one vision to measure the performance of an administration, and unless we ignore plurality and adopt a dynamic that would take us to authoritarian visions, we should expect at least that every group be competitive in trying to convince voters. This does not mean that evaluation exercises for the legislative bodies should be limited or eliminated, or, much less, that those who carry them out should be discredited. On the contrary, the more evaluations are carried out, the more elements the individual will have at his or her disposal to form a judgment. Democracy requires the free exchange of ideas and opinions for it to work. Since the mid-nineties, as a result of a plural and engaged society, there have been various monitoring and evaluation exercises both for the Congress of the Union and the local congresses. The objective of this chapter is to look at the possibilities and limitations of these evaluation exercises in Mexico for legislative bodies, as well as the responsibilities of parliamentary institutions to establish openness policies and feedback mechanisms.

Evaluations as a fundamental element in a democracy Evaluations are a political act for a pressure group, coalition of interests, or a party to judge the performance of a government body. It is expected that this will generate costs or benefits for the evaluated entity facing the next elections, as individuals can access this information in order to form a judgment. Therefore, evaluations are an instrument for accountability. It will be helpful to provide some of the definitions on which this analysis will be based. ď&#x161;š 41 ď&#x161;¸

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Accountability: the concept is complex not only from a theoretical point

of view, but also in terms of instrumentation. A textual definition would be to explain actions or decisions to someone (López Ayllón y Merino, 2010:1). In the context of a democracy—where it becomes an essential element—political institutions are supposed to be capable of making leaders account for their actions and decisions. This allows us, within the realm of possibility, to punish the abuse of power, aiming to reconcile collective interest with the particular interest of leaders (Crespo, 2001:7). “Evaluations Thus, what accountability means for leaders is both political (removal and substitution) and legal (criminal punishment) responsibility. For some authors, there must be three conditions: all leaders at all levels must be subject to accountability; it should rise from the bottom to the top; and it should be carried out peacefully (Crespo, 2001: 8-10). The same way that different government bodies have different attributes and characteristics, one would expect that the mechanisms to make them accountable would be different.

are a political act for a pressure group, coalition of interests, or a party to judge the performance of a government body.”

Evaluation: the possibility of accountability requires citizens

to be capable of discerning the character of public acts and their performance. In a democratic context, these words imply learning, analyzing, comparing, and thinking of changes to the main objectives that must lead all institutions to the fulfillment of their goals. (Alarcón Olguín, 2011: 175). Under these premises, an evaluation culture must respond adequately to the problems of omission, negligence, or lack of cooperation that usually characterize implementation problems and the design of actions developed by institutions performing their duties (Alarcón Olguín, 2011:175). The next chapter will take into account those evaluation exercises performed by external agents to measure the performance of the legislative bodies.  42 

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Possibilities and limitations of evaluations of legislative bodies The biggest problem when evaluating a legislative body is defining efficiency parameters valid for both the body as a whole and its parts, including its members. Even defining a group of criteria could be used by those who establish it to divide people into factions, at the cost of those who do not fit into their categories.

“The biggest problem when evaluating a legislative body is defining efficiency parameters valid for both the body as a whole and its parts, including its members.”

If evaluations are political acts done by one or more groups from society who want to generate political costs for their leaders and legislators, then an evaluation mechanism separate from the vote cannot be established. Going down that road would mean giving the power of agenda to the group of people defining those criteria, and it would be a first step toward an authoritarian or totalitarian regime. Democracy leaves decision-making in the hands of the citizens, subject to trial and error. Every public decision has a positive or a negative impact on various groups. This means that, unless we are talking about providing a public service with rules guaranteeing a better delivery or transparency regarding adjudications, all acts are subject to scrutiny and political struggle. Evaluations become even more complicated in the case of legislative bodies. There are more problems in addition to the ones mentioned above:

Plural and political character: in contrast to the executive branch, where

one person is responsible for an action, legislative bodies make decisions collectively. Every parliamentary group should have a distinct and often opposing view on every subject. Under this premise, it is not possible to make an institution accountable for the results or the quality of the results, since the decisions made were informed by political reasons, not necessarily technical ones. Also, this  43 

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makes law evaluations biased according to the views of those who end up benefitting from them or being affected by them. Negotiation-oriented processes: not results-oriented processes: another

factor that makes it impossible to establish unique evaluation parameters or terminal efficiency criteria is the work of legislative bodies itself, taking into account its internal organization and decision-making process. In a democracy, checks and balances mean veto points, not speed. Thus, internal bodies establish hierarchies both within parliamentary groups and in their external relationships, allowing only those initiatives on which there is a political agreement to prosper. We are talking fundamentally about parliamentary groups, the government, and committees. Modern legislative bodies cannot function without organizations that give some kind of coherence to the institutions’ work. In this way, parliamentary groups are groups of legislators joined by their affiliation to a political party, so they follow, more or less predictably, the line established by a coordinator. They define the stands that each side will adopt on public agenda issues, promoting them, pushing for their reform, or trying to stop them. A government body is the authority whose members usually represent each group or parliamentary representation. Its main objective is to coordinate political tasks, to foster agreements and to bring assembly members together. This body is the main filter for what is or is not discussed in the legislative plenary and when it is discussed. Committees are where specialized work takes place. They are plural and their aim is to learn about an issue that will be widely discussed during a period of time. There are initiatives that cannot move forward due to the number of commissions they are sent to or even because of their respective president’s decision. Finally, parliamentary procedure is the substantive work performed by the chambers, since it is through them that, based on the plurality of interests, a general interest is generated to express the views of the  44 

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legislative body, a consequence of the carrying out of the democratic principle. They help rationalize decision making (Mora-Donatto, 2001: 83). The process does not have to be agile or speedy—actually, it would not be very good if it were. In the words of Juan Molinar and Jeffrey Weldon (2009: 5), in any democratic country, the process is always complex and on occasion tortuous, for, by its very nature, the system of elaborating, discussing, approving and enacting laws cannot be endlessly simplified without leading to a dictatorship. Said tortuousness, the authors add, is due to the fact that, more than striving for efficiency and speed in the making of legislative decisions, constitutional systems almost always aim to protect the systematic discussion of all aspects and possible consequences of a law, and to provide access to the debate to all political actors legitimately interested in the norm to be discussed (Molinar and Weldon, 2009: 5). The elements discussed above are only a preview of those factors that affect the results of a legislative body. We would still need to look at those institutional design aspects for each of these elements that could help improve or could stand in the way of the assemblies’ performance. Role differentiation: measuring the performance of a legislative body

becomes more difficult when we acknowledge the fact there is no such thing as a “standard” legislator to whom unique evaluation parameters may be applied. In fact, legislators will resort to any strategy that might increase their chances of continuing with their political career; for example, communication with voters or specialization in committees. In other words, legislators are rational actors who choose a way to behave according to their goals and the restrictions imposed by institutional arrangements. In this way, their routines are behaviors guided by their preferences and ambitions (Strøm: 1997).  45 

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We will distinguish shortly between numerous roles that can be contrasted. Every one of these roles can decide whether or not some legislative activities will take place. For example, a parliamentary group can have, in addition to a coordinator, internal operators who ensure cohesion in voting, orators, and negotiators or “golpeadores” [hitters] when dealing with the other side. “Modern Other roles worth mentioning are the managing of the legislative board of directors, specialization in committees, attention bodies cannot to districts, and promotion of particular groups’ agendas. Is a legislator “better” or “worse” for opting for determined activities over others? Definitely not. The problem lies in believing that there could or should be a list of duties applicable to all of them in order to measure their performance. This would lead to another fallacy: the existence of a previous professional profile which could be used to judge whether or not the individual is deserving of being a candidate. Or worse: pretending that legislators can be evaluated according to the time he or she spends on a previously determined set of activities (Ramírez Macías, 2011: 83-95).

function without organizations that give some kind of coherence to the institutions’ work.”

Indicators and methodologies for evaluation If we take into account the aspects previously discussed, establishing a mechanism for evaluating legislative performance separate from the one performed by citizens through elections would only give the mechanism’s designer more power than that held by the citizens. However, this does not mean that it should not be done. In fact, it might be better if there were as many as possible. Therefore, it is necessary to know how the variables used by each of the actors carrying out the evaluation exercises might be used, knowing beforehand that they might all be used politically in order to benefit or harm one or more evaluated subjects. The only difference is that some criteria can be more technical or evaluative than others.  46 

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Based on the exercises that have been carried out to evaluate Mexico’s legislative bodies, three categories of indicators can be established, which will be subjected to political evaluations in varying degrees: Functioning indicators: those that describe the everyday operation of

the legislative body. The indicators themselves do not have any evaluative weight, although they could easily be put to use for political ends. In order to give two examples, the legislative sessions and the legislators’ activities during them will be discussed.

“Functioning indicators describe the everyday operation of the legislative body."

Most of the indicators to evaluate sessions focus only on the first hour, the quorum, the time spent on various issues, and the time they finish. While they serve to inform us about how the plenary works, they ignore aspects, such as the definition of the agenda and the negotiations regarding the topics discussed in department bodies, the board of directors, and the committees. The quorum should be the parliamentary group coordinator’s problem, since that could end up benefitting or harming him or her during elections.

On the other hand, the indicators look at the legislators’ activities in aspects, such as attendance, licenses requested, number of initiatives presented or interventions at the podium. Although it is useful for the citizens of a district to know this, it is easy to condemn the representative for attending or not attending, instead of the other activities he attended. The presentation of initiatives or interventions could be of tactical use for the legislator. For example, just because a proposal is presented, it does not mean that it will be approved; maybe this is less relevant than other actions, such as “championing” an issue or positioning the parliamentary group for or against an issue. Similarly, interventions at the podium could simply mean that the member is interested in appearing on the news when they report on the session. However, they are an excellent resource for a political attack, for the parliamentarian or senator must have a political response to hand in order to tackle allegations.  47 

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Thinking that a legislator is “better” or “worse” than others because of his or her attendance record, initiative presentation or interventions at the podium could lead to inefficient norms, such as making parliamentarians and senators present at least one initiative per session—something that would only generate larger opportunity costs for committees to address more urgent issues. Performance indicators: the objective of this set of variables is to measure

the way in which a legislative body and parliamentary groups fulfill their basic duties: overseeing the executive branch, legislating, and representing the citizens. Overseeing duties fundamentally means the budgeting process (income law, expenses budget, public accounts), ratification faculties or naming of public officials and, if need be, investigation committees. In this case, performance cannot be measured in time or approaches. Even the approval or rejection of a naming does not mean either that the legislative body is doing its job “well” or “wrong”. However, it is important to have information about the decision-making process within legislative bodies, especially in committees, if the analysis being made aspires to be assertive. It is also important to know if it was done within the timeframe previously established, as is the case with income law and the expenses budget. And even in this scenario, the conclusions of an evaluation exercise could be determined by the agenda of those who perform it.

“The objective of Performance indicators is to measure the way in which a legislative body and parliamentary groups fulfill their basic duties."

Indicators concerning legislation are based on the various stages of the legislative process: initiatives (number of initiatives presented, number of initiatives decided on, number of approved initiatives, success rate of each presenter, and break time), committees (rationality in the committee system, number of referred initiatives, number of initiatives decided on, and workload), and majority legislative coalitions.  48 

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As mentioned above, initiatives can be of tactical use rather than efficient use. Therefore, it is common for all legislative bodies that most initiatives will not be approved, given that those that go forward do so because the government is interested in them or the parties agreed to do so. However, the vast majority of evaluations that have been carried out indicate that an institution’s performance can be measured based on the percentage of approved initiatives over presented initiatives, leading to the false notion that there is an “overproduction” of initiatives. Even the approval or rejection of certain proposals can be a topic for political discussion depending on the party they are associated with. For instance, whereas a legislative body can argue that it approves almost all the initiatives presented by the government, the latter could be right in accusing the congress of being irresponsible if they eliminate some key points in the original proposal during the negotiation process (Secretaría de la Gobernación, 2012). In any case, we are talking about communication tactics utilized to win or keep a seat and that try to win the vote of those who would benefit or be harmed by a specific measure. Thus, believing that administrative efficiency criteria can be applied to plural bodies guided by political motives could lead to measuring the congress with parameters, as well as expecting all initiatives to be decided on in “a timely and appropriate manner”. In any case, it would be problematic if the initiatives presented by a single agent (say, the executive) were approved quickly, for this would mean that one group is the majority and that it takes advantage of it without being controlled. Coalitions are an indicator of how voting takes place in a situation where there are no majorities. They have an academic interest and they can be put to use for political ends by those who participate in these or not. However, they do not say anything about performance on their own. Information about the decision-making process of an initiative would be needed in order to know how efficient negotiations were for each side. When talking about the representative faculty, topics such as these are discussed: the cohesion of the parliamentary group; the way in which  49 

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they were able to push their agenda forward based on the number of approved initiatives over presented initiatives; respect for internal normativity when interfering in the plenary activities or not; the presentation of reports; number of district visits; or if there is conflict of interest. It is important to know about the cohesion of the parliamentary group, given that the citizens vote for a political platform and expect the party to cohere with it. In other words, a bench that is constantly divided in factions does not inspire trust. However, it is also true that a legislator can rebel against his or her institute on topics important for his or her district. In these cases, it is “It is important important to take into account individual voting records to know how when evaluating. It is also important to know how often a parliamentary group recurs to interfering in legislative processes by taking over the podium or assaulting their colleagues in any way, even when some of the groups that voted for these legislators believe that they are doing the right thing: democracy works when there is information and everyone makes decisions based on their own parameters.

much of the party’s political agenda is reflected in what the legislative body approves,”

Moreover, it is important to know how much of the party’s political agenda is reflected in what the legislative body approves, even when the party is a minority one. In any case, this shows how able they are to negotiate issues that are relevant to them in exchange for others. Citizens will make their decisions based on the information available in favor or against the measures that were approved, modified, or rejected. As mentioned above, legislators will work in the district if they believe that it would benefit their career in the future. Therefore, it should be their responsibility to do it, disclose it and contrast it with that of their opponents. However, there are legislative bodies that regulate this with their internal normativity. The important thing is, whatever the situation may be, that this information is easily accessed and, as far as possible, processed in a single format for citizens to know about it and evaluate it.  50 

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The conflict of interest issue is more complex. A legislator can belong to an interest group, and it would be expected that he or she work on the committees relevant to their agenda. In fact, for decades the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) assigned quotas in Congress to its sectors. However, the topic becomes a political problem when there is no clarity in the relationships between representatives and external groups. The best solution in this regard would be to establish transparency policies (Dworak, 2011b). Technical and administrative indicators: even when it is ac-

“Technical and administrative indicators: even when it is acknowledged that a law cannot be measured by unique criteria, it is still true that certain technical requirements must be complied with.”

knowledged that a law cannot be measured by unique criteria, it is still true that certain technical requirements must be complied with. Thus, there are methodologies that seek to measure approved norms based on categories, such as: clarity in the definition of the problem, alternatives and proposed solutions; legal aspects; linguistic aspects; legislative techniques; economic rationality; regulatory impact; instrumentation and application feasibility; or citizen rationality. Finally, there can be diagnoses of the performance of the legislative body’s internal structure and the way in which it makes the work of the institution as a whole easier or harder. We are talking about processes, instances of interlocution with the citizens, administrative structures, personnel quality, political communication, and accountability mechanisms. Based on most of the indicators described above, Alarcón Olguín (2011: 181-184) defined five approaches for the study of what he understands as legislative efficiency:

Approaches based on legislative self-evaluation: results from consulting

legislators or groups regarding their own performance. Approaches based on legislative quality: results from pondering the

kinds of initiatives approved, without taking into consideration the legislative offering.  51 

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Approaches based on the legislative offering: results from comparing the

total of proposed initiatives and the total of approved initiatives. Approaches based on voting records: results from the coherence and con-

gruence of parliamentary groups and legislators. This is how dynamics and centrifugal and centripetal actors are analyzed. Approaches based on process functioning: results from revising institu-

tions and the particular duties they are in charge of when explaining the obtained results. In order to finish this section, it is important to remember that both indicators and methodologies have achievements and limitations when acknowledging or measuring the work of legislative bodies. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine applying one single evaluative scheme to all of society. Actually, it would more convenient to realize that each group or individual will have their own view on the matter. It is democracy’s duty to guarantee the free flow of information, so that everyone can question his or her own criteria and enrich it with the opinions of others.

The legislative bodies’ responsibilities regarding evaluations Throughout this chapter I have tried to show how all evaluation exercises can be used politically. However, this is normal for all democracies, given that this system requires the most amount of information, so that individuals can form their own judgment. In this way, it can be stated that it should be the responsibility of both legislative bodies and legislators to provide as much information as possible about their work. Naturally, representatives tend to disclose only those facts that favor them. And the institution’s nature is to be as little transparent as possible. When confronting this problem, it helps to establish two responsibilities of political authorities regarding the institutions that evaluate both legislators and legislative bodies.  52 

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The first is to create places and mechanisms for the institution to comment and give feedback on the work of the institutions carrying out the evaluations. Even knowing that no methodology can be valid for all of society, there is evidence that a misinterpreted variable can have a negative effect on the perceptions about the legislative bodiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; obligations and results. In this way, there would be constant communication allowing for approaches to be improved and for accountability to be made easier using assertive criteria. Secondly, it is necessary to push for open parliament policies, meaning a series of principles that generate a direct relationship with citizens, beyond transparency policies. If information is the input, political institutions must guarantee its free flow. Making the work of all the actors transparent not only strengthens accountability mechanisms, but also provides state parameters on what will be disclosed to the citizens, so that each person can form judgment with a database that works for all. We are talking about ten principles that should be followed: 1. Guaranteeing the constitutional principle of maximum publicity and access to parliamentary and legislative information. 2. Proactively publishing as much relevant information as possible for the citizens, using simple formats and simple search mechanisms. 3. Publishing the analysis, deliberation and voting of the work done in parliamentary committees and plenaries in open formats. 4. Guaranteeing access to and public transmission of plenaries. 5. Publishing detailed information about the handling, administration and expenses of the budget assigned to the legislative body. 6. Publishing detailed information about representatives, public officials and personnel of the legislative body, including asset declarations and interests of the representatives. ď&#x161;š 53 ď&#x161;¸

OPEN PARLIAMENTS OPEN PARLIAMENT AND THE CHALLENGES OF EVALUATING LEGISLATIVE BODIES ACHIEVEMENTS & CHALLENGES

7. Having mechanisms and tools for efficient citizen monitoring and control. 8. Ensuring inclusive citizen participation in legislative projects. 9. Giving preference to open formats, free software and open codes. 10. Promoting legislation for open government policies in other government branches and levels; making sure that all aspects of parliamentary life incorporate these principles.

As a closing thought, it should be noted that nobody becomes transparent willingly, and that, in the case of political regimes, this happens when decision makers face costs for not doing so or bigger benefits if they do. In this way, any initiative without this incentive is at risk of becoming mere cosmetic reform. Another element to consider is that, as discussed above, legislators will undertake various activities according to their ambitions and the restrictions imposed by institutional agreements. If we have a set of rules that force them to side with their party instead of the citizens in order to further their political career, we cannot have an efficient accountability system. Thus, it is necessary to push for reforms that mean political costs for opacity through citizen punishment. We are talking about the possibility of consecutive election as a necessary condition (Dworak: 2003).

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“Nobody becomes transparent willingly, and that, in the case of political regimes, happens when decision makers face costs for not doing so or bigger benefits if they do.”

A TRUE PARTNERSHIP INVOLVES TWO

Annex 1: Evaluation exercises for legislative bodies in Mexico In order to illustrate the various methodologies that have been utilized to evaluate federal and state legislative bodies in Mexico, the following references are included below: • Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias (Desempeño de la LXI Legislatura del Congreso de la Unión, 2009) (http://www.ceey.org.mx/site/politicas-publicas/ evaluaciones-desempeno/evaluacion-desempeno-poder-legislativo).

• Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias (Desempeño de la LVIII Legislatura del Congreso de Puebla, 2011) (http://www.ceey.org.mx/site/politicas-publicas/ evaluaciones-desempeno/evaluacion-desempeno-sobre-primer-ano-sesiones-lviii).

• Fundar (www.fundar.org). • Impacto Legislativo (www.impactolegislativo.org.mx). • Observatorio Legislativo del Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (http://investigacionpolitica.iteso.mx/actividades/observatorio-legislativo).

• Reporte Legislativo (www.reportelegislativo.com.mx).

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CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN LEGISLATIVE POWER: AN ARGUMENT TO STRENGTHEN REPRESENTATION 1 By Guillermo Ávila2 (@guillermoavilar) RESEARCHER AT FUNDAR, CENTER OF ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH, A.C., MEXICO

1. I begin with the account of two experiences that illustrate well the topics we talk about in this volume and whose explanation—one among many—I will attempt below.

ne of the first actions of the current government was to send a constitutional reform initiative to the legislative power on the matter of transparency, the main objective of which was to give more autonomy to the IFAI [National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information, and Protection of Personal Data]. Setting aside the content and the benefits of its approval, we should pay attention, to the initial phase of the legislative process in the Senate—that was the chamber of origin—where the stage of study, discussion, and approval by expert opinion was exemplary: the meetings of the joint committees in charge were open and so were those of the Committee of Constitutional Affairs, which coordinated the work and invited those involved with the topic to voice their observations and concerns regarding all areas: specialists from civil society and the academic sector, public officials, and practi1 This text is a modified version of the one I presented in the IV International Congress of the Mexican Association of Parliamentary Studies on April 18, 2013. 2 Researcher on the project, “Monitoring and linking of the Legislative Power” in the area of Transparency and accountability with Fundar, Center for Analysis and Research.

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tioners of the right to access information. The final product—the reform that they approved—included many of the opinions and reflections not only of each parliamentary group, but also those of the participants of the analysis sessions. The second is not related to the legislative process but to the administration of finances and resources: in April 2013, the Chamber of Deputies hosted the award ceremony of the #app115 contest organized by Codeando Mexico, a group of programmers and designers with civic vocation. It tried, in two words, to design and develop a mobile phone application that would provide information about the Chamber in an agile and accessible way. The objective was to demonstrate that it is not necessary to spend extraordinary amounts of public resources in order to attain adequate services.3 The award itself was symbolic: "Citizen 11,500 pesos and an iPad mini. The value of the initiative, however, goes beyond that. It was quite interesting to obintervention in the proceedings serve the community of developers in front of our representatives and vice versa, and realize, for them too, the collaboof legislative rative potential between both sides.

power and in the activities derived from it, strengthen democracy."

What meaning do these experiences have? How can we explain them? They are certainly not isolated events, but it is important to point them out because they are representative of the growing demand for inclusion, consulting, and citizen participation that is stronger each time and whose consideration in the political processes is inevitable.

The idea that serves as a guide for this essay is that citizen intervention in the proceedings of legislative power and in the activities derived from it, strengthen democracy, both in the ideal plan—that which should be—as in the instrumental plan—the specific practices—because it is an element 3 The team Codeando Mexico [Coding Mexico] created the competition after the news that the Chamber of Deputies would pay 115 million pesos for the development of a similar platform—together with other services— without really having justification for it. See “How much is legislative information worth? at http://www.animalpolitico.com/blogueros-blog-invitado/2013/03/18/cuanto-vale-la-informacion-legislativa/ #axzz2lvcdXuFL. [27 November 2013].  59 

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that reinforces the principle of representation: it does not replace it, it complements it. 2. The processes that have occurred in the last three decades have modified

the way the State works and its relationship with society, which calls for more openness in the government’s decision-making procedures. Those processes, in turn, contain movements, projects, and initiatives that exemplify these general tendencies and that are worth putting into context. During the 20th Century a consensus was reached about democracy as a form of government. The democratizing processes had differing results, depending on where they took place. Those ‘democratic variations’, however, set aside the discussion about the elements of citizen participation and engagement in the making of decisions because expanding representation was considered sufficient to really succeed in including all social groups (Santos y Avritzer, 2004: passim). The “hegemonic form of democracy is based on elements from Western liberal democracy, which focuses invariably in procedures and ends up excluding participation, beyond elections, in the making of decisions.4

"With the spreading democratizing trend, it became clear that the vote, although free and effective, is not enough to define a democratic political system."

However, with the spreading democratizing trend, it became clear that the vote, although free and effective, is not enough to define a democratic political system. The vote is incapable of generating, by itself, a truly democratic government: responsible for citizen necessities and interests, bound to the law, transparent, punishable, controlled, and inclusive. It serves, by all means, to send signals: for example, if a representative becomes re-elected, one of the signals is that their electorate considers them actually representative, but the voters have a hard time believing that their voice is important to the government—even when they are convinced that the elections are free and fair (Krastev, 2012: loc. 154). 4 Among other reasons, considering that social life is all too complicated, what it implies is that individuals themselves do not have the resources—of any kind—to have an impact.  60 

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The worry, increasingly widespread, about the legitimacy and validity of the principle of representation, is furthermore reflected in the distrust of the public toward their representatives5 and also in the shared feeling of disenchantment with “democracy” because “it doesn’t work” and it does not “produce the desired results” which would be, among others: greater economic well-being, to guarantee the conditions for the exercising of human rights, social inclusion and plurality, and governance that is efficient and transparent. This accumulation of unfulfilled expectations offers a foundation for thinking that the government does not work, that the transition and alteration didn’t make any sense.

"What makes this crisis different from others is that it is marked by disillusionment and the downturn of trust in democratic institutions."

According to Ivan Krastev, “The crisis of democracy today can be best understood not as a threat to individual freedom or as a risk of return of authoritarianism…but as the frustration of the empowered” (2012: loc. 152). And he adds: “What makes this crisis different from others is that it is marked by disillusionment and the downturn of trust in democratic institutions, but it is not accompanied by the loss of liberties or the rise of a powerful anti-democratic alternative…this is not a result of an institutional failure of democracy, but a product of its success” (2012: loc. 259). It gives the impression that the success of democracy is that it does not question whether it is the desirable form of government—or the worst of the worst, paraphrasing Churchill—and that the crisis is due to the disagreement over procedures.6

In our country, the transformation of the hegemony from only one party to multi-party system had widespread repercussions in relation to the functioning of the political system in general, such a decrease in the margin of discretion of the president, which also came with the strengthening of the legislative power. 5 It is not novel to say that there is general mistrust towards the performance of the government: According to the polls on the topic—the National Poll on Political Culture, the Latinobarómetro [Latin American Barometer], the ones that develop private businesses of the branch—less than a third of the people really trust in the government, the parties, or the representatives. 6 It is the “pathology of participation and representation” that Santos and Avrits refer to (2004: 37).  61 

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The institutional order in Mexico was designed, judicially, in line with the balance of powers guidelines. The Mexican presidential system—like all others—is based on the principle of separation of powers but, for a long time, the real imbalance was not due to some deficiency in the construction of the institutional structure that, intentionally, grants the largest weight to the title of the executive.7 Although this current role is the one that corresponds constitutionally to them as part of a fundamentally liberal and democratic system, there is still, nonetheless, little knowledge about Congress and its role in the political system. The crisis that popular representation is going through is noted in the decoupling of the representatives from the represented and in the unawareness of their functions, work, and performance.8 This gap reflects, equally, the absence of means to convey their demands, concerns, and complaints, which cause parliament’s performance, in general, to be evaluated negatively because the concrete activities of the representatives, on occasion, turn out to be quite far from those of the represented and do not seem to consider their opinions, interests, afflictions, or concerns. As early as 2003, Mauricio Merino pointed out the path to overcome the almost immediate disenchantment caused by the alternation in Mexico: “The construction of democracy is a difficult, often eventful task that depends on the appropriate articulation of many willing people. There lies its main defect, in order for it to function, an undue amount of people have to intervene. But this is also, paradoxically, its main virtue” (2003:220). In consequence, in order to begin to rectify the problem of representation, to answer in what way the representatives that we elect reflect, decide, and act to the benefit and interest of the citizens, we need to make efforts to reduce the gap that we described above. 7 A review, yet superficial, of the articles 73, 74, 75, 76, and 77 of the Constitution sheds light on the ample compendium of powers and authorities of the legislative power. 8 In the “National Survey on Political Culture and Citizen Practices 2012”, a third thought that legislators take their own interests into account more that the development of laws and more than half think that citizens have little influence in government decisions. In the GEA-ISA (Group of Economists and Associates together with Inquiry and Advanced Solutions) survey from March about trust in the institutions, 51% say they are dissatisfied with the operations of democracy in Mexico.  62 

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3. The work that we do as civil society organizations (CSOs) is to push the

idea of open parliaments—the transparency, accountability, and citizen participation in legislative work—focuses on advocacy. That is to say, that our projects aim to impact the institutional structures and practices that we analyze: we identify problems, we search for more pertinent explanations, and propose solutions with a perspective that favors the exercise of the rights of the citizens.

"There is certainty regarding the limits of participation in parliamentary work, but there is no certainty of its reach."

In that regard, our experience throughout many years of work with and regarding legislative power allows us to note—speaking only on the topic presented in this text— the absence of mechanisms that are efficient, reliable, and stable in order to include the citizens’ concerns in parliamentary activities, mainly in the legislative process. While there are spaces and moments in which there is interference on the part of the organized groups of citizens, the amount of participation is variable: it depends on the topic of debate, on the resources implied, and on the form adopted. The same variability means that there is no certainty of its reach, although there is certainty regarding the limits of participation in parliamentary work.

The Declaration on Parliamentary Openness 9–an instrument that blends a series of the best practices on what an open parliament should be—is based on elements that strongly call for participation: where they do not mention it expressly, they do so in an implicit way. One of its objectives is “a call… by civil society parliamentary monitoring organizations… for an increased commitment to openness and to citizen engagement in parliamentary 9 According to its presentation, the Declaration is “a result of the conference that brought together organizations that monitor parliament (PMOs) from 38 countries from around the world to facilitate a discussion on international strategies with the objective to improve the access to useful parliamentary information, as well as the exchange of good practices in the promotion of parliamentary transparency and the supervision of parliamentary performance… and is based on a series of referential documents, adapted for the international parliamentary community.” The PMO Leaders Conference, that was held in Washington, DC, April 30-May 2, 2012, was organized by the National Democratic Institute, the Sunlight Foundation, and the Red Latinoamericana por la Transparencia Legislativa [Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency] with the help of the Omidyar Network, the Open Society Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy, the World Bank Institute, and the Mexican Embassy in the United States [www.openingparliament.org, consulted on the 27th of November, 2013].  63 

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work”, but it is “also as a basis for dialogue between parliaments and PMOs to advance government and parliamentary openness, and to ensure that this openness leads to greater citizen engagement, more responsive representative institutions and, ultimately, a more democratic society.” As explained above, the Declaration was elaborated through the collaboration of CSOs from various countries that dedicate themselves to the monitoring of parliament and of the experiences of each one working with the legislative power of their respective countries. It is, at the same time, the accumulation of knowledge of these organizations and a reference for their work on parliamentary advocacy—just like the Índice Latinoamericano de Transparencia Legislativa [Latin American Index of Legislative Transparency] or the wider and more developed process of the Open Government Partnership (OGP). The three following considerations serve to illustrate the point: “WHEREAS parliamentary openness enables citizens to be informed about

the work of parliament, empowers citizens to engage in the legislative process, allows citizens to hold parliamentarians to account and ensures that citizens’ interests are represented; “WHEREAS the rights of the citizens to participate in governance and access

parliamentary information are established in international human rights frameworks and in international benchmarks and norms for democratic parliaments adopted by the international parliamentary community; and whereas international institutions have laid a strong foundation for openness online; “WHEREAS a growing number of civil society parliamentary monitoring

and support organizations seek to play a meaningful and collaborative role in strengthening the democratic accountability of parliaments and require access to parliamentary information to play this role effectively, and whereas there are numerous precedents for strong collaboration between parliaments and parliamentary monitoring organizations (PMOs) that can inform efforts for the greater openness of parliamentary information;  64 

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These foundations of the Declaration reflect general tendencies that reproduce in a parallel way, adapting themselves to the peculiarities of each place. For example, the Law of Access to Information in Indonesia clearly establishes, among the transparency objectives for parliament, “facilitating citizen knowledge on the legislative process, encouraging citizen participation, increasing citizen intervention in the making of policies, and a verifiable governance.” The Law of Access to Information of Moldova also specifies that parliamentary information serves to stimulate the forming of opinions and the active participation by the people in the decision making process. The regulation of the Scottish Parliament includes rules to have, mandatorily, public meetings, public access to committee meetings, and that the requests from the citizens to the Parliament be received and addressed. According to the Office of European Parliament for the Promotion of Parliamentary Democracy, in order to have a legislative body that is open and transparent it is not sufficient to just provide the public with the most relevant public information or to offer explanations about the way it works. All of these measurements should be designed in such a way that they lead toward a larger objective, which is to actively involve citizens in the legislative process. In South Africa, Sweden, Ghana, Scotland, and Germany there are formal instruments for receiving opinions concerning the legislation at any given moment or concerning specific topics.10 The regulatory framework of the Mexican Congress also includes the possibility of consulting the public to take into account the opinion of external groups to the parliament but they are not obligated to do so. On occasion, this produces exclusive and opaque processes, which results in the lack of information and comprehension of public affairs by the citizens. Additionally, there is no real evidence that legislative processes are more efficient if they are conducted and executed exclusively by the representatives. 10 All of these and more international references, as well as an explanation and its link with each point of the Declaration can be found at http://openingparliament.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/declaration/commentary-20120914.pdf  65 

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4. Given their liberal concerns that point to the effective restraint of ty-

rant power, John Stuart Mill justifies popular sovereignty in the following manner: “The participation of all in these benefits is the ideally perfect conception of free government. In proportion as any, no matter who, are excluded from it, the interests of the excluded are left without the guaranty accorded to the rest, and they themselves have less scope and encouragement than they might otherwise have to that exertion of their energies for the good of themselves and of the community, to which the general prosperity is always proportioned.” ([1860] 2006: "All of these 73), and concludes that “From these accumulated considermeasurements ations, it is evident that the only government which can fully satisfy all the exigencies of the social state is one in which the should be whole people participate” ([1860] 2006: 85). designed in

such a way

The idea of citizen participation confronts the concept and that they lead practice of citizen representation. Facing the “impracticability” of democracy—that is to say that the public comes toward a larger together, decides and directly executes government ac- objective, which tions—the principle of representation was adopted in order is to actively to choose the most suitable people to take charge of public involve citizens affairs. In this way, one primordial function of parliament is to bring the voice of social groups to congress, which means in the legislative not only to reiterate and make their own claims, concerns, process." and demands of the represented, but also to put them into motion, to argue in their favor, and debate them in order to transform them into laws. Parliaments express the characteristics, conflicts, and transactions of the society that they should represent and they come to agreement by means of dialogue and debate. The celebrated speech of Edmund Burke to his constituents in Bristol could be considered contradictory in our era, for as he declares that it ought to be “the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents” the judgement of the former  66 

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should not have to sacrifice itself for the opinion of the latter.11 In reality, it clearly reflects the alleged incompatibility between the principle of representation and participation.12 To begin to decipher the complementarity of both, we should pay attention to the elements that allow us to solve the problem of authorization— the mandate granted to representatives when they are elected. In the introduction to their book Democracy, Accountability and Representation, Bernard Manin, Adam Przeworski, and Susan C. Stokes begin to define the problem of representation asking themselves how representatives reflect, decide, and act for the greater benefit or interest of citizens (1999: 1-2).

"The key to knowing the preferences or to have the elements needed to make the best decision is that the information is available."

The response is that to be representative one should act in search of the greater wellbeing of citizens. This is achieved through the coinciding of preferences, concerns, and decisions or in the exercising of power by the body of representatives to achieve the best results—those which could not be arrived to without delegating the decision of a representative, according to theory (loc. cit.).

Beyond the logic debate that this supposes, the key to knowing the preferences or to have the elements needed to make the best decision is that the information is available. In order for the citizen intervention to be efficient, it should have and provide sufficient information on the legislative process, the content of the initiatives, the actors involved, etc. Representation is a relationship between the citizen’s interests and the results of the decisions of representatives (Ibid.:8). This means that representation and participation are not exclusive concepts nor practices.

11 Electronic version available at http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch13s7.html 12 According to Philip Pettit, the distinction between a participatory system and a representative one does not mean distinguishing democracy as something similar, but between two rival approaches to the implementation of democracy (2009:61)  67 

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One of the goals of Fundar’s “Monitoring and Linking Legislative Power” project is to for citizen participation to be included as a transversal component of the Mexican congressional activities: from the design of the parliamentary agenda to the analysis and opinion of the initiatives. We take into account that the conflict that we discussed before can start to correct itself through the real implementation of citizen participation mechanisms. We start with the idea of including participation in the work of the parliament as a way of moving a substantial democracy in which citizens’ political rights are exercised effectively, and there are sensitive and responsible public institutions for citizens with needs, interests, and convictions that should be addressed through democratic governance. Again, participation does not have to be seen as the result of a “democratic anomaly” but rather as an element to influence public decisions directly and to exercise control over them. Participation and representation coexist on various levels, and the former replaces the latter, as well as in differing areas—sharing information, consulting decisions, and implementing joint actions. The relationship between the represented and the representatives does not have to be zero-sum, but rather one of benefit for both sides: “to the former because transparency exposes potential betrayals of citizens’ interests, and to the latter because it makes enforceable commitments to constituent interests possible, and the rewards that might follow from such commitments attainable.” (Carey, 2012:1). There are undeniable motives for the legislative power to be held accountable, to be transparent, and to be open to citizen participation. Popular representatives should perform a strategic role in the efforts to make governments and the powers more responsive and responsible toward the society that their mandate comes from. In addition to law making, the overseeing and controlling of the executive power, the legislative power should implement policies for its interior government that allow citizens the power to hold them accountable when necessary and influence affairs that they consider relevant for their everyday lives and wellbeing.  68 

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"The relationship between the represented and the representatives does not have to be zero-sum, but rather one of benefit for both sides."

If our representatives had a closer relationship with the represented, there would be a better interpretation of the needs and interests of the latter, who, in turn, mitigate their dissatisfaction with a political class that each time is seen as more removed. In this way, perhaps, we could imagine verses unlike those by Renato Ludac (I transcribe, merely as a courtesy, only the last stanza: “In the peace of congress he rests / triumphant delegate / with pockets and stomach well full / and a mouth pursed with a padlock”).

Bibliography • Burke, Edmund (1774). ‘Speech to the Electors of Bristol’ [Electronic Version Available at http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch13s7.html [Consulted on the 27th of November, 2013]

• Carey, John (2012). ‘Transparency & Legislative Behavior’, mimeo. [Electronic Version: http://www.lse.ac.uk/government/research/resgroups/ PSPE/pdf/ResearchSeminar/TLBCareyNovember2012.pdf. [Consulted on the 27th of November, 2013]

• Krastev, Ivan (2012). In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don’t Trust Our Leaders. TED [Electronic version via Kindle].

• Merino, Mauricio (2003). La transición votada. Crítica a la interpretación del cambio político en México. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

• Mill, John Stuart ([1860] 2006). Consideraciones sobre el gobierno representativo. México: Gernika.  69 

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• Pettit, Philip (2009). ‘Varieties of public representation’ in Ian Shapiro, Susan C. Stokes, Elisabeth Jean Wood, and Alexander S. Kirshner, Political Representation. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

• Przeworski, Adam, Susan C. Stokes and Bernard Manin (1999). Democracy, Accountability and Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 61-89.

• Santos, Boaventura de Sousa y Leónardo Avritzer (2004). ‘Introducción: para ampliar el canon democrático’ en Boaventura de Sousa Santos (coord.), Democratizar la democracia. Los caminos de la democracia participativa. México: FCE, pp. 35-74.

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OPEN PARLIAMENT IN GEORGIA’S OGP ACTION PLAN By Giorgi Kldiashvili DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE FOR DEVELOPMENT OF FREEDOM OF INFORMATION, GEORGIA

Georgia, as part of the totalitarian Soviet Union, did not have the culture of western democracy at its independence. Development of human rights and open government started in Georgia from the dissolution of the Soviet State.

eorgia went through a long and painful process of civil war, internal political, and socio-economic problems at the end of the 20th Century. The heritage of secrecy and political influence in the government sector had significant influence and was a barrier to the creation of civil society in Georgia in those years. Despite access to information and an obligation of accountability being a part of the Constitution of Georgia, regulations on freedom of information were adopted together with the General Administrative Code of Georgia in 1999. Since then every person has been guaranteed the right to have access to government documents. The development of open government and anti-corruption policy in Georgia was a long process of creating various tools and measures, both legal and practical. This process included adopting the Law on Freedom of Expression, the Law on Corruption and Conflict of Interests in the Public Sector, the creation of the Inter-Agency Anti-Corruption Council of Georgia, which led to the adoption of long-term and short-term strategies in various fields of government. Georgia successfully implemented the electronic system of

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public procurement, the electronic system of publishing the asset declarations of senior public officials, and the electronic system of recruitment in the public sector, etc. Civil society was a very important participant and contributor to this process and most of the successes in this direction were possible with the direct involvement of civil society organizations (CSOs).

"Most of the successes in this direction were possible with the direct involvement of civil society organizations (CSOs)."

In 2012 Georgia became a member of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) which became a very important platform for developing government integrity, transparency and accountability, public participation, public services, and innovations and technologies in the government sector.

In the first Action Plan of Georgia (2012-2014), which was drafted with the coordination of the Ministry of Justice of Georgia, and mostly based on the recommendations of CSOs led by the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI), Georgia introduced ambitious commitments, including reforms in freedom of information legislation and practice, anti-corruption measures, tools for public engagement, and improving government services. As a result of the successful implementation of commitments taken in the framework of the first National Action Plan of Georgia, proactive disclosure of information was recognized as one of the ‘Bright Spots’ of OGP at the London Annual Summit in October 2013. Open Government Georgia’s Forum – a national coordination mechanism for OGP was created at the Ministry of Justice of Georgia. The Forum unites representatives of state institutions, CSOs, and multilaterals. It has two chairpersons – one is the representative of government agency and another of civil society. All issues related to OGP are discussed at the Forum; it also plans, organizes and coordinates the process of public consultation on the Action Plan, public awareness raising as well as monitoring and supporting the process of implementation of commitments. The Forum in Georgia is considered as one of the best models of government-civil society cooperation in developing OGP.  73 

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The role of multilaterals was very active and important in developing OGP in Georgia. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Open Society Georgia Foundation were the first supporters of this process, which were later joined by the European Union and United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The IDFI has been involved in OGP development in Georgia since the country joined the initiative. IDFI leads the CSOs working on OGP and the director of the Institute was elected as the first co-chair of the Forum for civil society. IDFI was the author of recommendations for both of Georgia’s Action Plans and led the public consultation process on drafting the Action Plan. IDFI also nominated Georgia for ‘Bright Spots’ at London Annual Summit in 2013 and presented on the successful implementation of the commitment related to the proactive disclosure of public information by government agencies in Georgia. The organization also publishes OGP related information on a specially created blog. The second National Action Plan of Georgia (2014-2016) was created and presented through a very inclusive process and included even more ambitious commitments than the first. The most important commitments were recommended by the CSOs, such as drafting the Freedom of Information Law of Georgia; creating an open data portal – www.data.gov. ge; creating the electronic petitions site – www.Ichange.ge; the publishing of secret surveillance statistics by the Supreme Court of Georgia, and others.

"Commitments related to parliament were first recommended by CSOs."

Both the government and civil society see the OGP as a very important tool for developing open government in Georgia. For its active role in promoting OGP standards and values Georgia was selected as the OGP Steering Committee Member for two years in September 2014. In June 2015 Georgia hosted the Regional Meeting of Government Point of Contacts. Commitments related to parliament were first recommended by CSOs, in particular by the IDFI, during the drafting of the Second National Action  74 

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Plan of Georgia and focused on supporting civic engagement in lawmaking processes. In particular, recommendations included: 1. Introducing citizen petitions system to the Parliament of Georgia; 2. Enabling citizens to comment on bills;

"Georgia is the first country in the region which has started the implementation process of the principles of open parliament."

These recommendations were not included in the Second National Action Plan of Georgia but active work started on parliament’s involvement in OGP advocated by CSOs and supported by the Members of Parliament (MPs) of Georgia. In order to support and follow the initiatives of the OGP regarding parliamentary openness, in December 2014, the IDFI started the project “Supporting the Parliament of Georgia’s Involvement in Open Government Partnership” that is implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in cooperation with the IDFI, in partnership with the Parliament of Georgia, within the European Union funded Program “Strengthening the System of Parliamentary Democracy in Georgia”. The aim of the Project is to increase Georgia’s Parliamentary Openness.

The project team started active work on developing legislative openness in Georgia in cooperation with the Parliament of Georgia. Within the scope of the Project, IDFI coordinated the process of creation of the Open Parliament Georgia Working Group. The group consists of Georgian CSOs and multilaterals which work on parliament related issues – 16 organizations in total: European Union (EU), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI), United States Agency for International Development, (USAID), Transparency International Georgia, Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA), National Democratic Institute (NDI), Open Society Georgia Foundation (OSGF), Civil Society Institute (CSI), GIZ, Eastern Partnership Civil Society Platform, Civil Development Agency (CiDA), JumpStart Georgia, Council of Europe, World Bank, and Economic Policy Research Center (EPRC). The aim of the working group is to assist the Parliament

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Within the scope of the project, and for further effective cooperation with the Open Parliament Georgia Working Group, the Parliament of Georgia created the Inter-Factional Group. According to the Order of the Chairman of the Parliament of Georgia (which was signed on the 12th of February, 2015) the Inter-Factional Group was created comprising 11 MPs for ensuring the involvement of the Parliament of Georgia in OGP and for establishing the Open Parliament Principle. The members of the Group are only MPs, who represent all Factions in the Parliament of Georgia. The goal of the Inter-Factional Group is to draw out the Open Parliament Georgia Action Plan and support the involvement of the Parliament of Georgia in the OGP initiative. This Order will support the involvement of MPs in the Open Parliament Georgia Working Group. According to the Order, the Inter-Factional Group should present the Open Georgia Parliament Action Plan before parliament. Furthermore, the Parliament of Georgia signed the Memorandum on Parliamentary Openness with the representatives of the Open Parliament Georgia Working Group, and took responsibility for implementation of the Principles of the Open Parliament. At the same time the Parliament of Georgia ratified the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. Georgia is the first country in the region which has started the implementation process of the principles of open parliament. To better understand the legislative openness commitments in the framework of OGP, the IDFI team conducted a comprehensive study on international practices to present to MPs and CSOs on the parliament related commitments of OGP member states.

"The Inter-Factional Group should present the Open Georgia Parliament Action Plan before parliament."

The Open Parliament Georgia Working Group and the Inter-Factional Group are actively cooperating and have already had six meetings (one of them was the Field Meeting where participants of the meeting, MPs, and the representatives of Non-Governmental and International Organizations, worked on the draft version of the Open Parliament Georgia Action Plan).

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Group and the Open Parliament Georgia Working Group, where representatives of civil society actively supported the Inter-Factional Group through providing advice, recommendations and new ideas. Out of 18 commitments that are included in the final version of the Open Parliament Georgia Action Plan (OPG), 16 are civil society initiatives and 2 commitments were initiated by the staff of the Parliament of Georgia.

"Out of 18 commitments that are included in the final version of the Open Parliament Georgia Action Plan (OPG), 16 are civil society initiatives."

At the beginning of July the OPG was finalized by the Open Parliament Georgia Working Group and the Inter-Factional Group, and on the 10th of July the OPG was adopted by the Inter-Factional Group. On the 17th of July, the OPG was adopted by the Bureau of the Parliament of Georgia. Following the adoption, the Parliament of Georgia is obliged to fulfil the commitments of the OPG.

The OPG commitments, which cover the period from September 2015 – December 2016, aim at supporting public involvement and openness regarding parliamentary documents and activities, including implementing the electronic processing of bills, which also provides access to the current version of the bill at any stage, availability of the agendas of committees, and draft bills on the website of the Parliament of Georgia - also the possibility of subscription to the agendas and draft bills as well as to improve and modify the functioning of the website of the Parliament of Georgia, etc. The commitments are grouped in four categories which respond to OGP declared principles: 1. Public Involvement; 2. Access to Information; 3. Technologies and Innovations; 4. Accountability. Hereafter the commitments of the OPG are given:

1. Public involvement 1.1 The possibility of commenting on draft bills (electronically and/or in a written format) (the initiator of the commitment was IDFI): in many

countries, including Brazil and Finland, citizens have the opportunity to comment on draft bills. In Georgia this opportunity is provided  77 

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by the LEPL Legislative Herald, but as the mentioned Legal Entity of Public Law (LEPL) is part of the executive government, it is important to introduce the opportunity for commenting on draft bills within the scope of the Parliament of Georgia. The Parliament of Georgia is a legislative part of the government of our country, therefore, this commitment should be implemented within the realms of the Parliament of Georgia. This commitment will give the citizens of Georgia the opportunity to comment on draft bills, starting from the first hearing, in an electronic and/or written way. At the same time the commitment includes receiving feedback from the Parliament of Georgia. This commitment is upheld by the OpenGovGuide as well. 1.2 Presenting the legislative proposals and legislative initiatives to the Parliament of Georgia electronically and implementing its supporting mechanism through the official website of the Parliament of Georgia (the initiator of the commitment was IDFI and the supporting entity is the LEPL Date Exchange Agency): this commitment is consid-

"One of the recommendations of OpenGovGuide includes creating the web-platform for e-petitions where the citizens have opportunity to present their initiatives."

ered a major step towards increasing public involvement. One of the recommendations of OpenGovGuide includes creating the web-platform for e-petitions where the citizens have opportunity to present their initiatives. Currently, the Parliament of Georgia doesn’t give the opportunity to citizens to present and gather votes electronically in order to support their initiatives. After this commitment is implemented, it will give citizens the opportunity to increase their involvement in parliamentary activities, and present the legislative proposals and legislative initiatives in an electronic way using the web-platform. This commitment includes presenting both legislative initiatives and legislative proposals electronically and gathering the necessary votes electronically via the website of the Parliament of Georgia as well. 1.3 Enabling civic engagement in the legislative process (regarding the proposed amendments to the constitution) (the initiator of the commitment was National Democratic Institute (NDI)): the rules of procedure  78 

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of the Parliament of Georgia uphold the common and the popular discussion period for the possible amendment to the constitution but the procedures of the popular discussion for the possible amendment are not clearly defined - for example, the number of meetings that should be held and in which regions (one of the indicators for this commitment defines at least one meeting for popular discussion per region), how feedback will be received from the citizens, etc. In order to increase public involvement regarding proposed amendments to the constitution it is necessary to clarify the rules for popular discussion. At the same time, it is desirable to establish certain rules of popular discussion for the most important draft bills as well (for example, for the bill on State Budget). This will increase public involvement and the opportunity to receive and implement feedback in the legislative process. The timeframe establishes two main steps to achieve – first of all a draft bill should be initiated that will define the rules for organizing public discussion and secondly, the rules of procedure of the Parliament of Georgia should also be amended to support the public discussion process of the proposed amendment to the constitution. 1.4 Providing easy attendance to the citizens to the plenary sessions and committee meetings (the initiator of the commitment was Transparency International Georgia): in order to enter the building of the Parliament of

Georgia an entrance permit is necessary and only MPs and few representatives of the staff of the Parliament have the right to enable such passes. But the website of the Parliament of Georgia doesn’t contain this information, and this contradicts with the principle of parliamentary openness. In order to comply with the standards of international best practice the procedures for entering the building of the Parliament of Georgia should be published on the website. This will enable citizens to attend the plenary sessions and committee meetings. The aim of the commitment is to publish the information of attendance on the plenary sessions and committee meetings on the website of the Parliament of Georgia. 1.5 Underlining the obligation to present the substantiations for the anticipated amendment of the agenda of the committee hearing (the initiator of the commitment was Transparency International Georgia):  79 

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all agendas of the meetings of the committees are published on the website of the Parliament of Georgia. There are cases when the agendas are amended during the committee meetings without any further justification. These cases weaken the possibility of civil society being effectively involved in the committee hearing. In order to avoid such practices it is necessary to alter the agendas based on the substantiations and by the majority of the votes of MPs presented in the meeting. The aim of the commitment is to increase the level of justification for the possible change of the agenda and therefore give more opportunity to CSOs to be involved in the committee hearing. 1.6 Raising the educational and awareness level on the activities, role and mission of the Parliament of Georgia; strengthening the institutional image and the role of the Parliament of Georgia (the initiator of the commitment was the staff of the Parliament of Georgia): the communica-

tion strategy of the Parliament of Georgia designates the main values and principles that support the institutionalization of accountable and open parliament. At the same time open parliament provides more involvement of society in the legislative process. The communication strategy allows the active engagement of citizens and open and transparent communication with them regarding parliamentary activities. The main aim of the commitment is to increase the institutional image and role of the Parliament of Georgia via increasing public awareness, civic engagement, and open and transparent communication to the public.

2. Access to information 2.1 Easing access for people with disabilities to parliamentary documents (the initiator of the commitment was IDFI and the partner organization supporting this initiative is the Ministry of Internal Affairs): in order to

increase public involvement, it is important to increase citizen participation in the process of parliamentary openness, especially to increase the involvement of vulnerable groups of society. Therefore, easing access for people with disabilities to parliamentary documents would be considered as one of the major commitments of the Parliament of  80 

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Georgia. OpenGovGuide also upholds this commitment. According to the commitment of the draft action plan, it is necessary to create a platform that provides easy access for people with disabilities to the documents of the Parliament of Georgia. Currently, the Parliament of Georgia doesn’t offer this opportunity to the target group of this commitment. But first of all, the commitment upholds the preparation of the concept and the budget for the further implementation of the given commitment. Once the concept and the budget have been elaborated, implementation will start. 2.2 Proactive publishing of the annual reports and conclusions of the committees of the Parliament of Georgia (the initiator of the commitment was Transparency International Georgia): short descriptions

and press-releases of committee hearings and plenary sessions are effectively posted on the website of the Parliament of Georgia; currently it is also possible to watch live and rewind the committee hearings and plenary sessions. One can also have "Short easy access to various statements and reports posted on descriptions and the official website of the Parliament of Georgia. But annual reports and conclusions of the committees either are not press-releases published at all or are posted at a later period. The aim of of committee the commitment is to improve the method of posting the hearings and reports and conclusions of the committees that eventually plenary sessions will enable transparency and allow easy access to the legislative process. First of all, the rules of procedure of the are effectively Parliament of Georgia will be amended, and this will be posted on the followed with the uploading of the annual reports and the website of the conclusions of the committees of the Parliament of Georgia. The time-frame for implementing this commitment is Parliament." the year of 2015. 2.3 Enacting the legislative frame of consultations during the legislative process (the initiator of the commitment was GYLA): currently, both the

Parliament of Georgia and the Government of Georgia are characterized by a willingness to involve stakeholders in the legislative process but as there is no certain legislative frame for conducting consultations,  81 

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these consultations remain spontaneous and under the discretion of the decision making bodies in Parliament and in Government. There are no regulations defining the consultation procedures. In order to increase the level of civic engagement in the legislative process it is necessary to define the legislative frame for consultations. The main aim of the commitment is to designate and enact the legislative frame of consultations during the legislative process. 2.4 On time publishing of the amendments to the initial draft bill, altered during its discussion, on the website of the Parliament of Georgia (the initiator of the commitment was GYLA): in order to support the inclusiveness

"It is of utmost importance to have proper and on time follow-up procedures for all amendments to the draft bills during the process of consultations."

of the legislative process it is of utmost importance to have proper and on time follow-up procedures for all amendments to the draft bills during the process of consultations. At the same time it is important to publish such changes on the website of the Parliament of Georgia. This will give all relevant stakeholders involved in the legislative process the opportunity to have easy access to the amendments of the draft bill. At the same time this is important not just for the representatives of civil organizations but for the MPs themselves because they will have quick access to all amendments to the draft bills from the first till the third hearing. Thus, implementing this commitment is important in raising the awareness of all relevant stakeholders of the legislative process. Currently, there is no proper system that can visualize the information on all amendments to the draft bills. The main aim of the commitment is to elaborate the concept and the budget for supporting the on time publication of all amendments to the draft bills on the website of the Parliament of Georgia. 2.5 Renewing the list of the proactively published public information (the initiators of this commitment were Transparency International Georgia and MP, Member of the Inter-Factional Group, Tamar Kordzaia): the MP

has the right to send a question to the Government of Georgia, to the  82 

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members of the Government of Georgia and to the executive branches of the municipalities of Georgia and assess their answers. This is one of the effective ways for implementing parliamentary control. All respondents are obliged to provide a written answer within a maximum of 15 days. Currently, the statistics, including the rate of sent MP questions and received answers, are not published on the website. At the same time the Parliament of Georgia is the definer of the policy on foreign relations. In implementing this function, the Parliament of Georgia is actively involved in various international relations with the parliamentary delegations and with friendship groups. But the society is poorly informed about these activities. Thus, in order to raise public awareness it is necessary to proactively publish the report on parliamentary delegations and friendship groups. The main aim of this commitment is to publish the statistics about the sent questions of MPs and received answers in a raw format and at the same time to publish the reports on activities of the parliamentary delegations and friendship groups.

"The explanatory cards of the draft bills are one of the key components in increasing the level of accountability of the parliament and the rate of civic engagement in the legislative process."

2.6 Updating the internal part of the explanatory cards of the draft bills (the initiator of the commitment was Transparency International Georgia): the explanatory

cards of the draft bills are one of the key components in increasing the level of accountability of the parliament and the rate of civic engagement in the legislative process. The explanatory cards should be persuasive and informative. It is necessary to implement a common approach and update the internal part of the explanatory cards. A common standard of submitting the explanatory cards will enable one to thoroughly fill all the necessary fields of explanatory cards and the draft bills will be better justified and the reasons and aim for adopting the draft bills will be better explained. The main aim of the commitment is to update the internal parts and implement a common approach regarding the explanatory cards. Two main steps are identified for implementing this commitment: first of all, the consultation process should start to agree upon the ď&#x161;š 83 ď&#x161;¸

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common standards of explanatory cards, and secondly, the Bureau of the Parliament of Georgia should adopt the Instruction for updating the internal part of the explanatory card and for implementing the common standard for its submission.

3. Technologies and innovation 3.1 Placing the documents on the website of the Parliament of Georgia in a raw format (the initiators of the commitment were GYLA, IDFI, Transparency International Georgia, and the supporter organization is LEPL Legislative Herald of Georgia): currently at least part of the par-

liamentary documents are published on the website of the Parliament of Georgia but the problem is the further usage of the published material. The problem is that most of the information (for example, resolutions, decrees, statements, draft bills and the related documents, etc.) published on the website are in a PDF format that intervenes with the further search and use of the documents. Therefore, in order to comply with the principles of the OpenGovGuide, it is important to publish the parliamentary documents in a raw format (for example, in HTML or Word etc.). 3.2 Implementation of the new technologies and innovative approaches; increasing the level of involvement of youth, ethnic minorities and other stakeholders in the activities of the Parliament of Georgia; strengthening bilateral communication with the society (the initiator of the commitment was the staff of the Parliament of Georgia): to ensure the active

"The main aim of the commitment is to increase the active civil involvement process with the implementation of the new technologies and innovative approaches."

involvement of the society in the activities of the Parliament of Georgia, including in the process of legal drafting, the Parliament of Georgia plans to implement bilateral and various communicative and innovative approaches. For example, the Parliament of Georgia plans to spread the news for website subscribers according to the prior established standards; to place additional interactive modules on the website of the Par 84 

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liament of Georgia; to elaborate mobile applications for the web-services of the Parliament of Georgia, etc. These initiatives will support effective bilateral communication between the Parliament of Georgia and the citizens. The main aim of the commitment is to increase the active civil involvement process with the implementation of the new technologies and innovative approaches.

4. Accountability 4.1 Creating the Permanent Parliamentary Council on Openness and Transparency (the initiator of the commitment was IDFI): OGP mem-

ber countries like Chile and Mexico have parliamentary committees who work on the issues of Open Government Partnership regarding parliamentary openness and public involvement. At the same time OpenGovGuide also supports the idea of the institutionalization of the initiatives regarding the OGP. Thus, assuming the experience of other countries, the creation of the Permanent Parliament Council on Openness and Transparency was decided. The Parliamentary Council will consist of MPs and the Consultation Council. The Consultation Council will be comprised of the representatives of NGOs and International Organizations. The Parliamentary Council will have two co-chairs: one from the side of the Parliament of Georgia and other from the side of the CSOs. 4.2 Enabling the obligation to hold the annual meeting of the Parliament of Georgia with civil society organizations (the initiator of the commitment was the Civil Society Institute): starting in 2012, the tradition

of an annual meeting of the Parliament of Georgia and Civil Society Organizations was implemented. This is an important mechanism for dialogue between parliament and CSOs and responds to the principles of accountability, transparency and public involvement. The meetings of 2012 and 2013 proved to be effective as it supported the communication between parliament and the CSOs. At the same time this tradition was strengthened by the memoranda signed between the Parliament of Georgia and CSOs in December, 2013. This tradition is in full accordance to the principles of the Open Government Partnership. ď&#x161;š 85 ď&#x161;¸

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Therefore, it is necessary to continue this kind of meeting in the future as well. The main aim of the commitment is to hold annual meetings between the Parliament of Georgia and the civil society organizations. This commitment should be implemented annually. 4.3 Developing and adopting the state concept regarding the development of civil society organizations (the initiator of the commitment was the Civil Society Institute): the mem-

oranda signed between the Parliament of Georgia and civil societies in December, 2013, contains the provision on development of state concept regarding the civil societies. This concept should underline the state’s support for the further development of CSOs and for constructing the area for political dialogue between the Parliament of Georgia and CSOs. This commitment is supported by OpenGoveGuide. According to the OpenGoveGuide, the state is recommended to have policy in support of the development of CSOs. OGP member countries have already implemented the commitments on creating state concepts regarding the development of civil actors. The main aim of the commitment is to develop and adopt the state concept regarding the development of CSOs.

"The implementation of the Code of Ethics complies with the standards of OGP, as the principle of good faith, will be implemented in the public sphere."

4.4 Elaborating the Code of Ethics for the Members of the Parliament of Georgia (the initiator of the commitment was NDI): the Code of Ethics

of the Parliament of Georgia will be the basic document that will define the behavior of MPs. The Code should include clear provisions on the appropriate and inappropriate standards of acting on the side of the MPs, including the publication of information connected to their private interests, to present declarations on property, the usage of the state funds and state benefits and the type of work an MP was performing before and after being a Member of Parliament. A special committee should be designated to discuss the complaints regarding the violation of the Code of Ethics, and at the same time this committee should monitor the activities of the MPs regarding the Code. In the year 2004, the Parliament of Georgia enacted the non-obligatory Code of Ethics for MPs but this system proved to be non-effective,  86 

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and the un-ethical behavior of Georgian MPs remained a challenge for the Parliament. At the same time, the implementation of the Code of Ethics complies with the standards of OGP, as the principle of good faith, will be implemented in the public sphere. The Code of Ethics will also support the publishing of the information regarding the financial interests of MPs.

"The successful process of legislative openness in Georgia was much dependent on the good will and support of the Parliament of Georgia."

The successful process of legislative openness in Georgia was much dependent on the good will and support of the Parliament of Georgia. The Chairperson of the Parliament of Georgia was directly involved in the process. The platform for parliament-CSO cooperation was organized to jointly develop open parliament in Georgia. The leading CSOs and multilaterals who work on the parliament related issues formed the working group which is a best platform to support the Inter-Factional Group to develop OGP standards in the Parliament of Georgia and developed the Open Parliament Georgia Action Plan together with the Parliament of Georgia. Currently the Open Parliament Georgia Working Group is elaborating the concept for the Permanent Parliamentary Council of Open and Transparent Governance which will directly work on legislative openness in Georgia.

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PARLIAMENT AND PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN KENYA By Muchiri Nyaggah EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AT THE LOCAL DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH INSTITUTE, KENYA

Open government as an approach to governance and a core tenet of democracy is not as recent as the brand and movement through which it has gained popularity in the recent past.

ostly due to the efforts of the current US administration which catalyzed the formation of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), the movement has grown into a global multi-stakeholder community focused on a handful of key areas; captured in the five grand challenges of the OGP. Open government is not simply about transparency but extends to public participation. Where transparency is like a window that allows citizens to see what the government is doing, open government gives citizens a voice in how government goes about its business. In Africa, public participation is not new. In just the last fifteen years, it has formed part of the core approach to democracy on the continent and is a fundamental part of many of the normative instruments in play. The 50th Solemn Declaration adopted at the beginning of the millennium and which forms a basis for the existence of the union states that African Union member states undertake to “Foster the participation of our people through democratic elections and ensure accountability and transparency” The African Charter on Democracy, Elections for Governance adopted in January 2007 and which went into force in 2012 describes its objectives in Article 2 to

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“Promote the establishment of the necessary conditions to foster citizen participation, transparency, access to information, freedom of the press and accountability in the management of public affairs” This thread on the centrality of public participation, transparency and accountability runs through Africa’s frameworks including the African Charter on Values and Principles of Public Service and Administration and the most recent one, the African Charter on the Values and Principles of Decentralization, Local Governance and Local Development. It is therefore important to take into account the extent to which Africa has already mainstreamed the doctrine of open government within its mechanisms, constitutions and institutions when speaking to its community about open government. Despite the absence of the “opengov” branding, Africa has been opening up for quite a while. Within the open government movement, as it has emerged over the last 7 years, there have been weak linkages be“Open tween the movement and those institutions in government with the legal mandate for oversight. For instance, only in government the last 2 years did I begin to observe deliberate attempts initiatives are to work with the national offices of the ombudsman and therefore at risk national audit offices in countries where the OGP was acof not being tive. Government, in many countries where the partnersustainable due ship is active, is made up of three distinct and independent arms; the executive, the judiciary and the legislature. Unto their failure fortunately, the narrative on opening up government has to be truly been sequestered within the executive with the majority inclusive within of public sector open government champions being from within it. This is understandable due to the service delivery the broader mandate of the executive arm of government but unfortupublic sector.” nate because the institutions that support the institutionalization of open government are not part of the conversation. Open government initiatives are therefore at risk of not being sustainable due to their failure to be truly inclusive within the broader public sector.  91 

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My observations on the state of open government in Africa and primarily the level of engagement with OGP, has led me to draw a few conclusions which place legislative openness at the center of it all. First, a critical area of importance in the democracy ecosystem within

the continent doesn’t easily find a home within the five grand challenges of the OGP. This area is electoral openness. The integrity of the electoral process, from the aspects managed by the elections management bodies to those managed by the political parties, can either weaken or strengthen the legitimacy of the house and its members when they eventually take their oaths of office. Without a clear call “A critical area to support the openness of the legislature or the electoral of importance in process within the grand challenges, efforts to strengthen democracy and good governance in Africa fail to connect to the the democracy normative frameworks member states are already committed ecosystem within to. Although one may argue that the grand challenges on im- the continent proving public integrity or improving public services could doesn’t easily easily address this, those challenges don’t sufficiently address this interface that exists between the legislature and the exec- find a home utive. Electoral openness supports and is supported by legisla- within the five tive openness and if the global community is truly committed grand challenges to supporting Africa, this has to be a central part of the agenda of the OGP. This for initiatives like OGP to be relevant. Second, the existence of a parliament whose members are

area is electoral openness.”

committed to democracy and good governance, including public participation, is of vital importance in attempts at mainstream open government. Although in this regard my experience is limited to just one country, it is likely that my views would be echoed by others working in Africa and the global south in general. Open government initiatives anchored in the executive without legislative support are likely to suffer from low levels of engagement or resource allocation once their champions exit government. The long arduous journey travelled by those working on access to information can attest to this in some way. Wherever a freedom of information bill was not passed by an administration, the reset button was hit when a new administration came into  92 

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office postponing the realization of a legislated freedom of information dispensation for yet a while longer. Placing the legislature and legislative openness at the center of open government initiatives is the only way of making sure they outlast the current administration and thrive in the next. Third, we are at the dawn of a new era in international development and the

pursuit of equitable, sustainable and transformative prosperity for all. A set of sustainable development goals will be adopted by United Nations member states in September 2015 and these goals will be domesticated through policy such as realignment of the long term national development plans and also through legislation such as the enactment of legislation to curb illicit financial flows or stop discrimination of young women. The participation of citizens in the affairs of the executive will be of vital importance to safeguarding development gains over the next fifteen years. However, the institution with the delegated mandate to provide oversight over the affairs of the executive is the legislature. It is the legislature that can ensure citizens have a seat at the table and their voices count. Public participation for follow-up and review is an imperative in the new development agenda and only the legislature can ensure that this happens by creating permanent mechanisms for citizen voices. The centrality of the legislature in open government, especially in democracies where the sanctity of separation of powers is protected and enforced, is therefore a given in our line of work. The importance of openness in the legislature is therefore of fundamental importance for development and the improvement of the quality of life for Africa’s people. This calls for two principles for every legislature committed to the welfare of the people it represents.

Principle 1: Legislate Openness Open government requires key ingredients to be in place. Some of these are prepared in the executive but it’s the role of the legislature to ensure they are served for all through law. The role of the judiciary is to ensure they are followed. Three ingredients come to mind which, if parliaments ensure they exist lay a great foundation for those working on improving service delivery, equitable resource allocation and public integrity.  93 

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Access to information & data privacy laws. Not all information that is of

interest to citizens and other stakeholders will be proactively released by the executive. A great deal of data and information that is necessary for the planning and delivery of interventions to end poverty requires processing and investments which state officers would, quite prudently, not undertake without a clear request. Access to information laws provide the legal framework for these requests while data privacy laws help to draw the line on what information and data can be publicly available even through FOI requests. Access to data and information by non-state actors allows parliaments to leverage the wisdom and near omnipresence of the citizens to execute its oversight mandate. Laws to ensure free, fair, accountable and transparent electoral processes. Elections are the epitome of the con-

testation in politics. Their highly contested nature means the incentive to manipulate them for the benefit of a specific party or group is high. The credibility of the process speaks to the legitimacy of the resulting executive and the member of parliament. A tainted process calls into question the representative nature of the house and can adversely affect public participation and open government efforts as a whole. Holding governments to account for the quality of elections and the general electoral process requires a legal environment that is put in place by the legislature. Transparent, accountable and participatory management of political parties is at the core of democracy. How party

"Open political parties may be the largest missing ingredient in our democracies to date and could have catalytic impact on open parliaments."

nominations are conducted, how parties are financed, how resources are spent or allocated can determine who ends up in parliament, or not. It can also serve to reinforce or positively change the perceptions of citizens in political parties. Participation in political parties contributes to their representative nature and by extension the representative nature of the parliament that emerges from an election process. The government of political parties, their openness and the participation of citizens within them remains largely uncharted territory for the open government community but one which parliaments can play a ď&#x161;š 94 ď&#x161;¸

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leadership role in opening up. Open political parties may be the largest missing ingredient in our democracies to date and could have catalytic impact on open parliaments.

Principle 2: Legislate Openly The principle of separation of powers doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves within the open government movement. The impact of this is observed in national action plans in which commitments to openness in the judiciary or the legislature are included sometimes without broad consultation within those arms of government. It is therefore the responsibility of the legislature to make its own commitments to openness and implement them. Three ways in which parliaments can legislate openly and embed openness in the business of the house come to mind. Make public participation possible in house business to

"It is therefore the responsibility of the legislature to make its own commitments to openness and implement them."

strengthen the oversight function of the house. The committees cannot be everywhere and only the citizens the members represent can tell them when service delivery is failing, corruption is growing or the resource allocation is ineffective. Make parliamentary budgets and expenditures open. The

house loses its moral authority to call out the executive or judiciary on wanton waste or failures to disclose infractions when it doesn’t do so itself. The legislature should lead by example as it has the dual mandate to represent tax payers whose money is spent and to exercise oversight over how it is spent.

Make the processes of the business of the house transparent to allow

for citizen feedback and scrutiny in order to safeguard the integrity and legitimacy of parliament. How laws are made, what informs their formation and how they make their way through the various stages can sometimes be shrouded in mystery in the view of citizens. Deliberate efforts to educate citizens on how parliament conducts its business can  95 

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empower them to speak into or during the process. Public participation can be difficult to realize when citizens don’t have adequate, timely and complete information on the business being conducted and the role they can play. As we continue to develop multi-stakeholder partnerships for development or for better governance and accountability, we need to examine more closely the composition of the stakeholder groups. Are the civil society organizations only national with no sub-national organizations? Are they predominantly international organizations rather than indigenous ones? Is the national audit office and the office of the ombudsman represented? Are parliamentarians at the table? I hope that at the next OGP summit, we won’t be asking “Where are the Parliamentarians?”

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THE WORK OF THE LATIN AMERICAN NETWORK FOR LEGISLATIVE TRANSPARENCY By María Jaraquemada Hederra, DIRECTOR OF ADVOCACY, FUNDACIÓN CIUDADANO INTELEGENTE [INTELLIGENT CITIZEN FOUNDATION], CHILE & Agustina De Luca, PLEGISLATIVE TRANSPARENCY COORDINATOR FOR DIRECTORIO LEGISLATIVO, ARGENTINA

The Red Latinoamericana por la Transparencia Legislativa (RLTL) [Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency] emerged in 2010 with the mission of raising the standards of transparency in the legislative powers of the region, actively promoting good practices already in place, and promoting collaboration between peers.

n this way, a group of civil society organizations (CSOs) from different countries in the region came together to promote legislative transparency, and to join forces in order to promote higher accountability, participation, and openness standards in local, national, and regional parliaments. Some of the objectives that the Network pursues are: to generate instruments that allow the measurement and documentation of the progress in legislative transparency of the states; to offer recommendations and proposals to better the standards of transparency in the congresses of the region; to push national initiatives forward; to promote awareness between peers and the exchange of knowledge between organizations that work with congresses; and, to be a reference in respect to legislative work at a regional level.

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Thus, in its beginning, the Network was composed of 15 organizations 1 in 5 countries. Currently, the Network is composed of 22 organizations 2 from 11 Latin American countries. Transparency and access to legislative information is an essential element for the strengthening of democracy in the region and for adequate accountability, allowing true and effective citizen participation in decision making processes. In addition, transparency helps prevent corruption, which affects many countries in the region. The legislative power is the body where representatives directly elected by the citizens are, but it is also the government body with the least information in comparison with many national governments in the region. The direct representatives of the citizens are the ones who should be held accountable about their activity, yet they are not, or they do so in a deficient or sporadic way. Because of this, the project aims to work in conjunction with the organizations of each country belonging to the RLTL, sharing successful experiences, mutually learning from failures, and agreeing on the best ways to improve the lowest indicators of each country. With the objective of having a diagnosis of the state of transparency and access to information in the congresses of the region, the Network undertook its first Latin American Legislative Transparency Index in 2011, in which they systematized and compared the legislative processes, types of information available, various good practices, and methods of citizen participation in the congresses. 1 Directorio Legislativo, Poder Ciudadano, CIPPEC y ADC de Argentina; Chile Transparente, Ciudadano Inteligente and ProAcceso de Chile; Instituto de Ciencia Política, Transparencia por Colombia and Congreso Visible de Colombia; Asociación Civil Transparencia, Reflexión Democrática and Ciudadanos al Día de Perú; and Fundar and Impacto Legislativo de México. 2 The organizations are: Acción Ciudadana, de Guatemala; ACIJ, de Argentina; Asociación Civil Transparencia, de Perú; Bolivia Transparente, de Bolivia; Chile Transparente, de Chile; CIPPEC, de Argentina; Ciudadano Inteligente, de Chile; Congreso Transparente, de Guatemala; Congreso Visible, de Colombia; DATA, de Uruguay; Fundación Directorio Legislativo, de Argentina; Fundar, de México; Impacto Legislativo, de México; Instituto de Ciencia Política, de Colombia; Observatorio Legislativo, de Ecuador; Poder Ciudadano, de Argentina; Reflexión Democrática, de Perú; Semillas para la Democracia, de Paraguay; Transparencia Mexicana, de México; Transparencia por Colombia, de Colombia; Transparencia Venezuela, de Venezuela and Visión Legislativa de México.  99 

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During the years 2013 and 2014 the members of the RLTL worked diligently to modernize and update the methodology of the Index, given the advancement of new technologies and the fact that the quantity of congresses it evaluates doubled.

2014 Index3 The Index of Legislative Transparency measures a series of indicators in 10 countries in the region4 and is done with the objective of contributing to the institutional strengthening of our congresses and assemblies; to systematize, monitor, analyze, and spread relevant information on the legislative powers; as well as to facilitate the exchange of good experiences from the perspective of transparency, accountability, and the access that citizens have to said bodies. It gathers varied information that is very relevant regarding the primary regulations and practices of the congresses of each country in relation to the indicators previously mentioned. Furthermore, this Index proposes a series of minimum standards of transparency in the political, administrative, and legislative work of the congresses of the region in order to get an assessment—systematically practiced— becomes a reference for knowing the level of progress of transparency in these countries. It should be emphasized that these standards and indicators were constructed by the members of the RLTL directly, based on the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness5, and that they do not presume to be absolute or definitive, but rather a mere foundation upon which to build and demand more transparency and accountability from our congresses. The Index is compiled of 4 aspects and 48 indicators. The 4 aspects measured were Regulations, Work of Congress or Assembly, Administrative Budget and Management, and Citizen Participation. 3 In the near future general results from the Index will be offered. To access the complete information and individual results for each country, log in to indice2014.transparencialegislativa.org 4 They applied the Index in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru, and Venezuela. Uruguay participated in only one aspect of the Index. Paraguay is also currently participating. 5 Adopted by more than 160 organizations of parliamentary monitoring around the world. Available at www.openingparliament.org  100 

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For the purpose of simplification, and to facilitate the reuse of this evaluation in other countries or regions, the Network decided to assign 10% to the Regulation dimension and 30% of the other three. This way, the focus is on parliamentary and administrative management as well as the degree of relation to citizens, while also evaluating the effective implementation of the regulation and development of proactive public policies that lean toward openness and access to public information; since it is considered that the laws and regulations that regulate congress vary far less over time and do not represent a substantial variation in the final results of the Index. Thus, in future surveys, the progress or setbacks in the various congress subject matters will be more easily examined. Likewise, to calculate the average in each aspect and the final average, the simple average method was used to make the comparison easier Each dimension is composed of a series of indicators that measure the corresponding subject matter; particularly the existence, relevance, and publishing of the regulation and the information available about the activity of congress, as well as its timeliness and format of publication. The overall average by country can be observed in the following graph:

Latin American Index of Legislative Transparency Latin America average

40% 55%

Peru

53%

Chile 49%

Ecuador

46%

Guatemala 38%

Colombia Mexico

37% 36%

Argentina Bolivia Venezuela

24% 21% ď&#x161;š 101 ď&#x161;¸

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As a result of the 2014 Index, one can see that, on average, the Latin American congresses or national assemblies scored 40% transparency. Peru (55%) and Chile (53%) had levels of transparency greater than 50%, while Venezuela (21%) and Bolivia (24%) are the countries that were found to be the most lagging, with figures lower than 25%. It is important to highlight that not one country achieved results higher than 70%, which indicates an important gap between that which we consider to be optimal in a Congress and the end results of each one’s evaluation in this survey. On the other hand, the graph presented below shows the general percentage obtained in each aspect.

Transparency according to each aspect: Regulation

44%

Work of Congress or Assembly Administrative budget and management

45% 26%

Service Mechanisms, Citizen Participation, and Accountability

From the previous graph, we can see that, in general, the level of fulfillment of the aspects is consistent, except in reference to the administrative budget and management, in which transparency is quite deficient, coming in at just 26%.

I. Regulation: This aspect measures the existence of a regulation regarding legislative transparency and its reach and the type of legal regulation that it deals with—laws, regulations, agreements, ordinances, foundations, guidelines, criteria, etc.  102 

46%

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Here, only Peru (59%) and Ecuador (51%) yielded performances above 50% and, continuing with the general tendency, Bolivia (30%) and Venezuela (32%) present the greatest lags in respect to the rest of the countries in the region, although it is in this aspect that they obtained their best results. In this aspect they considered indicators such as the existence of regulation of matters such as transparency and access to information, lobbying or advocacy, recording of interests and participation in parliaments. Likewise, it measured the existence of regulations that established the publishing and recording of the work in plenaries and committees; the publishing and auditing of congressional expenses; the publishing of personal information and information about parliament’s work, and the existence of an ethics code. The results by country are shown in the following table:

Regulation Latin America average

44%

Peru

59%

Ecuador

51%

Mexico

47%

Chile

46%

Argentina

46%

Guatemala

43%

Colombia Venezuela Bolivia

35% 32% 30%

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II. Work of Congress or Assembly: This aspect evaluates the existence and publishing of the different means used by congress members to make known the fulfillment of their work—individual or of the bench—in legislative matters (such as debates and votes), of political control (to the different branches of power) and election of authorities (selection of high officers). The factor considers both the transparency criteria that they are bound to by law (and their justified exceptions) and the voluntary publishing acts that each parliament adopts "There still In this way, the Index measured the possibility to access information such as: documents with the topics to be discussed in the plenaries, documents that record the legislative memory of the plenaries, attendance to the plenaries, nominal votes of the parliament members in the plenaries, creation of committees and their agendas, attendance to committee sessions, publishing of travel information, and registry of gifts to parliament members. This aspect is where the greatest scattering of results is recorded between countries. Uruguay—which only participated in this indicator—scored 67% in transparency, followed by Peru (60%), Argentina (57%), and Guatemala (52%). Once again, Bolivia (24%) and Venezuela (12%) are the ones who are lagging behind the most.

remains much to advance in regard to the formats of publication and availability of information, particularly in regard to open and reusable formats."

Despite being the aspect in which the countries achieved the highest scores, it is worth highlighting that there still remains much to advance in regard to the formats of publication and availability of information, particularly in regard to open and reusable formats. The following table shows the results by country in this aspect.

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Work of Congress or Assembly Uruguay

67%

Peru

60%

Argentina

57%

Guatemala

52%

Chile

49%

Mexico

46%

Colombia

46%

Ecuador

42%

Bolivia Venezuela Latin America average

24% 12% 45%

III. Administrative budget and management: This aspect evaluated the publishing of congresses’ use and management of financial and human resources, as well as the existence of internal and external controls on the legislative budget. This aspect takes into consideration both the effective fulfillment of the regulation in reference to the administrative aspect, as well as the proactive transparency of the congresses in publishing information independently of their obligations. In this case, the aspects considered were the publishing of information such as the budget, information about its execution, internal and external auditing, salaries, and other benefits given to members of parliament, advisors to congress members, financial statements for trips taken by legislators for work reasons, public hiring and calls for personnel. It is in this aspect that the lowest scores of the congresses and national assemblies in the region were recorded, with an average of barely 26%. It  105 

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is extremely interesting that precisely this information about how they run the public budget is the least public and the most difficult to access. Indicators of the averages obtained in this aspect:

Administrative Budget and Management Chile

50%

Ecuador

36%

Peru

32%

Guatemala

32%

Colombia

25%

Mexico

21%

Argentina Bolivia Venezuela Latin America average

17% 13% 12% 26%

IV. Mechanisms of participation, citizen services and accountability: In this case, the Index evaluated both the effective fulfillment of the regulation and the accountability of the congress or assembly members, as well as the mechanisms implemented proactively by those same congress or assembly members that allow and guarantee the correct citizen participation and services. Among the indicators that it took into consideration were: the existence of an information office within the national congress or assembly, the existence of a mechanism by which they resolve conflicts related to access to public information, a national congress or assembly TV channel, publishing of information online, publishing of information about legisď&#x161;š 106 ď&#x161;¸

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lator activities, publishing of legislator information, media access to the congress or assembly precinct, and citizen participation. This aspect is the one that received the highest score as a whole. Highlighted are Peru (68%), Ecuador (68%), and Chile (65%), with scores above 60%. Meanwhile, Argentina (23%) and Venezuela (27%) did not reach a 30% transparency in this aspect. The results obtained for each country are shown below.

Service Mechanisms, Citizen Participation, and Accountability Peru

68%

Ecuador

68%

Chile

65%

Guatemala

55%

Colombia

45%

Mexico

33%

Bolivia

31%

Venezuela Argentina Latin America average

27% 23% 46%

Conclusions The results gathered in the 2014 Index are not very auspicious in regard to the openness and transparency that our congresses should have regarding their activity, budget, and citizen participation. Undoubtedly, there is much more progress to be made in the matter, and even though there are different standards in the varying countries, the general result in the region is not satisfactory. ď&#x161;š 107 ď&#x161;¸

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To what has already been pointed out in each aspect, it is fitting to add that it observed a great deficit in terms of open formats and data for the production, standardization, and publication of parliamentary, budget, and administrative information. In addition to there not being any regulation about these, the congresses or assemblies were not found to be very receptive to modifying their customs or to publishing data in reusable formats so that citizens, programmers, journalists, and social organizations could take it for their own analysis. 6 This is an important aspect, considering that new technology and new systems to analyze and share information require easy access that is complete and timely to the legislative information in order "Undoubtedly, to produce and spread information of public interest.

there is much more progress to be made in the matter."

The Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency aims to be a reference in the region on the matter of openness and good practices of our congresses, to contribute to a strengthening of democracy and accountability of our congresses, given that they are the representative body par excellence in any democracy and home to the representatives of citizens in each country. We hope to be able to contribute through the offering of specific data and standards of parliamentary openness, to offer a deeper discussion on the cultural change that we need in the region, so that our legislators and congress members are more responsible and held accountable by all citizens for their actions.

6 One of the few exceptions is the Congress of Chile which in June of 2014 opened up a site of open data: http://opendata.congreso.cl/ ď&#x161;š 108 ď&#x161;¸

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OPEN PARLIAMENTS ACHIEVEMENTS & CHALLENGES

A TRUE PARTNERSHIP INVOLVES TWO By Eduardo Bohórquez, (@ebohorquez) EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, TRANSPARENCIA MEXICANA, MEXICO

& Alejandra Rascón, (@alerascon) PROGRAM COORDINATOR, TRANSPARENCIA MEXICANA, MEXICO

In 2014, Mexico led global efforts in open parliament issues. Today, stagnant, it watches as other action plans pass by.1 » According to the Global Corruption Barometer, the legislative power is among the institutions that have the least trust among the population; 83% of those surveyed in Mexico consider the institution to be “extremely corrupt”2. » Close to 70% of Mexican voters, surveyed upon exiting the voting booths, expressed not knowing their legislator, never having seen them, and not feeling represented.3 » Only in 2014, Transparencia Mexicana registered news reports related to 137 legislative scandals in the country, 78 of which correspond to topics concerning poor administration and the spending of resources assigned to the legislative institutions.4 1 Bohórquez, Eduardo (@ebohorquez). “In 2014, Mexico led global efforts in #OpenParliament. Today, stagnant, it watches other action plans pass by: https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=https://idfi.ge/public/upload/ Open+Parliament+Georgia+Action+Plan+%282015-2016%29.pdf …” [26 August 2015, 9:09 am] 2 Transparency International, Global Corruption Barometer 2013, https://www.transparency.org/gcb2013/ country/?country=mexico

3 Fundación Este País, El sentir ciudadano. National survey on the feelings of citizens, Este País Journal, no. 222, September 2009, p. 11.

4 Of the 137 recorded scandals, 78 of them corresponded to the noncompliance of open parliament principle 4 “referring to the budgetary and administrative information, an open parliament seeks to publish and disclose timely information with details on the management, administration, and spending of the budget assigned to the legislative institution, as well as the bodies that incorporate it.” The Chamber of Deputies was involved in 30 scandals while Senators recorded 16 scandals on the topic. The Congress of Jalisco and the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District were the other two institutions that underpinned the list, already having been seen as involved in 12 and 20 scandals respectively.  110 

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1. Civil society, promoter of open parliament in Mexico In 2013, in the framework of the Open Government Partnership, or (OGP), which Mexico has been a founding member of since 2011, and aware that the efforts towards openness should be applied not only to the executive power, but also in other areas such as legislative power, civil society organizations Transparency Mexicana and Fundar Centro de Analysis e Investigación A.C. [Fundar Center of Analysis and Research] agreed to make a call out to more social organizations specializing in transparency, parliamentary monitoring, and open data to come together and form the Grupo Impulsor de la Alianza por el Parlamento Abierto [Driving Group for the Open Parliament Alliance] in Mexico. Among the first results obtained by Organizaciones de la Sociedad Civil impulsoras del Parlamento Abierto (CSO - OP) [Civil Society Organizations pushing for Open Parliament]5, was the creation of Ten Principles for Open Parliament in Mexico, as well as a set of 95 variables on which an assessment of the state of openness in the legislative bodies in Mexico was based. The Ten Principles for Open Parliament in Mexico are described in Annex 1 and are listed as follows: 1. The right to information. 2. Citizen participation and accountability. 3. Parliamentary information. 4. Budgetary and administrative information. 5. Information about legislators and public servants. 6. Historical information. 7. Open and non-proprietary data. 8. Accessibility and information sharing. 9. Conflicts of interest. 5 The organizations that the Grupo Impulsor de la Alianza por el Parlamento Abierto [Driving Group for the Open Partnership Alliance] includes are: Arena Ciudadana; Borde Político; Consorcio para el Diálogo Parlamentario y la Equidad; Fundar Centro de Análisis e Investigación; Gestión Social y Cooperación (GESOC); Instituto Mexicano para la Competitividad (IMCO); Impacto Legislativo; OPI Inteligencia Participativa; SocialTic; Sonora Ciudadana; Transparencia Mexicana, and Visión Legislativa.  111 

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10. Legislate in favor of open government.

The 95 variables created by the CSO - OP group, which can also be found in Annex 2, consist of a set of indicators that seek to materialize the principles of open parliament in concrete actions that legislative bodies should perform in order to become institutions that are open and close to their citizens. These variables represent a starting point—a base level—to undertake this task, and they should ideally be modified to adapt to the identified necessities and commitments co-constructed between representatives and the represented. It should also be pointed out that the development of the open parliament variables came from a global perspective, consequently designed in such a way that they can be applicable to Mexico or any other legislative institution in the world.

“The development of the open parliament variables came from a global perspective.”

With regard to the actions undertaken by social organizations to build a partnership with the legislators, after a year of work together with the Senate of the Republic through its Committee on the Guarantee of Access and Transparency of Information (COGATI), on September 22nd, 2014, a launch of the “Declaration on the Open Parliament Alliance in Mexico”6 took place and was signed by the Senate of the Republic, the Federal Institute of Transparency and Access to Public Government Information (now INAI), and the CSO - OP group, containing the following objectives:

I. Install a Tripartite Technical Secretariat with representation of each one of the parts of Open Parliament Alliance that, among other things, develops the methodology for the elaboration of action plans, and; II. To bring together the Congresses of the Federal Entities of the country, the bodies guaranteeing access to information, and the civil society of 6 Launch Declaration of the Partnership for Open Government in Mexico, http://www.senado.gob.mx/comisiones/cogati/eventos/docs/Declaracion_220914.pdf  112 

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the whole country, to join this Open Parliament Alliance. This Open Parliament Alliance seeks to resume the collaborative working experience that it had between civil society and the government in the Open Government Partnership (OGP), replicating the concept of the Tripartite Technical Secretariat as a high-level space for the definition of openness strategies for the legislative power at a national level; to create a permanent working group between civil society and legislators; and to co-build specific plans of action that will contribute to the openness of the 347 legislative bodies in the country. At that time, Mexico was playing a leading role in the world in terms of legislative openness, so much so that when it became the president of the OGP’s Directive Committee in October of 2014, it included in the Visión País [Country Vision] the objective to “encourage other (legislative) powers to incorporate the principles of open government and to put together action plans created with help from the citizens”. However, it should be said that to this day, there still is no tripartite working group formed by legislators, civil society, and the body that guarantees access to information. Therefore, there are no action plans that establish concrete commitments to open the 34 legislative institutions of the country.

2. The set goals: parliamentary openness at a national level Mexico is a federation and as such, each one of its 32 federal entities has a legislative institution. In addition to these, the Congress of the Union is formed by the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of Senators. The majority of the studies, surveys, legislative observation exercises, and some of the efforts for parliamentary openness in the country are found in the Congress of the Union. However, the remaining 32 legislative institutions also have a fundamental role in the lives of Mexicans and present equal challenges in matters of openness and the rebuilding of 7 The 34 legislative bodies in Mexico are: Senate of the Republic, the Chamber of Deputies, the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District, and the 31 Local Congresses.  113 

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citizen trust. Because the right to information is a universal right and one of the fundamental principles of open government, from the beginning of the CSO - OP group, the objective has been to guarantee equal levels of openness and transparency in the 34 legislative bodies in the country, for in the contrary, there would be “first and second-class” “The right to citizens depending on the institution with which they interact, information is the public information available to them, and the possibility to a universal right participate in the decision making that affects their daily lives. In 2013, in the OGP Global Summit in London, citizen demand for openness set a goal that by 2015 more than half of the 34 legislative bodies in the country would have assumed concrete commitments in terms of open parliament. Two years later, we see other countries moving forward, while Mexico lags behind.

and one of the fundamental principles of open government”

3. The Assessment of open parliament in Mexico On April 13th, 2015, we in the CSO - OP presented the first Assessment of Open Parliament in Mexico 8, which allowed us to know the degree of compliance with the Ten Principles of Open Government and to make a specific evaluation of the level of openness of each one of the 34 legislative bodies in the country using the 95 variables, gathering the following general results: Of the ten principles that are evaluated in this assessment, only one, the one related to the exercise of the right to information, presents a compliance above 80%, and in nine of the ten principles remaining, the legislative institutions presented a level of compliance with the elements of open parliament below 60%. 8 To access the Open Parliament in Mexico Diagnostic and the databases about the 34 legislative bodies analyzed from the country, visit http://www.parlamentoabierto.mx .The elaboration of this diagnostic was possible thanks to the resources invested by each one of the organizations that push for Open Parliament and the economic resources provided by the core of organizations that promote the Partnership for Open Government in Mexico that allowed the construction of a website and the creation of the public event to present the results.  114 

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Level of compliance with the Ten Principles of Open Parliament in Mexico in 2014

1. The right to information

84%

8. Accessibility and information sharing

59.8%

3. Parliamentary information

57.8% 50%

6. Historical information 39.7%

2. Citizen participation and accountability 5. Information about legislators and public officials

37.2%

4. Budgetary and administrative information

23.5%

9. Conflict of interest 10. Legislate in favor of open government 7. Open and non-proprietary data

16% 2.9% 0.3%

The principles that present a greater degree of compliance are the right to information (84%); followed by accessibility and information sharing (59.8%); and parliamentary information (57.8%), respectively. The principles that presented a lesser degree of compliance were the use of open data (0.3%); legislating in favor of open government (2.9%); and the prevention of conflicts of interest (16%). Perhaps the three most sensitive limitations that affect the trust of citizens in their legislators and that show up in the assessment with a level of compliance below 40% are: little information about legislators (37.2%), little detailed information about the budget and its use (23.5%), and the very limited regulation of topics related to conflict of interests and lobbying (16%). ď&#x161;š 115 ď&#x161;¸

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In terms of citizen participation, we must ask ourselves why, while the principle of right to information (84%) and accessibility and information sharing (60%) have the highest level of compliance, the level of compliance for the principle of citizen participation is only 39.7%. Regarding the strategic use of information technology, although the assessment shows that the principle of open data and non-proprietary format has the lowest level of compliance (0.3%), it is interesting to see mobile applications emerging, created by a variety of actors (media, citizens, businesses, and the legislators themselves) that seek to open Congress of the Union information, presenting it in a way that is easy to understand and increases citizen monitoring.9 Regarding the analysis at a national level, we observed that the Chambers of Deputies and Senators are the ones with the highest level of compliance with the principles of open parliament, although neither of them reached a score above 60%. A first explanation could be that they have more economic and human resources. However, after analyzing the 34 legislative bodies, we can see no existing correlation between the budget for legislators and the level of compliance with the principles, nor correlations in terms of population. The assessment of the level of parliamentary openness, in addition to a conceptual framework focused on complying with the ten principles, allowed us firstly to know the strengths and areas of opportunity for Mexican legislative institutions, and in the medium term hopes to serve as a tool for advocacy that allows us to channel the efforts pushing for parliament to be open at a national level in an organized way.

“Of the ten principles that are evaluated in this assessment, only one, the one related to the exercise of the right to information, presents a compliance above 80%,”

9 Among the mobile applications created in the last year to promote parliamentary monitoring in Mexico are: Observatorio del Congreso [Observing Congress], http://data.eluniversal.com.mx/observatorio-congreso/; Atlas Político [Political Atlas], http://www.atlaspolitico.mx/ranking-diputados Pleno Ciudadano [Full Citizen], http://propulsar.com.mx ; Ojo al Senado [Eye on the Senate], http://comunicacion.senado.gob.mx/index.php/ multimedia/imagenes/73-fotografias/16745-aplicacion-movil-qojo-al-senadoq.html  116 

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4. Legislators committed to government and parliamentary openness Open parliament is much more than obligations related to transparency and access to information about the legislative power established by Mexico’s Constitution and laws. The concept of open parliament covers access to information, as well as citizen participation, accountability, innovation and the use of information technology.

“The concept of open parliament covers access to information, as well as citizen participation, accountability, innovation and the use of information technology.”

Since 2013, the group of organizations that push for open parliament in Mexico have worked together with legislators from different parliamentary groups that share and support from their trenches in this battle to transform our legislative institutions into open parliaments. Although these efforts have not been enough to be able to speak of a policy of parliamentary openness in this country, we should recognize the valuable effort of those legislators who blaze trails, co-build, innovate, and take risks. It is necessary to refer to these cases as examples that show that when there is true collaboration between legislators and civil society, a collaboration that is not just words, it is possible to reach concrete goals that mark milestones in the journey. We can cite the following cases:

A) Active participation of civil society and academic organizations in the

process of drafting the initiative for the General Law of Transparency and Access to Public Information, at the end of 2014 and in early 2015, considered to be an open parliament process10, that materialized what then Senator of the Republic, Arely Gómez González11 stated: “True participation 10 The Fundar Center of Research and Analysis A.C. “The General Law Initiative of Transparencia should improve in order to guarantee the objectives” [2 December 2014]. http://fundar.org.mx/la-iniciativa-de-ley-general-detransparencia-debe-mejorarse-para-garantizar-los-objetivos/#.Vfz4_OksHF8 11 Arely Gómez González; Hacia una Nueva Relación con la Ciudadanía: Parlamento Abierto [Towards a New Relationship with Citizens: Open Parliament]; “Open parliament: a new vision of elected representation in the Senate of the Republic”, México, 2013, p. 204.  117 

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takes place in a context of openness in the decision-making process”; B) “Legislador Transparente” 12 [Transparent Legislator], launched in Feb-

ruary 2015, is an initiative created jointly by legislators and civil society, aims to create a new, trustworthy political class through an invitation to the legislators to make public their financial statements, taxes, and interests. As indicated by Senator Laura Rojas (who participates in the Transparent Legislator initiative) in the article Parlamento Abierto: Mecanismo Legal y Cultural de Rendición de Cuentas [Open Parliament: Legal and Cultural Devices for Accountability]13, “there is a difference between a parliament that fulfills its obligations of transparency and one that has committed itself to building a new relationship with the citizens, meaning an open parliament.” In order to build a new relationship with the citizens, it is necessary to rebuild trust, innovate, and be held accountable.

“In order to build a new relationship with the citizens, it is necessary to rebuild trust, innovate, and be held accountable.”

Meanwhile, Senator Zoé Robledo, who was also one of the first legislators to participate in the Transparent Legislator initiative, defines in a clear way the importance not of opening information per se, but rather of generating information that is useful for society. In his text “Mas Información No Necesariamente Significativa Mejores Decisiones” [“More Information Does Not Necessarily Mean Better Decisions”],14 he specifies that: “the issue should be seen from a different perspective: when we can build and create better public information, we will be able to really achieve a liberating change for our environment”. “Transparent Legislator” responds to this premise, offering relevant information on three fundamental topics to build a base 12 Initiative pushed by Transparencia Mexicana and the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO), in February of 2015 that laid down the bases for the “Candidato Transparente” [Transparent Candidate] initiative known as #3de3 http://legisladortransparente.mx/#!/ 13 Laura Rojas, Hacia una Nueva Relación con la Ciudadanía: Parlamento Abierto [Towards a New Relationship with Citizens: Open Parliament]; “Open parliament: mechanisms for legal and cultural accountability”, México 2013, p. 217 14 Zoé Robledo, Hacia una Nueva Relación con la Ciudadanía: Parlamento Abierto [Towards a New Relationship with Citizens: Open Parliament], “Más información no significa mejores decisiones” [More information does not mean better decisions], México 2013, p. 247  118 

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of trust between representatives and the represented: the assets that they have, the taxes that they pay, and the legislator’s potential conflicts of interests.

5. Mexico: why an active civil society and committed legislators have not been enough This query has more than one answer. Politically speaking, we would say that we have not achieved building the critical mass necessary to beat the resistances and generate change; in legal terms, we can say that it must be that the legal framework has established few obligations in terms of transparency for the legislative power; and in practical terms, we can say that the majority of the legislators feel comfortable as they are, and it seems “functional” to not be held accountable at an individual or institutional level. majority

“The of the legislators feel comfortable as they are, and it seems “functional” to not be held accountable.”

The legislative power performs two basic functions, which are the creating of laws and the monitoring of executive power. The legislative power is then a power accustomed to demanding accountability from the government, while not being held accountable, at least not in Mexico’s case.

The last Legislative Report from the consulting firm, Integralia 15, reiterates that transparency makes up the greatest challenge for the Mexican Congress. The cost of the legislative bodies is growing at a federal and local level, yet it does not report on the allocation of its resources. The report identifies the grants for parliamentary groups as the most serious problem and adds that in the last term (2012-2015), the parliamentary groups of the Chamber of Deputies received 2,142.85 million pesos (approximately $133 million dollars 16) in grants without providing information about how the money was used or allocated. 15 Integralia Consultores, Legislative Report number five. Second Year of the LXII Legislature (September 2013 – April 2014), http://www.reportelegislativo.com.mx/reporte5.pdf 16 To calculate the equivalent amount in US dollars a rate of 16 pesos per dollar was used.  119 

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Although legislative power has been bound by the Federal Law of Transparency and Access to Public Government information17 since 2002, this level of opacity is explained, in part, because said law established clear obligations and procedures for “The new the executive power, but not for the legislative power and General Law of empowered each one of the “other obligated parties”18 to establish their own regulations, bodies, and procedures to Transparency provide individuals with access to information. and Access However, the constitutional reform in matters of transparency promulgated in January of 2014 and the new General Law of Transparency and Access to Public Information 19 in May of 2015 marked a before and after in respect to access to information from the Mexican legislative power. The new law expands from 17 to 48 generic requirements for all of the required subjects and additionally creates a paragraph of specific requirements for the legislative, which should also update the following information and put it at the disposition of the public:

to Public Information promulgated in May of 2015 marked a before and after.”

I. Legislative agenda; II. Parliamentary Gazette; III. Daily order of business; IV. Daily reports on debates; V. Stenographic versions; VI. List of attendance to each one of the sessions in the Plenary,

Commissions and Committees; 17 Federal Law of Transparency and Access to Public Government; published in the Official Daily Report if the Federation, [11 June 2002] http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/244_140714.pdf 18 The Federal Law of Transparency and Access to Public Government Information is described as “Other Required Subjects”: Article 61. The Federal Legislative Power, through the Chamber of Senators, the Chamber of Deputies, the Permanent Commission, and the Superior Audit of the Federation; the Judicial Power of the Federation… in the area of their respective capacities, will establish, through general regulation or agreements, the bodies, criteria, and institutional procedures to provide individuals in the access to information, in accordance with the principles and terms established in the Law. 19 General Law of Transparency and Access to Public Information; published in the Official Daily Report of the Federation, May 4, 2015. http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/LGTAIP.pdf  120 

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VII. The law or decree initiatives, points of agreement, the date on

VIII. IX.

X. XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV. XV.

which they were received, the Commissions that worked on them, and any rulings established for them; Laws, decrees and agreements approved by the legislative body; The calls for meetings, records, agreements, lists of attendance and voting at commissions, committees and plenary sessions, identifying the meaning of the vote, in economic voting, and for each legislator, in the voting by roll-call, and the results of voting by ballot, as well as individual votes and reservations of expert opinion and agreements submitted for consideration; The final resolutions on political judgments and provenance declarations; The public versions of the information turned in in the public hearings, appearances, and procedures for appointment, ratification, election, and reelection, among others; The hiring of personal services and indicating the name of the service provider, purpose, amount, and validity of the contract from commissions, committees, parliamentary groups, and study sites or bodies of investigation; The semi-annual budget report on the use and allocation of financial resources for governing bodies, commissions, committees, parliamentary groups, and study sites or research groups; The results of economic, political, and social studies or research done by centers for legislative research or studies; The register of lobbyists, according to the applicable regulations.

6. The impasse, lessons learned, and next steps At the beginning of the Open Government Partnership in Mexico, when Mexican civil society declined the first plan of action drafted for the executive and pointed out that it did not reflect their concerns and proposals, we found that it was not possible to build an open government without civil society, and thus emerged the Tripartite Technical Secretariat as a  121 

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space for collaboration and dialogue. In terms of parliamentary openness, the lesson was different. We have seen how, despite the active participation of civil society, it is not possible to build an Open Parliament Alliance without the real commitment of a plural group of legislators that allow words to become actions, and their individual belief in the institutional commitment. Experience confirms that the two fundamental components of open government and open parliament are always society and government. Both players are indispensable for the success of initiatives of this kind. Conceptually, “partnership” implies “It is not the participation of two or more players. 20 However, in possible to practice there are cases in which one of the parts operates build an Open on its own, wanting without much success to build an open Parliament government and parliament. We cannot talk about open government or parliament when officials unilaterally decide the necessities of citizens; nor can we talk about it when civil society diagnoses, proposes or demands actions of openness that are not echoed by public officials, and do not translate to institutional commitments that improve people’s quality of life.

Alliance without the real commitment of a plural group of legislators.”

To sign agreements, to emit points of agreement, and organize seminars 21 on matters of open parliament are actions that contribute to the generation 20 The parts that shape the Open Government Partnership in Mexico are the executive power, civil society organizations, and the access to information guarantor body. 21 Among the actions related to topics of parliamentary openness for the Congress of the Union of Mexico is the omission of a Point of Agreement on July 23, 2013 which urges the government bodies of the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies, the State Legislators, and the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District to push the model of open parliament; the adoption of international standards like the Declaration on Parliamentary Transparency OpeningParliament.org; the organization of the Week for Transparency and Open Parliament that took place in March of 2014, of which came commitments such as the creation of a Bicameral Commission for Open Parliament, the elaboration of a work plan with concrete commitments in matters of the carrying out of a Hackathon; as well as the signing of the Declaration of the Launch of the Alliance for Open Parliament in Mexico by the two Boards that make up Congress of the Union, the Guaranteeing Body for Access to Public Information and Protection of Personal Information, and the Civil Society Organizations, September 22, 2014.  122 

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of a public debate on the topic, but if no tangible results are produced, it will only widen the gap of distrust and lack of representation in the long run. The implementation process of the new General Law of Transparency should result, in the short-term, in greater access to public information about the legislative power, and can also mean an opportunity to break the impasse, which we are currently in and allow legislators and citizens to work together to design a strategy for parliamentary openness in the country.

“When representatives know and carry the voice of those whom they represent, and when words translate into actions, then we can begin to talk about effective representation and an authentic participatory democracy.”

When representatives know and carry the voice of those whom they represent, and when words translate into actions, then we can begin to talk about effective representation and an authentic participatory democracy. Currently, what we have, according to the opinions of the majority of Mexicans22, are legislators that operate in line with the interests of their parties or themselves and that hardly incorporate the opinions, concerns, or interests of the people they represent. Mexico needs a strong coalition of legislators from all parliamentary groups in the country, at the federal and local level, that decidedly push for openness in legislative bodies in an authentic partnership with civil society that translates into action plans with useful and measureable commitments, that result in a true accountability, facilitate citizen participation, and allow the rebuilding of trust between citizens and their legislators.

22 Secretary of the Interior, National Survey on Political Culture and Citizen Practices 2012, ENCUP. http://www.encup.gob.mx To the question “What is it that officials take into consideration the most at the moment of creating laws?” 36% considered it to be party interest, 30% thought it was self-interest of the officials, and only 14% of those surveyed thought that officials take the population’s interests into account.  123 

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ANNEX 1 Description of the Ten Principles of Open Parliament in Mexico 1. The right to information. To guarantee the right to access information

used to produce, protect, possess, and safeguard –with the help of various mechanisms and methods—systems, regulatory frameworks, procedures, and platforms that allow access in a simple, easy, timely way without the need to justify the request or opinions. 2. Citizen participation and accountability. To promote the participation

of people interested in integration and the making of decisions regarding legislative activities; to use mechanisms and tools that facilitate the supervision of legislative work by the population, as well as control actions carried out by their internal comptrollers and other bodies legally designed for that. 3. Parliamentary information. To publish and share a greater amount of in-

formation relevant to people in a proactive way, using easy formats, simple search mechanisms, and online databases with periodic updates on: analysis, decision-making, voting, parliamentary agenda, and reports on the affairs of commissions, government bodies, and plenary sessions, as well as reports received from players external to the legislative institution. 4. Budgetary and administrative information. To publish and disclose

detailed, timely information on the management, administration, and spending of the budget assigned to the legislative institution, as well as the bodies that constitute it: legislative commissions, support staff, parliamentary groups, and individual elected representatives. 5. Information on legislators and public servants. To require, safeguard,

and publish detailed information about elected representatives and public servants, including the declaration of assets and the representatives’ interests.  125 

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ANNEX 2 The matrix of the 95 variables used for the elaboration of the Open Parliament Assessment in Mexico OPEN PARLIAMENT IN MEXICO: 10 PRINCIPLES AND 95 VARIABLES PROPOSED BY CIVIL SOCIETY, TO UNDERTAKE ACTIONS THAT INCREASE ACCOUNTABILITY, CITIZEN PARTICIPATION AND THE USE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN THE COUNTRY’S LEGISLATIVE INSTITUTIONS PRINCIPLE OF OPEN PARLIAMENT IN MEXICO

BASIC VARIABLE TO ANALYZE

1 » Guarantee full exercise of the right to information

1.1 The legislative must comply with the law of access to the corresponding information. The right to information. To guarantee the right to access information used to produce, protect, possess, and safeguard –with the help of various mechanisms and methods—systems, regulatory frameworks, procedures, and platforms that allow access in a simple, easy, timely way without the need to justify the request or opinions.

1.2 The legislative body has procedures so that citizens can make requests for information.

1.3 The legislative body has mechanisms so that citizens can make requests for information (Example: Infomex).

1.4 The legislative body has an office to help and inform citizens in relation to access to information (“unidad de enlace”) [liaison unit].

1.5 The address for the “Liaison Office” that helps and informs citizens in relation to access to public information is available on the legislative institution’s website.

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2 Âť Promote citizen participation and accountability

2.1 Plenary and commission voting records on the website. 2.2 Records of legislator attendance to plenary sessions. 2.3 Records of legislator attendance to commission sessions. 2.4 Legislators present an annual activities report. 2.5 There are mechanisms for direct contact with the Citizen participation and accountability. To promote the participation of people interested in integration and the making of decisions regarding legislative activities; to use mechanisms and tools that facilitate the supervision of legislative work by the population, as well as control actions carried out by their internal comptrollers and other bodies legally designed for that.

citizens that they represent in their district and/ or federal entity (link office, traveling module, and/or meetings with the community).

2.6 To put an online platform available with live, two-way interaction mechanisms between citizens and Congress at the disposal of the citizens (Example: E-Democracia).

2.7 The website allows citizens to identify the legislator with a tool using the postal code and/or electoral section.

2.8 There is a contact phone number for interaction between citizens and legislators.

2.9 There are citizen participation mechanisms in the legislative process in addition to the citizen initiative.

2.10 There are citizen participation mechanisms on the topic of budgets (Example: participatory budgets).

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3 » Publish parliamentary information

3.1 Inform citizens about the functions of the legislative body in an easy and clear way.

3.2 Explain the legislative process. 3.3 Complete list of Representatives. 3.4 The legislative body posts at least two official social media accounts on its website.

3.5 The legislative body publishes the daily agenda on its Parliamentary information. To publish and share a greater amount of information relevant to people in a proactive way, using easy formats, simple search mechanisms, and online databases with periodic updates on: analysis, decisionmaking, voting, parliamentary agenda, and reports on the affairs of commissions, government bodies, and plenary sessions, as well as reports received from players external to the legislative institution.

website, and the documents are linked.

3.6 The legislative body shares information about its daily activities through social media.

3.7 Section dedicated to the explanation of the functions of the government bodies (board and/or government commission and/or conference).

3.8 List of members of each one of the government bodies (government commission, governing body, board of directors, conference).

3.9 List of the regular commissions, and special commissions and committees.

3.10 Explanation of the functions of the administrative units of the legislative body, according to its regulations.

3.11 Organizational chart of the structure of the administrative units of the legislative body.

3.12 The legislature has a search engine on its website that is connected to the legislative body’s information.

3.13 Publish the number and/or legislative term. 3.14 Publish a list of all of the documents that are received in the exercise of its functions.  128 

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3.15 Publish updated lists of attendance. 3.16 Voting lists are published and updated. 3.17 Publish the Commission Calls for Meetings. Parliamentary information...

3.18 Publish the list of currently existing laws. 3.19 Stenographic version of the commission debates. 3.20 Stenographic version of the Plenary debates. 3.21 The daily logs of debates and/or the stenographic versions made available on the website less than 24 hours after the sessions are held.

4 » Publish budgetary and administrative information 4.1 Congress budget: approved and exercised. 4.2 The approved and exercised budget of the government bodies of the Chamber.

4.3 The approved and exercised budget of the administrative bodies. Budgetary and administrative information. To publish and disclose detailed, timely information on the management, administration, and spending of the budget assigned to the legislative institution, as well as the bodies that constitute it: legislative commissions, support staff, parliamentary groups, and individual elected representatives.

4.4 The approved and exercised budget of the committees. 4.5 The approved and exercised budget broken down by centers for study.

4.6 Approved and exercised budget of the committees or similar units. 4.7 Approved and exercised budget by parliamentary group. 4.8 Approved and exercised budget by legislator. 4.9 Online publication of the trimester reports on the execution of the expenditures.

4.10 Publish the results of completed accounting and financial audits, both internal and external.

4.11 Publish public contracts (public tenders, invitation to at least three, direct awards).

4.12 Publish the hiring of advisers and/or consultants and/or research studies, whether it be a private individual or legal persons.  129 

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5 » Publish information about legislators and public servants 5.1 The legislator’s profile contains his or her full name. 5.2 The legislator’s profile has a photo. 5.3 The legislator’s profile contains the parliamentary group to which they belong.

5.4 The legislator’s profile contains the committees that they are a part of.

5.5 The legislator’s profile has an email address to contact them by. 5.6 The legislator’s profile has listed social networks through which they can be contacted.

5.7 The legislator’s profile has listed an office location in the Information about legislators and public servants. To require, safeguard, and publish detailed information about elected representatives and public servants, including the declaration of assets and the representatives’ interests.

legislative precinct to contact them at.

5.8 The legislator’s profile contains the initiatives and other legislative items presented.

5.9 The legislator’s profile contains their attendance to the plenary.

5.10 The legislator’s profile contains their attendance to committees.

5.11 The legislator’s profile contains their CV. 5.12 The legislator’s profile contains annual and activities reports.

5.13 The legislator’s profile contains reports on trips and committees.

5.14 Public version of legislator’s declaration of assets. 5.15 Public version of their spouse or partner’s declaration of assets.

5.16 Public version of the legislator’s disclosure of interests is public domain.

5.17 Public version of the disclosure of interests of their spouse or partner and/or dependents as public domain.  130 

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6 » Publish historical information of previous legislation Historical information. To present information on legislative activity, creating a historical, accessible, and open archive in a 6.1 Have a page with information about the most recent prior place that remains constant over legislature at least. time with a permanent URL and with reference hyperlinks about legislative processes.

7 » Use open data and non-proprietary formats 7.1 The list of representatives is published in a structured and downloadable way, in an open and non-proprietary format.

7.2 The historical list of representatives of at least the last

two legislatures is published in a structured and downloadable way, in an open and non-proprietary format.

7.3 Publish a database of parliamentary advisers and

consultants in a structured and downloadable way, in an open and non-proprietary format.

7.4 Publish a database of the commissions and/or Open and non-proprietary data. To present open, interactive, and historical data using free software and open codes, and to facilitate the mass download of information in open data formats.

committees in a structured and downloadable way, in an open and non-proprietary format.

7.5 Publish a database of the public versions of the

declaration of assets in a structured and downloadable way, in an open and non-proprietary format.

7.6 Publish a database of voting records in a structured and

downloadable way, in an open and non-proprietary format.

7.7 Publish a database of attendance records in a structured and downloadable way, in an open and non-proprietary format.

7.8 Publish a database of stenographic versions in a structured and downloadable way, in an open and non-proprietary format.

7.9 Publish a database of the budget in a structured and

downloadable way, in an open and non-proprietary format.

7.10 Present the information in a way so that it can be downloaded in bulk.

7.11 Use of public software. Characteristics of software that promote free and public software.

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8 » Ensure the physical access to and live broadcasting of the sessions. 8.1 The Congress website contains the addresses and phone Accessibility and distribution. To ensure that the facilities, sessions, and meetings are accessible and open to the public, and to promote the live broadcasting of parliamentary procedures by open channels of communication.

numbers of the offices.

8.2 Physical access to plenary sessions. 8.3 Physical access to committee sessions. 8.4 Broadcasting of plenary sessions. 8.5 Broadcasting of committee sessions. 8.6 Digital audio and/or video archive of plenary and/or committee sessions.

9 » Regulate lobbying, conflicts of interest, and ethical conduct. 9.1 There is a provision that regulates lobbying or the encounters and meetings of legislators with people, businesses, and groups of interest in order to limit the discretion of lobbying activities, or there are regulations ad hoc: and this regulation requires keeping track of names, dates, issues, and agreements; as well as keeping track of all documents that legislators receive, and that all those records are public.

9.2 Publish the record of lobbying activities with names, dates,

issues, and agreements, and a record of the documents that legislators receive. Conflicts of interest. To regulate, organize, and make 9.3 There is a provision that establishes the requirement of transparent the lobbying actions, the legislator to present a disclosure of interests at the to have mechanisms to avoid beginning of the legislature. conflicts of interest, and to 9.4 There is an updated public register of the interest disclosures ensure the ethical conduct of made by the legislators on the current legislature. representatives.

9.5 There is a provision that establishes the requirement of

the legislator to excuse themselves from participating in parliamentary processes in which they have a potential conflict of interest.

9.6 Publish a list of the cases of conflict of interest that have come up in the legislature and been presented before the board of directors.

9.7 There is a Code of Ethics and/or Conduct for the officials and legislators of the legislative body.

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10 Âť Legislate in favor of open government Legislate in favor of open government. To approve laws that favor open government policies in other government branches and orders, ensuring that all of the aspects of parliamentary life incorporate those principles.

10.1 The institution legislates in favor of the open parliament agenda.

10.2 The institution legislates on matters of open government in the executive and judicial powers.

10.3 The legislative institution promotes the open government and parliament agenda at the state and municipal level of government.

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THE IMPACT OF LEGISLATIVE CHANNELS ON OPEN PARLIAMENT: THE CASE OF THE MEXICAN CONGRESS’ CHANNEL By Leticia Salas Torres FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE MEXICAN CONGRESS CHANNEL

To this day, the first questions that come up when talking about the existence of a legislative channel concern its purpose: a television channel to watch parliamentary sessions? How is parliamentary activity useful? How should it communicate? What does it want? Are the investment and the efforts worth it? What is the purpose of the transmissions?

e say “to this day” because the history of this kind of media is relatively short, and its importance in the creation of citizens, accountability, and civic development is only now beginning to be recognized. However, its history is not so short nor its achievements so vague as to not warrant studies and analyses on its importance for the strengthening of democracy in a country. It is impossible not to state that any effort to make a parliamentary body more transparent through media has been positive for society: media brings the government and the governed together, and it makes legislative actions transparent, making room for the possibility of sanctions for poor performance by voting at the polls. Research on the case of Mexico

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indicates that showing parliamentary work in the media increases the positive perception of legislators, the only counterweight against the limited or skewed information that tends to dominate in other media. Legislators, society, critics and researchers have discovered the advantages of having this kind of channel. Of course, transmitting congress sessions does not turn a country into a democracy, but it does foster accountability—a crucial element in a government system of this nature— and therefore, it contributes to the modification of old synergies and non-transparent behaviors from congress people.

Not all parliamentary channels are the same By the time the First International Congress of Legislative Television Channels took place in Mexico City in 2008, hosted by the Mexican Congress, legislative communication was categorized in “two types of channels: a) those that act as a television service for other media—meaning, that they offer the signal to other television channels, saving them money on coverage and logistics costs—that citizens can watch on the internet or cable (as is the case in Argentina and Spain); and b) those that are oriented to a general public and are constituted as media, rather than as a broadcasting service (as is the case in Mexico, France and Brazil), with 24-hour coverage and more content”1. Over the years, those that function as media have been perfecting their model in order to move toward paradigms more consistent with their public service role. In the same way, steps have been taken to contribute to the creation of indicators and the definition of tasks in order to propose an open parliament ideal. The Mexican Congress Channel case is one of them. Their work and actions since 1998, the year they started their experimental transmissions, earned them international acclaim and leadership on the subject, which is why it would be useful to talk about their specific characteristics, functionality, achievements and challenges. 1 Salas, L., & Navarro, F. (2009). Parlamento en TV, Experiencias y retos de las televisiones legislativas. Revista Mexicana de Comunicación, (marzo-abril), 45–47.  137 

OPEN PARLIAMENTS THE IMPACT OF LEGISLATIVE CHANNELS ON OPEN PARLIAMENT: THE CASE OF THE MEXICAN CONGRESS’ CHANNEL ACHIEVEMENTS & CHALLENGES

Today we can say that neither their work nor their results have been minor: “The Congress Channel changed our country’s history; it brought us closer to one of the most important yet least known parts of our government, and it gave a human face to representatives”2.

An ironclad governing body Unlike other parliamentary channels that depend on the congress’ or the assemblies’ social communication areas, the Mexican Congress Channel has a Bicameral Committee that acts as a plural, collegiate, and joint governing body. It is comprised of three parliamentarians and three senators from various parliamentary "The Congress groups rotated periodically to ensure balanced representa- Channel “is tion in Congress. This single factor has been key to the success of legislative openness by giving normative incentives to the push for agreements from the various political forces in order to mediate decisions, sustain investments and consider the citizens as the ultimate end of the Channel’s work, in other words, to give neutrality and plurality to the decisions being made.

a social and civic need, as well as an indispensable vehicle in Mexican democracy."

The Bicameral Committees’ tasks are many, and thanks to their work with governing bodies and their plenaries in their respective chambers, there has been progress in the most relevant strategic projects for the Channel’s growth, such as obtaining authorization to transmit in open television or digitalizing their productions. The legislators that make up this body have adopted the notion that, “parliament is able to be representative as long as it admits that its work is public”. This appropriation has allowed the Channel to make decisions more efficiently and have the human and economic resources necessary to ensure free and continuous transmission of its signal and content. The Bicameral Committee has turned legislators into the Channel’s ambassadors and promoters. 2 Cueva, Á. (n.d.). La envidia del mundo entero. Milenio.  138 

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Finally, the Congress Channel “is a social and civic need, as well as an indispensable vehicle in Mexican democracy. It also answers to a legislative branch that is obligated to legislate openly, to account for its actions, and to create media and instruments to make it viable”3. To this end, the Channel’s governing body was able to legitimize the existence of the Channel in the Congress of the Union’s Organic Law (1997) and to endow it with a law hierarchy procedure (2005). This action, unlike what occurs in other similar media, was successful in demanding that the political class keep the Channel, no matter the distribution of parliamentary groups or the economic interests of others, such as those of commercial television networks in our country.

Strategic self-regulatory architecture Political communication through public service media demands not only the upholding of a normative framework, but also the instrumentation of self-regulatory mechanisms to guide personnel, establish behavior limits for legislators, and also reassure the citizens about the work of parliamentary channels.

"The Consultation Council is a collegiate body that promotes ways of engaging with society, as well as access rights and freedom of expression."

In that sense, as a first measure in order to comply with the regulations, the Bicameral Committee formed its first Consultation Council in 2008 via an open invitation. The Council is comprised of 11 representatives from prestigious academic institutions. This collegiate body promotes ways of engaging with society, as well as access rights and freedom of expression; it oversees professional rigor at the Channel, and evaluates the medium’s development independently. The Council duties’ importance is evidenced in the Channel’s regulations. It is the ideal mechanism to establish alliances with society and its organizations, as well as to give a

3 Salas Torres, L. (2008). Ocho años del Canal del Congreso. Etcétera, [November].  139 

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voice to citizens regarding the medium’s work. In other words, it narrows the gap between the public’s perspective and the Channel’s programming, and at the same, it encourages the achievement of goals and the upholding of values and communication ethics. The Council meets periodically in order to ensure the continuity and relevance of the issues that concern it, among them the Channel’s openness and usefulness for society. In order to highlight its values, principles and policies, the Channel has developed a series of self-regulation documents that have become essential to everyday decision making, facing partisan expressions or an external actor’s intention to interfere with its content. The document, Communication Policy, is one of them. Just like the rest of the Channel’s code of ethics, it is subject to periodic peer review from various areas in the medium. Thanks to this document, limits have been established in the legislators’ relationship with the medium, and possible conflicts of interest have been identified, among other achievements. Far from being an obstacle, this instrument has restored the political representatives’ confidence by establishing clear rules that, for instance, ensure that no group is favored over another during key legislative discussions, achieving a greater openness and equality in the information made available to the citizens by parliamentary groups and the Channel. The other self-regulation documents include codes of ethics, guidelines, internal rules that indicate the kind of behavior expected from Channel personnel in order to fulfill its mission of being a public service medium in all aspects related to expression, as well as mechanisms to ensure editorial independence, access to information and freedom of expression. In addition, another instrument for self-regulation is expected to be incorporated: the Channel Audience Office. This mechanism not only states who the Channel works for, but also guarantees to society that a public medium such as this one will not yield to pressure, and that it has clear operation rules that aim to push for more effective accountability from Congress. The former was carried out even before the Law established this self-regulatory measure as required in the media.  140 

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More than a broadcasting medium The Channel aims to review and broadcast legislative and parliamentary activity. It also aims to contribute to informing, analyzing and discussing national problems related to the legislative activity publicly4. In this way, the Channel’s production and its 24-hour programming 365 days of the year exceed the mere transmission of what takes place in legislative spaces.

"The Channel also aims to contribute to informing, analyzing and discussing national problems related to the legislative activity publicly."

Political groups and their representatives are aware that reflections and opinions provide an opportunity to establish their views in a civic, orderly manner. Because of this, the Congress Channel has decided to include analysis and debate programs. This content balances and enriches transmissions that can go on for hours and tire the audience. They are also better at communicating with audiences by presenting essential parliamentary information in a friendlier format, in the legislators’ own words, who remain the Channel’s protagonists.

Nevertheless, it is true that there is still work to do until congress people embrace parliamentary media as the main channel for broadcasting and reference on their own work. The seduction of larger audiences, the spectacularization of politics and the trivialization of information in private media draw attention away from this purpose. This challenge should be seen as an urgent issue to be addressed, for by doing so, it creates an ideal space for discussions in a public forum without party bias, protected by the ethical principles guiding the Channel’s work and the existence of efficient methods for receiving audience feedback. News broadcasts are another element that this medium provides for citizens to better comprehend legislative activities. Practically all parliamentary channels in the world have them, but this does not necessarily 4 Canal del Congreso, (2005). Reglamento del Canal de Televisión del Congreso General de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos. Congreso General de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos.  141 

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represent proof of the editorial independence or the efforts toward objectivity, plurality or equality that should reign in a medium that uses its informative spaces to examine the everyday work of the Congress; without editorializing or interpreting the information, in order to let citizens reach their own conclusions. Fortunately, the Congress Channel’s news programs have been models of prudence and ethical commitment, as well as of strong journalistic will, as has been confirmed by opinion polls throughout the years.

Alternatives for openness in the current environment of parliamentary media For a medium with a mission like the Congress Channel’s to do its work more efficiently, it must make use of additional tools and platforms to engage and inform citizens. This contributes to a sharper scrutiny of the work of the legislature within the limits imposed by the television screen. A clear example of this is the work in the medium’s web portal and social media, which have allowed it to reach a larger, younger audience. Moreover, following the transparency principle, these channels have become alternative windows to the great number of parliamentary events that take place simultaneously, so that audiences do not miss out on the most relevant happenings.

"The Channel decided to perfect the country’s current democratic system by adopting the communities’ alternatives to follow up legislative procedures and actions."

Coming up with more options to fulfill the need for more legislative, social, educational and civic content has been a constant for the Channel since 2007. Because of this, it will shortly open new streaming signals to increase the amount and improve the quality of the events available to those interested on the internet; the Channel has also started to install robotic cameras in various parliamentary spaces in the Senate in order to obtain better coverage, and it will shortly have its own radio channel—only on the internet in its first phase—which will not only increase the number of parliamentary events available to citizens, but  142 

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also diversify the ways in which they are covered, taking advantage of the proximity and depth inherent to a medium such as the radio. Finally, another example of the search for new strategies for the punctual exercise of a democratic medium has been the citizen essay-writing contests that take into account their opinions for the creation and modification of the Channel’s programming, as well as for deeper reflection on the challenges and the fulfillment of its mission. With the latest edition of this contest, the Congress Channel, “was ahead of political times, and gave the country an example of public service State television, by asking the citizens to give their opinion and propose mechanisms on how, via their open signal, they can contribute to the auditing of the legislative power. Through this, the Channel decided to perfect the country’s current democratic system by adopting the communities’ alternatives to follow up legislative procedures and actions”5. All these actions, which will soon include universal access to their digital transmissions –in line with the most recent essay-writing contest—ensure the Mexican Congress Channel’s position at the forefront regarding the work and objectives that a parliamentary medium must accomplish. Of course, there is unfinished business. Among other challenges, for instance, is to create awareness in legislators and parliamentary groups about the discredit that it would mean to negotiate outside of the appropriate arenas for this or that issue regarding transparency or accountability within the parliament itself. So long as this ceases and dialogue takes place openly, the democratic quality of the medium and the country will grow.

Final thoughts On the Mexican Congress Channel, it is not unusual to see images from the podium or the seats showing the legislators’ political views. The Channel humanizes those expressions that the legislator assumes to be public, be it in front of other legislators or facing the television cameras. The Congress Channel is the ideal vehicle for the legislator’s assumption 5 Esteinou Madrid, J. (2014). El Canal del Congreso, ejemplo de apertura a la ciudadanía. Zócalo, (Julio), 69–70.  143 

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of public commitment regarding society. What they think, what they choose to say, or what choose not to, is recorded for posterity in the video archive “cloud” and made public by the Channel, who considers it to be of interest to the citizens. This action, in addition to being another example of accountability, represents the historical testimony of our democracy’s efficiency, of a socially-committed parliamentary medium’s work, and the performance—good or "The Congress bad, according to the citizens’ judgment—of the legislatures’ Channel is the work for Mexican society. Without a doubt, as the Channel’s Director, after having gone down and witnessed the path to broader information openness on the part of the Mexican Congress thanks to the Congress Channel, and what this has meant for Mexican democracy and to the citizens, I can do nothing else but to invite all countries of the world and all their Congresses, to say yes to all initiatives oriented to the creation or strengthening, whatever the case may be, of legislative channels and the multiple windows that new technologies allow us to open for public-service oriented communication.

ideal vehicle for the legislator’s assumption of public commitment regarding society."

I hope that in the future we will look back on the Mexican legislatures that the Congress Channel has been able to witness and record (from 2000 to the present) in a positive way, taking into account the times and the challenges the country and its citizens have faced.

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TOWARDS AN OPEN PARLIAMENT IN MEXICO: AN EVALUATION EXPERIENCE By María del Carmen Nava Polina (@MariacarmenNava) DIRECTOR OF VISIÓN LEGISLATIVA [LEGISLATIVE VISION]

“Public and independent controls are much more effective in the preparation of society so that it becomes the livelihood of an enduring democracy” claims Roger Bartra1 when he writes about how to democratize the democracy.

ivil society forms the main pillar for driving democratic changes. We are the eyes that observe, evaluate, and enforce the improvement of the execution of the power, institutions and governments. This text examines the characteristics of the legislative power in relationship to the demands of open parliament, the system of committees, approval of state debt, and legislative budget.

Challenges in the evaluation of Congress A fundamental part of the nourishment of the democratic systems is the citizens. Of what quality is the information that is within their reach to participate in public life? In regard to civil society organizations and think tanks, do they fulfill their role of giving feedback? Of distributing information and using common and direct language? Does anyone measure their reach and degree of influence to improve the status quo? 1 Roger Bartra, “Democratizar la democracia”, Revista Letras Libres, Julio 2012. At http://www.letraslibres.com/ revista/columnas/democratizar-la-democracia [29 July 2013].  146 

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As organizations conduct research, analysis, and advise on public and political affairs, think tanks provide public figures with information for a better decision making. According to the 2012 Report on the Think Tanks and Civil Society Program, there are 6,603 groups in the world. Of the top countries with the highest numbers, Mexico finds itself coming in at number 16; there is a think tank for almost every two million people. In contrast, in the United States there is one for every one hundred and seventy thousand people, which means a greater coverage of topics that enrich the democratic debate. “All that is not evaluated, depreciates” read a reflection of Miguel Ángel Gonzalo, an official of the General Court of Spain, about the openness of citizen forums in respect to parliamentary topics. The reflection talked about the convenience of integrating citizen participation into the debates and decisions of parliament.2 In Mexico we have been making use of some basic measurements for federal legislative activity for the past fifteen years. After attending international forums and reaching conclusions about the more than two hundred years that have passed since the creation of the Congress of Mexico in relation to its operation, transparency, and evaluation, the result is discouraging. Instead of celebrating a bicentennial of parliamentary life, we are facing a fifteen-year-old legislative adolescence. Some examples are keeping count of law initiatives without knowing the degree of amendment or modification taking place in committees or the plenary; also, keeping track of legislators’ attendance to plenary sessions without looking at the activity in the committees.3 It is exactly at this point that the work of the think tanks comes in - their capacity to observe reality. The evaluation, follow-up, and implementation of open parliament is a window of opportunity to bring depth to the analysis of legislative institutions. We need information that is robust, specialized, 2 Gonzalo, Miguel Ángel, “Participación en el Parlamento” at http://sesiondecontrol.com/actualidad/participacion-y-parlamento/ [29 July 2013]. 3 Index of Law Initiative Ammendments from the Mexican Chamber of Deputies 1917-2000 http://visionlegislativa.com/indice-de-enmiendas-iniciativas-de-ley-camara-de-diputados-1917-2000/ [29 July 2013].  147 

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and has an open methodology that is not only in the hands of those who can pay for it, nor in academia, isolated from the distribution of mass media. The final objective would be to reinforce the civic political culture and the quality of representation. The responsibility to supervise, evaluate, and sanction public work is the citizens’ with help from the legal system and the media. Fortunately, social networks have become a good ally for the first step in the demand for transparency. A year has already passed since the worldwide Declaration on Parliamentary Openness4, which pursues four goals: 1) To promote a culture of transparency; 2) To make parliamentary information transparent; 3) To ease access to information; 4) To allow electronic access to and the analysis of information, which implies taking advantage of new technologies to strengthen the ability to govern. In all these goals, Mexico is beginning to express a commitment through the Senate of the Republic which adopted this declaration. In turn, the Chamber of Representatives has shown signs of improving the official website, as expressed by the Special Committee of Digital Access and Telecommunications. We will see if they carry out their work agenda and if the Senate of the Republic will emulate their steps with the modernization of their own website.5

“Instead of celebrating a bicentennial of parliamentary life, we are facing a fifteen-yearold legislative adolescence.”

We should remember that in both chambers, the information on the legislative activity that their websites show is quite recent (at best, less than fifteen years). Initiatives and votes are the only things that can be found on the website of the Chamber of Representatives and not in an open data format.

4 Declaration on Parliamentary Openness http://www.openingparliament.org/declaration [29 July 2013]. 5 Press release from the Chamber of Deputies No. 0863, February 11, 2013. at http://www3.diputados.gob. mx/index.php/camara/005_comunicacion/a_boletines/2013_2013/febrero_febrero/11_11/0863_retos_para_cerrar_la_brecha_digital_aun_son_grandes_en_mexico_diputado_pablo_adame [29 July 2013].  148 

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No information about the work done in the committees is made accessible to the public; and the work reports are incomplete. The same happens with parliamentary groups and government bodies. There is a great absence of indicators that evaluate if the legislators comply with their legal obligation to supervise the executive power (beyond the Public Account). This is part of the challenge relating to information that the federal legislators should confront in order to pursue an open parliament, facing the citizen.

“There is a great absence of indicators that evaluate if the legislators comply with their legal obligation to supervise the executive power.”

The concept of open government implies transparency, participation, and collaboration. When there is a great deal of information that has not been classified or organized, that does not have an index or an accessible format to analyze it, it is like diving down into the ocean without an oxygen tank. It is necessary for engaged citizens, specialists, and legislators to grow exponentially and that they collaborate to construct a congress that forms part of a more agile democracy.

It is fitting to point out that the citizen’s right to participate in the government and have access to such information is legally supported in the international standards for human rights. Mexico in particular finds itself doubly committed since the constitutional reform published on June 10, 2011, which specified that: “The norms regarding human rights will be interpreted in compliance with this Constitution and with the international treaties on the subject, at all times favoring the people with the broadest protection possible.” In the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness, the organizations6 that monitor legislatures commit themselves to promote forty-four goals, among these: promote transparency culture through supervision; enable efficient parliamentary monitoring; provide complete and timely 6 Website for organizations that monitor the application of the “Declaration of Parliamentary Transparency” in Mexico: fundar.org.mx , impactolegislativo.org.mx y visionlegislativa.com  149 

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information; provide information on the members of parliament and the administration itself; publish reports conducted; give access to the historical information; issue information in open and structured formats; facilitate bidirectional communication with citizens. The United Nations and the Inter-Parliamentary Union presented the World e-Parliament Report in 2012 that they produce every two years7, which includes the latest data on the use and accessibility of systems, applications, and tools used in parliaments around the world. The results are derived from surveys conducted in 156 chambers and congresses worldwide. In regard to 2010, there was 54 percent more information and documents available on parliament websites. The main objective for the next two years in 46 percent of the parliaments is to increase their capacity to make information and documents available. The General Assembly of the United Nations, in September of 2010, made a call to strengthen open governments. One year later the Open Government Partnership was created as a multilateral initiative of governments and civil society organizations with the objective of promoting transparency, combating corruption, reinforcing accountability, and empowering citizens.8 A year ago already, Mexico presented a plan of action that included 38 commitments.9 The 2011 Global Integrity Report informed us that the Mexican institutions in charge of guaranteeing citizens access to information continue to make progress.10 Within the information that they track, they look at legislative transparency.11

7 “World E-Parliament Report 2012”, en http://www.ictparliament.org/WePReport2012 [29 July 2013]. 8 “Declaración sobre Gobierno Abierto”, September 2011, at http://www.opengovpartnership.org/sites/www. opengovpartnership.org/files/page_files/Declaracion_sobre_Gobierno_Abierto.pdf [29 July 2013]. 9 “Plan de Acción de México sobre Gobierno Abierto”, 20 September 2011, at http://www.opengovpartnership.org/countries/mexico [29 July 2013]. 10 “Reporte de Integridad Global: México 2011”, at http://www.globalintegrity.org/report/Mexico/2011 [29 July 2013]. 11 Website for the Alliance for an Open Government in Mexico http://aga.org.mx/SitePages/Principal.aspx [29 July 2013].  150 

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General assessments Mexico elects 1,765 legislators (628 federal and 1,137 local), of which 1,166 are presidents of committees and local congresses in the 32 federal entities. The officials’ work goes beyond legislating: they oversee, supervise, manage, represent, and monitor. They are the counterweight of the executive.

Legislative presidents: committees and congress Federal Officials, 89

Senate, 70

Local Congresses, 1 007

Source: Visión Legislativa [Legislative Vision] with data from committees in the Congress of the Union and 32 local congresses from May, 2013.

On the topic of open parliament the questions are never-ending: what is the scope and necessity of having an open data system in the national and state legislative power? The main requirement is that the legislators turn in results, inform us about their work, and make the information that they generate transparent and in open data formats. That way, its impact, implications, and scope can be analyzed, and as a colophon, to have elements to evaluate the quality of legislative representation and begin the cycle of accountability. Thus the content, structure, and reach of their websites are the basis on which the openness–transparency degree of a parliament is evaluated. The concept of open government implies transparency, intelligent information, participation, and updating; congresses in Mexico are not the exception. It is practically useless to have any amount of information without classifying it, organizing it, without an index or timeline that helps anyone  151 

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interested in locating and finding what they are looking for. The objective of parliamentary transparency is to provide information on how they function, what their rules and powers are, how they make decisions, what their votes are, how they use the public budget, the research they conduct, and the results they provide to strengthen the link of representation. Under the logic of open data, as well as the legal and constitutional powers of legislators, the categories of information that the legislative websites should include are the following seven: 1) Function and integration of Congress; 2) Performance; 3) Budget and control; 4) Citizenry; 5) Transparency; 6) Interactivity; 7) Open data. These groups integrate at least 111 elements that differentiate everything from the profiles of officials and senators, to reports on government departments and the legislative agenda, and committee vote databases. The section of open data should include databases concerning, at the very least, 19 elements, among which are found: agreements, calendar of activities, attendance to committees and plenaries, forums, budget reports, legislative reports, law initiatives, international instruments, committee integration, research, appointments and ratifications, opinions and analysis, profiles, publications, points of agreement and appearances.

Classification of website information of the Congress of the Union 24

Transparency Budget and control

9 19

Open data

Interactivity

Function an integration

Performance Citizenry

Source: Visión Legislativa [Legislative Vision], classification of Congress of the Union website information.  152 

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Along with a complete website, social media should be put to use to inform on legislative activities with ease, timeliness, and transparency. 22 percent of local congresses do not have an account12. Therefore, they don’t provide information about their work via social media to almost 15 million voters. • Baja California Sur » without parliament majority, PAN (33%) • Coahuila » PRI majority (50%) • Oaxaca » without parliament majority, PRI (36%) • San Luis Potosí » without parliament majority, PAN (37%) • Sinaloa » without parliament majority, PRI (48%) • Tlaxcala » without parliament majority, PRI (31%) • Veracruz » PRI majority (58%) The state legislative powers that shared the most information in nine months were: Morelos, Colima, Jalisco, and Guerrero. Those that have the most followers are: Sonora (10,124), Jalisco (8,036), Yucatán (5,237), Puebla (5,173), and the State of Mexico (4,765). Meanwhile, the committee system is the specialized structure par excellence that thematically analyzes the affairs turned over to the assemblies, revises the public policies and government performance. How many committees are there in local congresses in the country? Do they make their work transparent and share it? The committee system in the Mexican Congress has operated in a permanent way since 1966. With 47 years of uninterrupted work, how well known are their activities and contributions to the political system? There are 975 committees from the 32 local congresses and legislative assembly in Mexico. The extremes are located in the southwest: Yucatán is the state with the fewest committees (13), Chiapas has the most (49). The number of committees on average is 30. 12 Source: Visión Legislativa, review of activity on Twitter with samples of information, 29 October 2012 & 12 August 2013.  153 

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The statistics are as follows: One congress has less than 20 committees: Yucatán. 17 congresses have between 20 and 29 committees: Aguascalientes, Baja

California, Baja California Sur, Campeche, Coahuila, Colima, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Michoacán, Nayarit, Nuevo León, Querétaro, Quintana Roo, San Luis Potosí, Sinaloa, Tabasco, and Tlaxcala. 9 congresses have between 30 and 39 committees: Chihuahua, the Federal District, Hidalgo, Morelos, Oaxaca, Sonora, Tamaulipas, Veracruz, and Zacatecas.

Committees in local congresses

50 40 30 20 10

Yucatán Guerrero Nuevo León Colima Coahuila Tlaxcala Baja California Sur Quintana Roo Baja California Campeche Nayarit Querétaro Tabasco Aguascalientes Sinaloa San Luis Potosí Guanajuato Michoacán Chiapas Morelos Sonora Zacatecas Hidalgo Veracruz DF Oaxaca Tamaulipas Mexico Durango Jalisco Puebla Chihuahua

Source: production of Visión Legislativa [Legislative Vision] with data from local congress websites and organic laws of Congress from federative entities. Informative court: April 22, 2013  154 

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At the beginning of the LXII Legislature (2012-2015), Visión Legislativa [Legislative Vision] carried out a revision of the profiles of the Senate committee presidents: 82% have previous legislative experience (whether it be federal or local). 13 In contrast, the committee president officials in San Lázaro have an experience rate of 63%.14 Compared to the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District, which has a rate of 22%.15 We would hope that the experience would mean greater awareness of their work, yet the reality is that there is no factor that pushes to have an assembly with greater experience and that is more transparent.

“Along with a complete website, social media should be put to use to inform on legislative activities with ease, timeliness, and transparency. ”

In 2006 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights declared that public access to information is essential for democratic participation.16 We must monitor the performance, activity, scope, and use of resources not only of the plenary, but also of the system of committees, of parliamentary groups, of government bodies (Board of Directors, Meetings of Political Coordination), parliamentary support institutes and centers, and of the officials and senators individually. On the other hand, state congresses barely comply with the minimum that their transparency laws require. From a government convenience perspective, open government policies at the national and state level could result from a search for legitimacy. “It would be a way to show a will to develop good governance, utilizing the opportunities that the internet offers”, states Manuel Villoria. Mexico could apply this strategy.17

13 Nava Polina, María del Carmen, “Presidentes de comisiones del Senado: actividad tuitera” en blog La Silla Rota, 27 noviembre 2012 at http://cort.as/2xgB [29 July 2013]. 14 Nava Polina, María del Carmen, “Presidencias legislativas y rendición de cuentas” in the blog La Silla Rota, 23 October 2012 http://cort.as/2lw4 [29 July 2013]. 15 Nava Polina, María del Carmen, “La Asamblea Legislativa del D.F.: un vistazo a lo local” in the blog La Silla Rota 6 November 2012 http://cort.as/2nqR [29 July 2013]. 16 “Estudio Especial sobre el Derecho de Acceso a la Información”, Organization of the American States, Special Rapporteur for the Freedom of Expression 2007, at http://cidh.oas.org/relatoria/section/Estudio%20Especial%20sobre%20el%20derecho%20de%20Acceso%20a%20la%20Informacion.pdf [29 July 2013]. 17 “La Promesa del Gobierno Abierto” at http://www.lapromesadelgobiernoabierto.info/uno/ [29 July 2013].  155 

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Knowing how much local officials make is a basic sign of transparency. The salary for parliamentary work is the first use of public resources. There are five states that exceed the allowance of the federal official: Jalisco, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosí, Sonora, and the State of Mexico. Local officials earn between 80 thousand and 110 thousand pesos per month. Two congresses are not present in the transparency assessment: Jalisco and Guerrero. The Congress of Jalisco does not report its officials’ allowance. In November 2012, the President of Congress, together with the Administration Committee, even proposed the publication of the complete payroll on the official website18, something that has not happened to this day. The closest information was requested for transparency by the weekly magazine Proceso: they reported more than 110 thousand pesos of ‘dieta mensual’, a type of monthly allowance.19

Local official allowances by federal entity 120 000 100 000

Federal

80 000 60 000 40 000 20 000 Jalisco Guanajuato San Luis Potosí Sonora Mexico FEDERAL Tamaulipas Baja California Sur Guerrero Nayarit Nuevo León Durango Coahuila Morelos Puebla Veracruz Zacatecas Chihuahua Quintana Roo Querétaro Federal District Michoacán Tabasco Aguascalientes Campeche Hidalgo Colima Baja California Sinaloa Oaxaca Chiapas Yucatán Tlaxcala

Source: production of Visión Legislativa [Legislative Vision] with transparency data from the state congress websites and the Chamber of Representatives of the Congress of the Union. Data applicable until: February 4, 2013 18 Press Release by Congress of the State of Jalisco, 13 November 2012, at http://www.congresojal.gob.mx/Noticias-1246-diputados_proponen_corregir_.html [29 July 2013]. 19 “¿Cuánto nos cuesta un diputado?”, Proceso edición Jalisco, 3 November 2012, http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=324231 [29 July 2013].  156 

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On the other hand, the Congress of Guerrero is omitted from the law for not reporting the salaries of officials and public employees. A ruling by the State of Guerrero’s Electoral Court in 2012 found that the officials were entitled to a monthly allowance of 70 thousand pesos.20 It is necessary to have information that allows evaluation of the citizen representation body’s performance. We must contextualize the complicatedness of obtaining basic information by transparency—as are the local officials’ allowances—in order to make a quantum leap and aspire to open data about the activity and decisions of congress. Local officials are the ones who approve public debt in the states, oversee the use of resources, and apply the federal budget. Everything should be accounted for. We need concrete results to strengthen democracy, not only for the benefit of the federation but of all federal entities.

Legislative budget and state debt Public spending in the local congresses in 2013 comes at 12,676,000 pesos. It represents almost the same portion of the Congress of the Union Budget, the Federal Electoral Institute (more than eleven billion each), or the Federal Committee of Electricity (more than twelve billion). Are the resources they exercise justified by the results? The debt of each state is approved by the local officials. Until September, 2012, federal entities had accumulated almost 435 billion pesos in debt.21 Those resources are equal to the budget expenses for 2013 for the Secretaries of Public Education, Healthcare, and the Governorship combined. Regrettably, there are no consequences for the legislators that authorize these debts.22

20 State of Guerrero Electoral Court sentencing dossier TEE/SSI/JEC/183/2012, 9 August 2012, at http://www.teegro.gob.mx/consultas/sentencias/ano-2012/SSI/JEC/TEE-SSI-JEC-183-2012.pdf [29 July 2013]. 21 Public debt of the federal and municipal entities, Secretary of Finance and Public Credit, at http://www.shcp.gob.mx/Estados/Deuda_Publica_EFM/Paginas/Presentacion.aspx [29 July 2013]. 22 Expenses proposal of the Federation for the fiscal year of 2013 at http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/PEF_2013.pdf [29 July 2013].  157 

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So far, because of the current legislation, citizens, media, organizations, and academics are mute witnesses to the management of public resources and indebtedness. There are no consequences nor any allocation of responsibilities. It is our role to witness from afar—like the Hitchcock character in Rear Window— the unrestricted use of public money. At the moment, five federal entities top the list of indebted entities: the Federal District (governed by the PRD), Nuevo León (PRI), the State of Mexico (PRI), Chiapas (PRD), and Veracruz (PRI). Except for Nuevo León and Chiapas, in the rest of the local congresses the governing party has majority in their local congress. The Legislative Assembly of the Federal District has the most legislative resources for 2013 (472 billion pesos), even more than the State of Mexico, which has the largest local congress. It is interesting that Baja California has the congress with the third most resources and is the second to smallest in size. Michoacán and Jalisco follow, both with a budget of over 600 million pesos.

Budget of local congresses, changes from 2011 to 2013 50% 40% 30%

National

20% 0 -10% -20% -30%

Sonora Sinaloa Oaxaca Baja California Morelos Nuevo León Quintana Roo Zacatecas Querétaro Federal District Guerrero Campeche Yucatán Tamaulipas Veracruz NATIONAL Guanajuato San Luis Potosí Puebla Durango Michoacán Colima Mexico Nayarit Hidalgo Aguascalientes Baja California Sur Tlaxcala Tabasco Coahuila Chiapas Chihuahua Jalisco

10%

Source: produced from the state and Congress of the Union budget expenses for the fiscal years 2011 to 2013  158 

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As incredible as it seems, we identify four local congresses that reduced their budget from 2011 to 2013: Coahuila, Chiapas, Chihuahua, and Jalisco. While in two years, three states greatly increased their resources: Sonora (45%), Sinaloa (35%), and Oaxaca (32%). We have to track their activities in order to asses if the results correspond with the assigned budget.

The local government and its representatives are the first point of contact with the citizens.”

On the other hand, of the five states most in debt in 2012, four have a majority in their local congresses: the Federal District, Coahuila, Veracruz, and the State of Mexico; Nuevo León has a split government. The Federal District stands out: it is the local congress that has the largest budget in 2013, is the most in debt according to numbers from 2012, and the government party (PRD) has a majority in the house. Does this mean that divided governments lead to more responsibility in the use of public funds?

We should remember public state debt is approved by its local congresses, with the exception of the Federal District, which must be authorized by the Congress of the Union, as portion III of section A, constitutional article 22 establishes. The local government and its representatives are the first point of contact with the citizens. At least in theory, the most visible face of the results, achievements, omissions, and consequences should be the local officials, as well as the municipal and state executives. As public oversight becomes sharper and more specialized, this link should become clearer.

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Congresses with majority/divided congresses, legislative budget in 2013 and public debt in 2012 Entity

Congress with majority/divided

Place in Congress budget (natl.2013)

Place in Debt (natl.2012)

Majority

Méx

Majority

Mich

Divided

Jal

Divided

Son

Divided

Ver

Majority

Oax

Divided

Gro

Divided

Mor

Divided

Sin

Divided

Gto

Divided

Zac

Divided

Tab

Majority

Chis

Divided

Pue

Divided

Chih

Majority

Nay

Majority

SLP

Divided

Qro

Divided

Tlax

Divided

Coah

Majority

Dgo

Majority

Hid

Divided

Tam

Majority

Camp

Majority

Ags

Majority

Yuc

Majority

BCS

Divided

Col

Divided

Source: production of Visión Legislativa [Legislative Vision] with data on the local congress formation in official websites, state expense budgets from 2013, and 2012 debt reported by SHCP (Secretaria de Hacienda y Crédito Público) [Ministry of Finance and Public Credit]. Integration of local congresses to April 2013.  160 

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International push and open budget Opposite to what has happened up until now in Mexico, international agencies are focused on incentivizing parliamentary transparency. As the Organization of American States (OAS) points out, “The growing importance of the legislative powers, both in the functioning of democracies in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in citizen participation processes, requires genuinely robust institutions capable of fully carrying out their tasks and duties.” It is fundamental to give the legislative powers in the region mechanisms that allow for more transparency by sharing more of the information contained in public documents, encouraging greater citizen participation, and more accountability in the legislative Open Parliament management and at national, regional, and municipal level.

must go from being science fiction and good intentions to being a reality that strengthens democracy and legislative representation.”

With this in mind, the OAS and the Fundación Ciencias de la Documentación (FCD) [Documentation Sciences Foundation] created the “Documentation in the Legislative Institutions of Latin America and the Caribbean” project.23 They strive to make parliamentary information transparent, provide access to this information, and allow electronic access to it and analysis of it. Will it have relevance and implications in the performance and true transparency of the Congress in Mexico?

Open Parliament must go from being science fiction and good intentions to being a reality that strengthens democracy and legislative representation. There is a long way to go; we need fast, real change. It is the least we can have when the Mexican Congress is the fifth most expensive in the world, according to the Global Parliamentary Report from 2012 of the United Nations Development Programme and the Inter-Parliamentary Union. 23 “Documentación en Instituciones Legislativas de América Latina y el Caribe” project at http://www.documentalistas.org/oea/ [29 July 2013].  161 

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To adopt the open and transparent parliament discourse is not sufficient when the idea is starkly different from reality. The open parliament cycle should incorporate these four elements regarding legislators: 1) Public discourse about being interested in working for an open

and transparent legislative power. 2) Concrete commitments to achieve it. 3) Concrete actions with deadlines. 4) Public and verifiable results.

By omitting any one of these elements, we are left only with a list of legislative good intentions. “A government that uses public resources, from the public authority and with the purpose of addressing or solving public problems would have to be, by definition, an open government,” states Guillermo Cejudo. Legislative power is not the exception, and a fundamental part of the forty-four elements of an open parliament is transparency in legislative budget spending.

“It is crucial to know what money is being spent on and what results are being achieved.”

From here we see the necessity of having an open, understandable, accessible, and updated budget linked to civil society and citizens that observe and evaluate it in order to push the use of resources to more closely adhere to the results. It is indispensable to generate a link between the stages of the budgeting process to citizens. The open budget website is born with this objective in mind, as well as the publishing of information about budgets and spending, collecting the analyses and recommendations that specialists, academics, institutions, and civil society organizations have made. It is crucial to know what money is being spent on and what results are being achieved. Thus, Fundar [Establish], along with Curul 501, Borde Político [Political Edge] and Visión Legislativa [Legislative Vision] have joined forces to create presupuestoabierto.mx where they seek to build a bridge that starts by evaluating the budget through results and making inputs to weave  162 

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accountability. The objective is to distribute and share this information in an accessible way, accompanied by social media. The site links information about budget and budget performance to the officials responsible from the ad hoc budget legislative committees. This effort comes from the conviction that the work of legislative monitoring should help reduce the gap between citizens and representatives, broaden and improve the communication channels, facilitate feedback and, finally, strengthen democracy. Additionally, Visión Legislativa [Legislative Vision] structured an index that measures information transparency in terms of the use of legislative resources. It is composed of 67 variables according to seven general tasks of the local congresses: technical support, committees, parliamentary groups, government bodies, representation, information publication, and permanent committee. They made a first assessment of the two local bodies: the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District and the Legislature of the State of Mexico. Both legislative bodies failed the index of legislative budget transparency (ITPL). The Legislative Power of the State of Mexico does not provide information on seven out of every ten variables, while the Legislative Assembly does not give information on six of every ten cases. This first assessment considers the existence—or absence—of information in respect to the use of resources.

Recommendations In order to begin the activation of the open parliament agenda, three basic recommendations are presented: • The signing and adoption of the Declaration on Open Parliament for the Chamber of Deputies, all thirty one local congresses and the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District.  163 

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• That the local congresses, legislative committees, and local officials publish information about their activities on websites and social media. • That the information on parliamentary activity includes the activities of the seven general functions: technical support, committees, parliamentary groups, government bodies, representation, distribution, and permanent committees. There cannot be a citizen-legislator representation without information related to the decisions that they make in their work. What does this mean for legislative power? Ignacio Marván, María Amparo Casar, and Khemvrig Puente summarize in one phrase the reality of the country “The Mexican legal framework has been designed so that Congress is not held accountable while others are”.24 It is time that this changes. Legislative power, that naturally represents citizens and federal entities, and makes decisions in their name, should be held accountable.

“There cannot be a citizenlegislator representation without information related to the decisions that they make in their work.”

To strengthen democracy and its institutions, the only thing left to do is to permeate monitoring tools in the political culture of citizens; in this way, we would demand democratic growth in two forms: politicians that are held accountable and full-time citizens.

24 Casar, María Amparo, Ignacio Marván y Khemvirg Puente, “La Rendición de Cuentas y el Poder Legislativo”. At http://www.bibliojuridica.org/libros/6/2800/11.pdf [29 July 2013].  164 

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OPEN PARLIAMENTS ACHIEVEMENTS & CHALLENGES

REMOTE ONLINE MEDIA: FUNDAMENTAL TOOLS TO GUARANTEE ACCESS RIGHTS By Diego Ernesto Díaz Iturbe (@DiazIturbe) GENERAL DIRECTOR AT IMPACTO LEGISLATIVO

“A more transparent, more democratic State.” ESTRIBEN TUERO

ince its enactment in the last decade, the Federal Law on Transparency and Access to Public Governmental Information (LFTAIPG) (2002) acted as a catalyst for change in the concept of Mexican democracy and the relationship between the State and its citizens. The enactment of that law resulted in specific public policy to address the right of access to public information, from information about the federal government to information about the thirty-two federal entities in the country. Also, it laid the foundation for the other State bodies to do the same1. Thus, from that moment on, the stage was set for the beginning of a virtuous cycle toward accountability from the parties concerned, such as the legislative and judiciary branches, as well as the autonomous bodies of the Mexican State. Later on, after publication of the reforms to the 2007 Magna Carta, which gave constitutional status to the right of access to public information, minimum obligations were generalized for all authorities in the country. And although there are still no general national rules, it does create a 1 Although the Jalisco Congress approved an access law before the Congress of the Union, the Federal Law was the first to be enacted in September 2002.

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constitutional obligation for all State bodies—including the legislative branch, of course—to generate specific norms that guarantee the right, while also allowing each entity and the federal powers to do it their own way, resulting in a great variety of policies that address the application of the right of access to public information. July 2009 was the deadline established by the reforms and guaranteed on a constitutional level for all the State bodies in Mexico to acquire online media resources—internet—for access to public information. This includes both data that they are required to publish—work data—and data that the citizen is required to fill out in an access application for the authorities. However, five years after the implementation of this constitutional reform regarding access to information, the main studies that have evaluated the performance of public policies on legislative transparency in Mexico2 have not addressed specifically the institutions’ constitutional obligation to have remote media. With these concerns in mind, this study aims to analyze the characteristics of the online media resources utilized by the regulated institutions in Mexico (the legislative branch, in particular) in order to find the most advanced systems and the best practices to provide individuals with easy access to information, and recommend modifications to the transparency policies.

Online media resources Regarding both norms and online media resources, the process of instrumentation was “different, heterogeneous and incomplete throughout the country, for the instruments necessary to access public information have 2 The studies done by the CIDE [Center for Research and Teaching in Economics] and the COMAIP [Mexican Conference for Access to Public Information] in the beginning were projects, such as: “Monitor Legislativo” [Legislative Monitor], “Métrica de la Transparencia” [Measuring Transparency] and, more recently, collaborative contributions by diverse groups of civil society organizations, academia, and oversight bodies, such as the Red de Rendición de Cuentas [Accountability Network] and the Red Latinoamericana por la Transparencia Legislativa [Latin-American Legislative Transparency Network].  167 

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been made available to people at different times in the different states of the Republic” (Baños, 2007:41). However, many adopted the federal law model, “[…] the only one in the world to have such a broad scope of application […], except for Sweden, consists of limiting access to administrative documents. Overall, the idea is that the legislative and judiciary branches regulate themselves” (López Ayllón, 2004:27). Nonetheless, no regulation foresaw the managing of access to information via the internet. The 2007 reform did introduce this aspect to the constitutional text in a transitory article that reads: “The Federation, the States and the Federal District must provide electronic systems for all people to make remote use of the mechanisms for accessing information and the revision procedures that this Decree refers to, no later than two years after its effective date. Local laws will establish what is necessary for municipalities with a population of more than seventy thousand inhabitants and the territorial delimitations of the Federal District to acquire the respective electronic systems within the same timeframe” (DOF/June 20th, 2007).

“The possibility of being able to make a request, receive notifications, and file a complaint about the response—all on the internet—is everything but trivial.”

The possibility of being able to make a request, receive notifications, deliver information, and file a complaint about the response—all on the internet—is everything but trivial. It means saving a substantial amount on the applicant’s transaction costs, saving him or her the trip to the offices of the government agency, which may very well be in another city, entity, or country. It also means savings for the State itself in the organization and the shipping of information via electronic media systems. Thus, “electronic systems are usually the simplest way to conduct consultations for information; they save the user the trip to the authority’s offices to make the request; they guarantee an easy process and more reliability in management control” (Cejudo y Zavala, 2012). At the moment, five years after the deadline for instrumentation required by the constitutional reform of 2007, its interpretation by the regulated institutions has resulted in a wide variety of online media resources with  168 

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sub-optimal characteristics, such as not having one homogenous medium for all people to make information requests following the same procedure. The 2010 “Métrica de Transparencia” [Measuring Transparency] reveals that “during the SU’s (simulated user) request for information, some entities were proven to have individualized application systems (by district); whereas in other states there are systems that process the information requests of all regulated institutions” (Cejudo y Zavala, 2012). Although online media resources “The are only one of the components of transparency and access heterogeneity to public information policy, they are essential to the effective of state laws exercise of the right to access information.

on access to information and of systems of access to information via online media resources has produced varied results, which mean, in turn, differences in the enforceability of constitutional law.”

The 2010 “Métrica de Transparencia” (CIDE, 2011) was the first to address the issue of “electronic systems”, discussing tangentially an initial distinction between the different media for requesting information. However, the research was not specific when distinguishing online media resources from in-person media. It only mentioned three categories (Infomex, their own system, and email) to cover the more than sixty online media resources that exist in Mexico and the thirty-four that exist in the legislative branch. In line with the evidence obtained from the most recent study on the subject, “Transparency policy in Mexico” (Cejudo, López Ayllón y Ríos, 2012), while also aiming for greater rigor in its definition, it proposes variations on the names and definitions: Sistemas Informáticos de Gestión Integral (SIGI) [Integral Management Information Systems]: refers to a series of complex

processes of diverse components that perform communicative functions and administrative tasks in order to uphold the right of access to information via online media resources using a homogenous platform for the field of jurisdictional competence. SIGI can be divided in two groups: the first is the one with the Infomex 2.0 system that will be described in depth below (which can vary depending on the browser); the second are those systems that have developed unique systems for addressing a specific issue (entity-specific systems) or an entire entity (state-specific system).  169 

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One-way mechanisms: refer to a single channel of communication where

the applicant interacts once and then cannot follow up on his or her application. Sometimes the applicant does not even have the assurance that the application will be processed or that it actually went through. In reality, these are simple on-line forms that, despite making the navigation and application process easier, do not allow for follow up or the expression of dissatisfaction with the response, if there is one. Email: refers to those regulated institutions that have opted against im-

plementing a system and simply provide an email address. Not only are they not very functional, but they do not make it possible for applicant records to be viewed or for the total of sent applications to be known either. Moreover, they do not send any kind of acknowledgement of receipt, making the possibility of receiving a response seem less certain. This is a very vague interpretation of the third transitory article of the aforementioned constitutional reform. While SIGI, the mechanisms, and email are online and they comply with the requisite of being “online media resources”, the substantial difference is the integration of a platform capable of administrating and centralizing the standardized procedures for access applications—as well as resources for revision and reconsideration—of multiple districts. Also, the procedure homogenization qualities and the optimization of technology use emphasize the difference between a system and a one-way mechanism. Whereas the former allows citizens to browse a single website no matter what department they wish to make an application to, with the latter citizens face many different forms in different formats depending on what department they need information from.

Index of access to online media resources The Index of Access to Online Media Resources (Díaz-Iturbe, 2013) was created in order to make a standardized evaluation to compare and analyze for the first time all information request systems via online media resources in Mexico. The results of this first evaluation take into account all the legislative bodies in Mexico, the two federal chambers, the thirty-two  170 

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state legislatures, and the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District. The Index is composed of thirteen criteria, chosen from previous experience with their utilization, the literature, the practices originating from civil society organizations, and, in addition, the best practices mentioned earlier, integrating the Mexican legal framework on the subject. Thus, the evaluation’s principles adhere to indicators that measure both the guarantees established in the Magna Carta and the best international practices, such as the Open Government Partnership (2011)3 and the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness4, always keeping in mind that the analysis must come from the citizens’ perspective, since this is the target audience. The thirteen evaluation criteria are: 1. Easy access to the web portal 2. Homologation of the system 3. Use of a determinate browser 4. Request for personal information 5. Spaces for carrying out consultations 6. Choice of regulated institutions 7. Response reception 8. Acknowledgement of receipt 9. Application finder 10. Follow up on applications 11. Revision and dissatisfaction resources 12. Public consultation of applications 13. Instructions manual 3 The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a global effort to improve government. Citizens want more transparent, effective and accountable governments, with institutions that enrich citizen participation and address their needs and aspirations. This task is never easy. It requires leadership, technological knowledge, constant effort, and resources. It also requires the collaboration of the government and civil society (Source: http://aga.org.mx) 4 The Declaration on Parliamentary Openness is an invitation to national parliaments and subnational and transnational legislative bodies by parliamentary monitoring civil society organizations (PMOs) to generate a stronger commitment to transparency and civic engagement in parliamentary work. PMOs are increasingly recognized for their role in making parliamentary information more accessible, empowering citizens by inviting them to participate in legislative processes, and contributing to more accountability. While PMOs are very interested in improving access to parliamentary and governmental information, they are also aware of the need for more dialogue and collaboration between the world’s parliaments regarding parliamentary reforms. The Declaration not only aims to call to action, but also serves as a base for dialogue between parliaments and PMOs to promote governmental and parliamentary transparency and to ensure that this openness leads to greater civic engagement, more representative institutions and, certainly, a more democratic society. (Source: the Declaration’s objective, which can be accessed here in 17 different languages: http://openingparliament.org/declaration)  171 

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Evaluation The values assigned to each category in the Index are: 1, if the information and its content satisfy the category’s criteria; if the information is incomplete or not properly detailed, it will receive half a point (.5); and if it is not available, or the information is not there, or it does not satisfy the criteria, it will receive a zero (0). In contrast to other studies, the choice of a 0 or a 1 corresponds to mathematical logic, which establishes 1 as the correct expression of completion and .5 as the expression of fragmentation or incompletion in its nature. The weight of all thirteen indicators will be the same, making the end result nothing more than the sum of all the values in every category.

Time

In order to keep the time of the study constant and to limit its influence on the study, the research took place over ongoing reviews during the month of October, 2013.

The criteria to be studied about transparency web portals for making information requests Category 1: Easy access to the links that lead to the web portal from official websites or the most popular browsers

This category aims to analyze how easy it is for the user to reach the transparency web portal for making requests from different places. The functional, simple and viable way is for the user to be able to reach the web portal for making information requests after clicking on no more than three links. Category 2: Homologation of the system

Having only one system for the entire federal entity makes the citizens’ access easier. The criterion measures whether there are more than one different media within the same jurisdiction (state or federal). Category 3: Use of a determinate browser

While there was a clear leader in terms of browsers in the early 20th century, and even by 2008 Internet Explorer’s market share in Mexico  172 

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reached 90% (down to 26% by 2013), Google Chrome is the current leader with a little over 50% of the market share, in addition to the 23% distributed among browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox (12%), Safari (8%), and Opera (1%). This can be corroborated in the following graph.

Graph 1. Browser Market Share in Mexico 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 2008-07 2009-01 2009-07 2010-01 2010-07 2011-01 2011-07 2012-01 2012-07 2013-01 2013-07 Internet Explorer (Microsoft) Firefox (Mozilla) Opera (Opera Software)

Chrome (Google) Safari (Apple/MAC) Other

Source: Prepared by the author based on information provided by StatCounter-Global Stats (2013).

Thus, it is fundamental for online media resources to be visible on all the major browsers, or at least the five most popular ones. Not being able to access a system for not having the right browser (Internet Explorer, for example) limits accessibility by requiring that the user download the browser, or even by dissuading him from making the application for this reason. Category 4: Request for personal information

According to normativity, the only personal information that may be requested from the applicant in order for him or her to register is his or her name (or pseudonym) and an address to receive information (email or mailing address). This is established in the second subheading of the 6th constitutional article: “Information referring to private life and per 173 

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sonal data will be protected by the terms and according to the exceptions established by law” (CPEUM, 2013). The request for additional personal information, such as the CURP [personal ID number], voter registration ID, profession, “[…] racial or ethnic origin, current and future health status, genetic information, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, union membership, political affiliations, sexual preference […]” (LFPDPPP, 2010, Article 2) or any other kind of sensitive information are elements that could dissuade the applicant, to his or her disadvantage, from filling out a request form. Nonetheless, gathering personal information for statistical purposes is not considered to be wrong, as long as it is specified that providing it is optional. Category 5: Spaces for carrying out consultations

This category analyzes whether the space for carrying out the consultation has a maximum number of characters that can be entered, or whether it has a space that points to helpful information or helps locate said information, or if it is possible to attach other documents to the application. Category 6: Choice of regulated institutions

This category looks at the possibility of sending one request for information to more than one regulated institution. The importance lies in two factors: first, the applicant does not always know exactly to which entity he or she must submit the request, which means the possibility of sending the same question to more than one entity eases and promotes access to information; second, when the applicant requires the same information from more than one entity, he or she can submit a request more efficiently, without needing to repeat the same question to every entity. Category 7: Manner of response reception

This category evaluates whether the system allows the applicant to select the medium through which he or she will receive notifications or a response to the application. It is a crucial aspect in order to guarantee the reduction of transaction costs for the applicant, since being able to choose between electronic media or certified documents (paying for printing costs) means more options than if there were just one medium for the receipt of the response.  174 

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Category 8: Acknowledgement of receipt

This category looks at whether the medium generates files or another logical form of organization for the identification of each application form. Filed acknowledgements of receipt would identify each application for access to information. Having an acknowledgement of receipt means proof that the application was registered, reassuring the applicant that it will be processed. This is a fundamental criterion, for it generates certainty in the user regarding the speedy and thorough processing of his or her application. Category 9: Application finder

This category evaluates whether there is a finder for the applications submitted by the user. An ordered system making use of the technology available to all the regulated institutions constitutionally binds the institutions to have electronic storage systems for administrating and handling the applications as part of the guarantee of real access to information via online media resources. Category 10: Follow up on applications

This category examines the possibility of finding a specific application form and obtaining information regarding the stage it is at (meaning the deadline for receiving a response, the requirements for the applicant to broaden or specify indications for the identification of his or her application, and other possibilities for interacting with the regulated institution, such as providing a resource for reconsidering or revising in case of dissatisfaction with a response). As it was with Category 8, it is vital to have a medium for identification that makes it possible to follow up on an application and find out about extensions and other requirements to ensure appropriate access to information via the internet. Category 11: Revision and dissatisfaction resources

In line with the previous category, this criterion evaluates the possibility of presenting and following up on the revision and dissatisfaction resources, which are as important for accessing the application as submitting the application itself. The electronic medium should make submission and follow up easier. ď&#x161;š 175 ď&#x161;¸

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Category 12: Public consultation of applications

This category analyzes the possibility of users being able to access and consult applications submitted by other users, as well as responses to them, in an easy and intuitive way. This possibility could even answer any questions the applicant might have before he or she asks it, granted the problem has already been resolved by the regulated institution. Another important factor that supports this possibility is that it contributes greatly to reducing the work load of the regulated institutions and the bodies responsible for guaranteeing transparency in the State. Category 13: Instruction manual

A good instruction manual on the system that clarifies the procedure, the meaning of the icons and other kinds of visual support for defining the deadlines of requests for access to information (including legal precepts for warning, requirements and provision of resources) is fundamental in order to facilitate comprehension in relation to the functioning of the system and to reach as many people as possible.

Sample The sample is composed of all the existing media in Mexico’s legislative powers, meaning: the 31 congresses of the legislative bodies, the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District, and the two Chambers of Congress of the Union: a total of 34 legislative bodies.

Results Below are: 1. the taxonomy of online media resources in Mexico, and 2. the Index of Access to Online Media Resources’ first evaluation of the legislative branch.

Taxonomy of online media resources in Mexico After an initial review of the main web portals, both federal and state, the various online media resources can be grouped into three categories: 1. Integral Management Information Systems (SIGI), 2. One-way  176 

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mechanisms, and 3. Email (see Table 2). The online media resources found in the legislative bodies of the Republic are classified below:

Integral Management Information Systems (SIGI) 1. Infomex 2.0 A version developed by the IFAI [Federal Institute on Access to Information] to replace the SISI (the electronic request system)5, able to become nationwide platform that fulfills most of the access requirements established in the Index. Our country, “[…] in contrast to what happens in other countries, such as England [or the United States], does not charge for the search, revision or classification, only for the printing and mailing” (Trinidad, 2005:55). With this in mind, the federal government and the IFAI created Infomex 2.0 as an “online information system that will allow applicants, transparency organizations and regulated institutions to manage the processing of requests for access to public information (IFAI, 2009:6). In order to analyze Infomex properly, we must understand that there is more than one Infomex; the variations in how they function allow for two sub-categories to be defined: 1.1. Universally compatible Infomex 2.0: The platform can be accessed on

all kinds of browsers, such as Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera or Mercury, to mention the most popular ones. There are eighteen entities in this category, although this is the sole medium of access for only eight of them; the other ten entities combine it with one-way mechanisms and email, as shown in Table 1. 1.2. Browser-restricted Infomex 2.0: Compatible with Internet Explorer

only, “a browser that used to dominate the web almost but whose popularity is currently decreasing, and is in second place in the Mexican market (26%), behind Google Chrome (51%)” (Statscounter, 2013). As a result of incompatibility, the screen layout is affected, so that menus 5 SISI [Computerized System for Information Requests], developed by the IFAI, used to process the first electronic requests to executive institutions, replaced by Infomex.  177 

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overlap and it is unreadable or ineffective. This happens in seven entities, which means that 20% of Infomex’s space has navigation issues.

2. Integral State Systems Located in the State of Mexico, Oaxaca and Yucatán: 1. Sistema de Acceso a la Información Mexiquense (SAIMEX) [System of Access to Information in the State of Mexico]; 2. Sistema Electrónico de Acceso a la Información Pública de Oaxaca (SIEAIP) [Electronic System of Access to Public Information in Oaxaca]; and 3. Sistema de Acceso a la Información (SAI) [System of Access to Information] in Yucatán

All of them are capable of administrating more than one entity and centralizing the processing of applications in one operative system. The first two consider all the regulated institutions in the state, whereas the Yucatán case does not consider the executive branch.

3. Entity-specific Systems Systems developed by the regulated institutions to fulfill their duties related to transparency and access to information that are not compatible in their jurisdiction and could hardly be incorporated to other entities in their system.

4. One-way mechanisms Clearly, all the cases studied have very low standards when it comes to providing adequate attention to the citizens with their public policy, as well as access to the information held by the State.

5. Email Using email does not guarantee even the minimum security conditions in the reception, handling, follow up or access of information.  178 

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Table 1. Specific classification of online media resources Online media resources

SIGI

Mechanisms -

Specific

Amount

Percentage

Infomex

32.3%

Deficient Infomex

17.6%

State Systems

8.8%

Entity-specific Systems

8.8%

One-way Mechanisms

26.4%

2.9%

No online media resources

2.9%

Results for the legislative branch in Mexico The scores in the Index of Access to Online Media Resources go from 0 (0%) to 13 (100%), which corresponds to the criteria previously established. After comparing the evaluation results of the 31 state congresses, the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District and the Chambers of Deputies and Senators of the Congress of the Union obtained an average score of 8.98 (70%). While the Federal District obtained the highest score, 13 (100%), 20 entities (58%) obtained scores higher than 10, and there are 12 cases (35%) where the score was below average: • Baja California Sur (0%) • Querétaro (7.6%) • Baja California (30%) • Campeche, Guerrero, Puebla, and Tamaulipas (38%) • Nuevo León (42%) • Michoacán (50%) • Quintana Roo (54%) • Jalisco (61.5%) • Chamber of Deputies (65.3%)

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Table 2. Results and classification of online media resources Level

Classification

Total

Senate of the Republic

Infomex (SIGI)

Chamber of Deputies

Entity-specific System

Aguascalientes

Infomex (SIGI)

Baja California

One-way mechanism

Baja California Sur

No online media resources

Campeche

One-way Mechanism

Chiapas

Infomex (SIGI)

11.5

Chihuahua

Infomex (SIGI)

Coahuila

Infomex (SIGI)

Colima

Deficient Infomex (SIGI)

Federal District

Infomex (SIGI)

Durango

Deficient Infomex (SIGI)

Guanajuato

Entity-specific System

9.5

Guerrero

One-way Mechanism

Hidalgo

Deficient Infomex (SIGI)

State of Mexico

State-specific system (SIGI)

Jalisco

Entity-specific System

Michoacán

One-way Mechanism

6.5

Morelos

Deficient Infomex (SIGI)

Nayarit

Deficient Infomex (SIGI)

Nuevo León

One-way Mechanism

5.5

Oaxaca

State-specific system (SIGI)

Puebla

One-way Mechanism

Querétaro

Quintana Roo

One-way Mechanism

San Luis Potosí

Infomex (SIGI)

Sinaloa

Infomex (SIGI)

Sonora

Infomex (SIGI)

Tabasco

Deficient Infomex (SIGI)

Tamaulipas

One-way Mechanism

Tlaxcala

Infomex (SIGI)

11.5

Veracruz

Infomex (SIGI)

11.5

Yucatán

State-specific system (SIGI)

Zacatecas

One-way Mechanism

Source: Prepared by the author based on results (Díaz-Iturbe, 2013).  180 

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In the federal arena, the Chamber of Deputies’ score is below average at 65%, whereas the Senate of the Republic obtained a score equivalent to 84%, due in great part to their recent acquisition of Infomex and the guarantees that this system means. As they scored the lowest, the cases of Baja California Sur and Querétaro are worth highlighting; the former, for not having any media for access via Internet, and the latter, for obtaining only one point (7.6%). In contrast, entities, such as Aguascalientes, Coahuila, Oaxaca, Sinaloa, and Chihuahua obtained a score higher than 9 (70%), which makes them the states with the best legislative web portals. The Federal District was the only state that obtained all 13 points in the evaluation, scoring 100%; it has the only online media resources allowing people to submit just one application to more than one entity without requiring a new petition for each one.

Graph 2. Evaluation of legislative branch web portals

Baja California Sur Querétaro Baja California Campeche Guerrero Puebla Tamaulipas Nuevo León Michoacán Quintana Roo Jalisco Chamber of Deputies Durango Guanajuato Colima State of Mexico Senate of the Republic Hidalgo Morelos Nayarit San Luis Potosí Sonora Tabasco Zacatecas Yucatán Chiapas Tlaxcala Veracruz Aguascalientes Chihuahua Coahuila Oaxaca Sinaloa Federal District

13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Source: Prepared by the author based on results (Díaz-Iturbe, 2013).

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Conclusions It is a grave problem that legislative bodies in Mexico have obtained such low scores, especially when their representative duty should mean more channels for accountability and access to information for the people they represent. Clearly, the heterogeneity of state laws on access to information and of systems of access to information via online media resources has produced varied results, which mean, in turn, differences in the enforceability of constitutional law. For instance, citizens from entities, such as Baja California Sur do not receive the same attention from the law as those from places where norms and access mechanisms are stricter and more specific (the Federal District, Aguascalientes, Coahuila, Sinaloa, and Chihuahua, which obtained the highest scores). The lack “In the national of homogeneity throughout the nation is worrying and it context for the generates discrimination regarding access to public information from legislative bodies that cannot go on any enforceability of longer. the guarantee

to the right

In the national context for the enforceability of the guarantee of access to to the right of access to information, the online media resources’ importance is fundamental for truly universal information, the access. Consolidating a single system for classification, online media access and instrumentation is a challenge for this country. resources’ Having multiple systems for making consultations from each importance is regulated institution makes it more difficult to carry them out. The issue is not trivial, since the simple fact of having fundamental.” to learn how to use an online system to submit requests for access to information generates transaction costs for the user. If, in addition, the user must learn how to use other systems as well in order to submit requests to other regulated institutions, then the costs previously mentioned go up. If there were just one homogeneous system for all entities, the user would only have to learn and contact one medium in order to make all the requests for information he or she needs, guaranteeing the individual’s constitutional right to not receive different treatment when making a request to any public department.  182 

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The creation of a single mechanism based on the characteristics of the current information system “Infomex” is definitely the most viable option, although it is highly recommended that we learn from the particular experiences of the systems in the State of Mexico, Oaxaca, Yucatán, or the improvements made to the Federal District platform that ease access and use. Fixing these issues in access media will represent an important step toward the implementation of transparency policies, access to information, and accountability in Mexico.

Bibliography • Baños, Marco (2007). “Transparencia y Acceso a la Información Pública en México: Estudio Comparado sobre su diseño e implementación”, Tesis para obtener el grado de maestro, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, México.

• Cejudo, Guillermo, Sergio López Ayllón y Alejandra Ríos Cásares (eds.) (2012). “La política de transparencia en México. Instituciones, logros y desafíos”, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, México

• Díaz-Iturbe, Diego Ernesto y Jorge Moreno Troncoso (2007). Transparencia de los órganos legislativos de las entidades federativas de México, Monitor Legislativo – Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, México.

• IFAI (2009). Presentación General Infomex. Instituto Federal de Acceso a la Información. México.

• IFAI (2012). Informe de Rendición de Cuentas de la Administración Pública Federal 2006 - 2012. Instituto Federal de Acceso a la Información y Protección de Datos. México.

• López Ayllón, Sergio y Mauricio Merino (2010). “La rendición de cuentas en México: perspectivas y retos” en Guillermo Cejudo et al. (coords.). La estructura de la rendición de cuentas en México. México; Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México - Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas - Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas.  183 

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• López Ayllón, Sergio, Mauricio Merino y Lourdes Morales (2004). Hacia una política de rendición de cuentas, Auditoría Superior de la Federación - Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas – Red por la Rendición de Cuentas Editorial Color, México.

• Merino, Mauricio (2005). “El desafío de la transparencia. Una Revisión de las normas de acceso a la información pública de las entidades federativas de México”, División de Administración Pública, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Documento de trabajo No. 169.

• Merino, Mauricio (2008). “La transparencia como política pública”, en John M. Ackerman (coord.), Más allá del acceso a la información: transparencia, rendición de cuentas y Estado de derecho. Siglo XXI, México.

• Statscounter, 2013 (http://gs.statcounter.com) • Trinidad Zaldívar, Ángel (2006). La transparencia y el acceso a la información como política pública y su implementación en la sociedad y el gobierno. Cámara de Diputados - Miguel Ángel Porrúa. México.

Regulations • Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos (CPEUM, 2013). • Ley Federal de Protección de Datos en Posesión de los Particulares (LFPDPPP; 2010)

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OPEN PARLIAMENTS ACHIEVEMENTS & CHALLENGES

THE EXPERIENCE OF QUÉ HACEN LOS DIPUTADOS [WHAT MEMBERS OF CONGRESS DO] By Vicky Bolaños (@VickyBol) COFOUNDER OF QUÉ HACEN LOS DIPUTADOS [WHAT MEMBERS OF CONGRESS DO], SPAIN

Abstract This article intends to document the experience developed by Qué Hacen Los Diputados (QHLD) [What Members of Congress do], a movement that emerged in Spain in 2011 in a context of great social mobilization upon a backdrop of economic and political crisis. As explained in this document, our activity takes place almost exclusively online and our immediate objective is to increase the levels of transparency around the activities that our representatives carry out in the legislative bodies to be able to, in a second chapter, focus on the demand for accountability. Therefore, this document presents information about our interactions with members of congress, reflections on the opportunities that the network offers for citizen participation, the need to take advantage of both the official channels of information as well as the peripheral ones, and our interaction with other movements that pursue related objectives.

How did Qué Hacen Los Diputados (What Members of Congress Do) come about? Qué Hacen Los Diputados is a movement formed by a group of people of civil society, with no political affiliation, and that is not confined by any type of official institutional figure. It emerged in the context of unprecedented social mobilization in the Spanish Democracy. The severe economic crisis that has affected Spain since 2008 was the stage that led the resurgence of the previous political and social consciousness—  186 

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with processes of deliberation like the action against the Sinde Law1, the #nolesvotes [#dontvote] or “Esto sólo lo arreglamos SIN ELLOS” [“we will only resolve this WITHOUT THEM”]2—and after the 15M 3. In these moments social movements emerged with a decentralized coordination of autonomous collectives with the objective of having a global reach. In our case, the project has focused, from the beginning, on a concrete niche: give follow-up to the members of the Spanish Parliament.

"Movements have been emerging and growing stronger that promote a new relationship between citizens and governments, a relationship based in openness."

In this same respect, it is important to mention that, at an international level, movements have been emerging and growing stronger that promote a new relationship between citizens and governments, a relationship based in openness. One of the most important movements, perhaps because of the weight of its promoters, is the Open Government Partnership (OGP). This Partnership launched in 2011 and defined itself as a multi-lateral initiative whose objective is to ensure concrete commitments of the governments, to promote transparency, citizen empowerment, the fight against corruption, and the taking advantage of new technologies to strengthen the governance.

In this general framework lies the action of many movements that intend to make transparent and establish new and better interactions between citizens and their leaders. There are now movements that concentrate on certain types of activities or in certain types of state institutions with the idea of conducting a more specialized and effective action. One of the most prominent examples of specialization is the open parliament paradigm, which has given rise to numerous initiatives in past years. The importance of this specialization is determined by the fundamental character of parliaments in democracies: it is the body where 1 Candón Mena, José. La dimensión híbrida del movimiento del 15M: Entre lo físico y lo virtual. 2 Candón Mena, José. La dimensión híbrida del movimiento del 15M: Entre lo físico y lo virtual. 3 Sampedro, V; Duarte, J. M. La red era la plaza. http://www.ciberdemocracia.es/articulos/RedPlaza.pdf  187 

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popular sovereignty resides, where citizens exercise their sovereignty through their representatives. In this way, organizations such as Qué Hacen Los Diputados [What Members of Congress Do], which belong to the collective of Parliamentary Monitoring Organizations (PMO), have been emerging. PMOs are civil society groups whose main objectives are to generate a greater commitment to transparency and citizen participation in the work of parliament.4 These movements make parliamentary information more accessible, strengthen the ability of citizens to participate in the legislative processes, encourage better accountability, and their interest is to drive greater access to governmental and lower chamber information. Furthermore, they urge the parliaments of their respective countries to establish a greater dialogue and collaboration between chambers and between their own parliaments and the PMOs to promote transparency. They seek to arrive at greater citizen participation and to achieve a more democratic society.5

Legislative power in Spain and objectives of Qué Hacen Los Diputados When we speak of parliament monitoring movements or of open parliament, the word parliament refers to the legislative power in general and we need to acknowledge that the legislature is organized differently in every country. Thus, in Spain, the legislative power resides in the General Courts: a bicameral assembly that is divided into the High Court or Senate and the Low Court or Congress. The Spanish Senate is considered as the chamber of territorial representation and occupies a secondary position in respect to Congress, which holds the limelight in legislative activity.6 4 Declaración sobre transparencia parlamentaria (2012). Pág.1 http://openingparliament.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/declaration/1.0/spanish.pdf 5 Declaración sobre transparencia parlamentaria (2012). Pág.1 http://openingparliament.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/declaration/1.0/spanish.pdf 6 Los proyectos de ley del Gobierno –con mucho los más numerosos- se presentan y se tramitan en la Cámara  188 

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In regard to the functions of the Spanish Congress, we can summarize them in the following way: to control government action, to legislate, to approve the general budgets of the State, grant or withdraw the trust to the government, name the leaders of other institutions, etc. That is to say, the low chamber performs functions that directly or indirectly affect all citizens. It is formed by 350 officials that are elected every four years by citizens with closed lists. The initial idea at the moment of creating Qué Hacen Los Diputados was to supervise the public and political tasks of the members. To form a parliament of people in the manner of the English “Shadow Cabinet” parliamentary tradition. In the case of the United Kingdom, the Shadow Cabinet is formed by the opposition party with members that match the roles of the formal Cabinet and is in charge of watching over each of the affairs and actions of each Cabinet minister.7 The main idea of Qué Hacen Los Diputados is, firstly, to make it so that the citizens of all of the constituencies monitor the work of the officials, for the sake of achieving the maximum transparency possible of each official. That is to say, to know their background in regards to their family, personal life, professional career, and politics; to know if there is a logical coherence and political honesty in their acts and politics; if they have problems with the law; if there are legal incompatibilities with private and professional activities; to conduct an analysis of their assets as well as their relationships in regard to business, finances, courts, and media, all on a first and second degree. A second block of objectives consists of clarifying if each one of the 350 officials complies with their obligations in relation to the parliamentary initiatives, presenting draft bills, written or oral questions, etc.; participating and performing tasks in parliamentary committees and performing tasks in the same; attending plenary sessions and Baja. El Senado puede vetarlos o enmendarlos, pero tanto sobre el veto como sobre las enmiendas decide finalmente el Congreso. Lo mismo ocurre con el proyecto anual de presupuestos generales del Estado. 7 Jorge González Chávez. El sistema Parlamentario en cinco países de Europa. pág. 5. http://goo.gl/bNCYd  189 

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committees; informing the media, voters, and affiliates, and organizing work meetings in the constituency, as well as elaborating materials for party congresses, elections, and documentation for the citizens, among others. The third block of objectives has the purpose of verifying if they are politically coherent with a view to evaluate their behavior; with the execution of their electoral agenda, the presentation of projects or propositions; with the propaganda of their own ideas in the media; with their assigned expenses budget and of their assistants; and with the adequacy of their discourse with their political and personal actions. In summary, the aim of Qué Hacen Los Diputados is to become an instrument to help consolidate the public culture of transparency and accountability of its leaders. Undoubtedly, one of the necessary elements for true accountability and transparency is to have a legislative framework that foresees and regulates fully the citizens’ rights of access to information, based on the idea that the information that the State bodies possess is not their property, but the property of the citizenry.

"The aim of Qué Hacen Los Diputados is to become an instrument to help consolidate the public culture of transparency and accountability of its leaders."

Spain will be the last country in Europe with a population of over one million people, to have a law of transparency and access to information. The law was approved in Congress on September 12, 2013, after a long trail of negotiations and amendments, and is now pending approval in the Senate. According to many specialists and organizations that work in the field of access to information, the result has been an insufficient law.

The predominant critique of it is that if doesn’t recognize the right to information as a fundamental right. With the topic at hand, it needs to be said that even though Congress is obligated by law to uphold this right, this obligation is only partial since it is not obligated to share information  190 

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that is unrelated to administrative law, leaving out, for example, fundamental affairs like the Congress entry register.

Information that Spanish Congress publishes As mentioned before, the data that the State possesses belongs to the citizens and is necessary so that they can be aware of government actions and act accordingly. For example, directing complaints or questioning the leaders directly through the channels of communication set up for them. Likewise, it is essential that the administrations, political parties, and institutions respond and take measures in the event of not fulfilling their obligations. data

"The that the State possesses belongs to the citizens and is necessary so that they can be aware of government actions and act accordingly. "

For Spanish Parliament, the information that is available for citizens through the institution is extensive, although insufficient. An initial point to highlight is that to this day there is no general search engine on the website (although there is a general search engine for officials and another one for parliamentary initiatives), which definitely complicates the online search for information. One can access all of the initiatives, interventions, congressional agenda, plenary voting records, and some information about trips taken by officials. This information is found in formats that are not very accessible and or modifiable (PDF, URL) and, in many cases, requires a computerized process in order to make it manageable and intelligible. We must keep in mind that when information is available but requires an army of people to decipher it or is very hard to access, it is almost the same as if it were not public. Additionally, the parliament still needs to publish parliamentary committee votes; the reports, statistics, and documents that officials use to develop laws and to support their speeches; their public agendas; verified information and much more thorough information on the profiles of officials; details on the officialsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; declarations of total assets verified with information from the tax bureau; and more concrete information ď&#x161;š 191 ď&#x161;¸

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on the trips of parliament members. Hence, there are major gaps in the parliamentary information that makes it impossible to truly exercise supervision. Qué Hacen Los Diputados is working to ensure that the principle of transparency materializes and that a greater amount of information relative to the activities of officials in Spain is made public and accessible, which corresponds to our organizations first group of objectives. That would allow us to move to the next level in relation to the objectives: accountability.

Interaction between QHLD and officials Qué Hacen Los Diputados is mostly an online project. Since its birth, it started by having a social media presence, with microblogging site Twitter as its primary medium. In Qué Hacen Los Diputados we discovered how the internet, above all the software thought up for human communication, facilitated contact with the politicians of Congress. In the case of the Spanish Parliament members, according to data from 2012, 294 officials have a website, 154 have Facebook, 88 have a blog, 234 have a public email account, 8 and according to data from February, 2013, 194 have a Twitter account.9 The first direct contact of Qué Hacen Los Diputados with the parliamentary officials was through Twitter. Although many did not answer—the response rate of parliamentary officials to user messages is 21.91% on average10—it was the start of direct contact that was more or less immediate and bidirectional with certain officials. Some of the more accessible ones are Laia Ortiz, Joan Josep Nuet, or Ricardo Sixto from ‘La Izquierda Plural [a leftist Spanish political coalition]; Nacho Sánchez Amor and Patricia Hernández Gutiérrez from PSOE [Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party]; 8 David Álvarez. Evolución de la presencia de los diputados del Congreso en las redes sociales. http://goo.gl/Y7As8 9 David Álvarez. Datos de la actividad de los diputados en Twitter en 2012. http://goo.gldHFUi 10 David Álvarez. Datos de la actividad de los diputados en Twitter en 2012. http://goo.gldHFUi  192 

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Carlos Martínez Gorriarán from UPyD [Union, Progress and Democracy]; and Conrado Escobar from PP [People’s Party]. With some of them, the contact has consisted of email exchanges and even personal meetings, the latter to make them aware of the project and to try to introduce them to the good practices of the parliaments reflected in the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. 11 In order to analyze the extent to which the good practices established in said declaration are being carried out, and to make recommendations for the points that are not complied with, Qué Hacen Los Diputados has created a document 12 that is available on the website.13 From the encounters with officials, we can draw a series of conclusions: • The reality of protocol and traditional at the heart of Congress always prevails over any mention of change. • There is an unawareness on behalf of the officials of the international standards on access to information and, moreover, in respect to open parliament. • There is also an unawareness in relation to the handling of online tools that allow citizens to access the work of the legislature. • Verbal commitments do not crystallize into concrete steps towards our parliamentary monitoring organization. In the “Report of Online Transparency of the Parties and Political Foundations”14 about parties with parliamentary representation, the 11 Declaración sobre transparencia parlamentaria (2012). http://openingparliament.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/declaration/1.0/spanish.pdf 12 Qué Hacen Los Diputados. La Declaración de transparencia parlamentaria: ¿Qué hay de ella en el Congreso?. http://goo.gl/5xizc 13 http://quehacenlosdiputados.net/ 14 Barrio, E.; Martín Cavanna, J. y Martisi, B. Transparencia el mejor eslogan 2012. Informe de transparencia en la web de los partidos y fundaciones políticas. Pág. 6. http://goo.gl/jAlim  193 

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fulfillment of criteria regarding the degree of transparency established by the authors does not surpass 50% for the majority of the points established. Some of the concrete data points from said report from 2012 are: • 78% of the parties publish an explanation about the origin of the party and their ideas. • 29% publish government information of the party (Founding Act, statute or code of good governance). • 49% show information about their affiliates. • 22% publish their budgets and initiatives in relation to the electoral agenda. • 14% publish economic information. • None of the parties analyzed publish the report of the Court of Auditors.15 • There is no information about management reports in relation to the fulfillment of the electoral agenda nor the audit reports.

New spaces for information and deliberation In the almost two years that Qué Hacen Los Diputados has been in operation, we have been discovering that there are other sources of information alternative to the traditional mass media. In the peripheral sphere of transparency and parliamentary information there are established projects that generate quality content and provide information with unofficial data,—or conveniently analyzed data extracted from an official environment—deep reflections, and or declarations that would not be published by conventional media. Take for example, relevant 15 El Tribunal de Cuentas es el supremo órgano fiscalizador de las cuentas y de la gestión económica del Estado en España. http://www.tcu.es/  194 

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comments made by officials in the hallways of Congress that would not fit in a traditional news article, or analyses that require so much effort for its elaboration that a journalist could not complete because of lack of time. Those reference spaces of Qué Hacen Los Diputados are primarily the blogs that do not compete with the immediacy of bigger media. They form part of the circuits of information of independent media, with a critical and thorough look in the examining of information. They are: Access Info16, El BOE nuestro de cada día [our daily Official State Bulletin] 17, Fundación Ciudadana Civio [Civic Citizen Foundation]18, ¿Hay derecho? [Is there a right?]19, Opening Parliament20, Parlamento 2.0 [Parliament 2.0]21, Tu2is22, Tu derecho a saber [Your right to know]23, among others. Our own blog24 is a source of information since it has a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license. It is relevant to point out that, thanks to the licenses that allow the sharing of content in an open format, this type of project that we can call “peripheral sphere” has been introducing itself to the “central sphere” that traditionally feeds from the information given by the official channels, and that together with the existing contacts and relationships between members of the mentioned organizations and the journalists of the large media companies, they are contributing little by little to the weakening of the barriers that separate both spheres in the field of communication. The everyday work of the project weaves partnerships with workers from the press, radio, and television, and makes them commit themselves—or they were already committed to them—to offer other alternative views.25 16 http://www.access-info.org/es 17 http://elboenuestrodecadadia.com/ 18 http://www.civio.es/ 19 http://hayderecho.com/ 20 http://www.openingparliament.org/ 21 http://parlamento20.es/ 22 www.tudosis.es 23 http://www.tuderechoasaber.es/ 24 http://quehacenlosdiputados.net/ 25 Díez Gutiérrez, Enrique Javier. Globalización y educación crítica. Pág, 253.  195 

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Hybrid space for the common good As we have already noted, practically all of the activity of Qué Hacen Los Diputados is conducted online, generating a continuous dialogue with citizens and their respective government officials. Thus, the information that we publish elicits reactions from users: they discuss facts or news reports with us and also contribute constructive comments and alert us of any error in the content. The most evident materialization of this hybrid space is that some citizens offer to collaborate and incorporate themselves into the project, including remotely, utilizing the internet as a means of communication. The characteristics of this selfless collaboration are: political involvement (interested citizens that are politically situated and are up to date); possession of resources (internet connection, knowledge of the internet and use of its tools, they have time or they allocate part of their free time to collaborate with the project following an official); and interest in the common good (they do not mind using their resources to offer a result that will benefit their region or all citizens).

"The characteristics of this selfless collaboration are: political involvement, possession of resources, and interest in the common good."

Despite this collaboration being primarily conducted online, it has also generated actions or encounters in the “analog spaces” through meetings in person, in key moments, with some collaborators, supporters of the project, and officials themselves. It is a way to fortify citizen networks and improve the interaction between politicians and citizens.26

Protest and deliberation in the central public sphere without taking on protocols Qué Hacen Los Diputados is without a doubt an activist project in which, based on the data collected from the Congress website, the various aspects of the life and work of government officials are revealed, meaning: 26 Gutiérrez Rubí, Antoni . La política vigilada: la comunicación política en al era de Wikileaks. Pág. 76.  196 

A TRUE PARTNERSHIP INVOLVES TWO

activities, presentation of initiatives, interventions, votes, and other political events such as the ones that they can put in the press, and their assets, based on the declarations that they present at the beginning of the term. This data is presented without bias, generating reactions and critiques from the citizens and the users that consume the information, but also from the officials themselves. In the case of the users, there have been complaints for various reasons. The most noteworthy ones being the following:

"In the case of government officials, they primarily react when they are in disagreement with certain data that we publish."

• Dissatisfaction regarding certain political actions considered to lessen their rights (think of the budget cuts in healthcare and education, the approval of labor reform, or the reform of abortion law, for example). • Dissatisfaction produced by unawareness of the work of the government officials and of Congress, which includes the confirmation to the user that “they don’t do anything”.

In the case of government officials, they primarily react when they are in disagreement with certain data that we publish. One of the main conflicts that came up stemmed from the tax-free compensation that the 350 officials earn and that is conceived as costs derived from their activity as parliament officials.27 Other critiques from the officials relate to how, in their opinion, the totality of the activities they carry out is not published. These critiques are not understood since they should be the ones who make public all the information regarding the income earned with their parliamentary work. In addition, they should know how to communicate what their work consists of and what the activities that they develop are.

27 Desde Qué Hacen Los Diputados request that officials justify their spending just like they do in the Brazilian Parliament.  197 

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One of the most important demands of Qué Hacen Los Diputados, and that relates to the activities of the parliament members, is that the website of Congress host the public calendar of the officials when they work as officials. In the way in which it is presented currently, citizens are obligated to put together a complicated “puzzle” that no one in the world has the necessary time or knowledge to solve. Traditionally, the information on activities, votes, or the agenda itself has been hidden from citizens and what Qué Hacen Los Diputados intends to do with their actions is turn this situation around and ensure that the Congress is an institution of true popular sovereignty, or at least one that the citizens have access to through complete information, thus allowing them to visualize the map of work as a whole, not just the parts that Congress feels inclined to show.

Elimination of the restrictions to participation The interactivity of the internet allows for the multiplication of possibilities of contact and action in a very efficient way in terms of time invested. It has created an intensive environment of communication28 in which it is possible to discuss and deliberate topics of shared interest.29Also, “traditional” participation activities such as contacting politicians, signing a petition, or donating money can be conducted much more easily and reduce certain costs related to collective action.30 However, these forms of participation do not always lead to active or continued participation. In Qué Hacen Los Diputados, very simple actions like “re-tweeting” on Twitter, “liking” on Facebook, “menear” in Menéame, or sharing a link, among others, are very simple actions that involve very little effort on behalf of the user and, although they 28 Borge, R.;Cardenal, A. S; y Malpica, C. (2012). El impacto de Internet en la participación política: Revisando el papel del interés político. Pág. 733. 29 R. Karakaya (2005). The Internet and Political Participation. Exploring the Explanatory Links. European Journal Communication, 20. Pág 435 30 M.S. Boncheck (1995) Grassroots in Cyberspace: Recruiting Members on the Internet or Do Computer Networks Facilitate Collective Action? A Transaction Cost Approach, 53rd Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago.  198 

A TRUE PARTNERSHIP INVOLVES TWO

fulfill their function of spreading the word of the organizations, they do not ensure that the message arrives if the link is not opened and the information not read. Another type of possible participation in Qué Hacen Los Diputados is to follow a governmental official; on this topic, in almost two years of operation, we have received around 25 petitions to join the project, yet, for now, said interest to participate has not materialized in visible results.

Cyber ghettos At the moment that Qué Hacen Los Diputados started to function, various people that work in the Congress or Senate environment contacted us both through Twitter and email. Little by little we tracked down key people, interested or directly involved in the work of the General Courts. In this way, we have made an informal demarcation of the parliamentary transparency sphere.

"These organizations give options and critique, extract data, and pursue institutional and democratic change."

On one hand, we have identified an “officialist” sector formed of people that work in the institutions themselves, in political groups, in consulting businesses, or lobbying. These people are characterized by following all posts, notices, and actions concerning parliamentary transparency in social and analog media without emitting hardly any opinions or critiques toward institutions, at least publicly. They are usually individual people who do not belong to an official organization but do work for an organization, business, or institution related to the topic.

On the other hand, there is a sector of “advocacy” located in the peripheral sphere constituted by people from civil society who belong to an organization (Civic Citizen Foundation, Access Info, Graba tu Pleno, Sus Cuentas) specialized in transparency and in the channels to attain it. These organizations give options and critique, extract data, and pursue institutional and democratic change. Qué Hacen Los Diputados is located in this second group, although maintains a good relationship with the officialist sector.  199 

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One of the facts that we should highlight is our collaboration with other organizations in the peripheral sphere. After a lot of time coexisting in the space of transparency promotion, the relationship with organizations like Civio or Access Info has been growing closer, even leading to joint actions, such as asking officials online about the situation of law transparency.31 Given the nature of the type of project (political, for the common good, not for profit) and the activity (political supervision, software development, and journalism), to be in contact with organizations that have been in the field longer helps to learn their processes, to spread awareness, and to have support for the work and the campaigns; they lead people that contact them to our project and they can advise us on doubts and at crucial moments.

Islands of related causes

"The network creates the feeling of community and collective identity."

In the field of transparency, so popular in Spain since 2011, there is a sort of archipelago of projects focused on achieving transparency, but as a general rule, there are no other projects with the same focus. For example, Graba tu Pleno, a citizen platform active since before 2011, defends that the citizens can record the plenaries of their council to make them public, relying on a right granted in the Legal System of the Local Entities, that is to say, their focus is transparency at the municipal area.

Meanwhile Cuentas Claras, a collective in favor of transparency, is another project that works so that the Law of Transparency includes measures to ensure the supervision of the expenses and income of the political parties, foundations and related associations, and of the elected and politically appointed officials. It also asks for a change of the Law of Political Party Funding in order to correct the “major gaps that it still has”, and for an independent and efficient Court of Auditors that controls and 31 Qué Hacen Los Diputados. ¿Dónde está la Ley de Transparencia? @Congreso_Es #PreguntaCongreso. http://goo.gl/U1N4Z  200 

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makes public the financing of parties within the timeframe established by the law. The pro-transparency projects are isolated in the sense that, in general, they don’t work jointly on concrete actions; however, they sympathize and mutually support each other by publishing information online about each other’s actions, linking websites, etc., meaning that, “the network creates the feeling of community and collective identity” and “strengthens the feeling of belonging to a community of movements that share a certain common identity”.32

"We have taken advantage of the opportunities that new information and communication technologies offer in order to question, publish, and spread ideas and demand transparency."

In addition, the fact that there are many projects with a common global end goal, which is the improvement of transparency, all working in different fields, can be very enriching. This mosaic of civic initiatives generates an “influence between organizations in that they consider each other as comrades in the fight. They generate ideological sympathies between the participants of movements that interact online”.33

Conclusion Over almost two years of experience of Qué Hacen Los Diputados, in which we have seen our interaction grow both with government officials and citizens, we have witnessed the growth in the volume of information that the officials share with us. Therefore, we have taken advantage of the opportunities that new information and communication technologies offer in order to question, publish, and spread ideas and demand transparency.

All of which has been possible thanks to the efforts and creativity of people that have dedicated their time so that citizens can know what 32 Candón Mena, José. Internet en movimiento. Pág 316. 33 Candón Mena, José. Internet en movimiento. Pág 317.  201 

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their legislative representatives are doing with their time, demonstrating that it is not necessary to construct a formal structure in order to create advocacy. We have learned about the information opportunities that peripheral or unofficial channels offer and also the opportunities that are offered through collaboration and joining forces with other organizations that share objectives to generate a major impact. Ultimately, with movements like ours, little by little, we are moving and causing a change in attitude or paradigm in regard to information relative to Congress and its officials actually being public information belonging to the citizens.

"Our next objective: a true accountability."

Although there is still much more to do and we should coordinate efforts and refine strategies, we are convinced that the journey towards transparency has no turning back, which will smooth out the path toward our next objective: a true accountability.

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AUTHORS

OPEN PARLIAMENTS ACHIEVEMENTS & CHALLENGES

ABOUT THE AUTHORS: TO MAINTAIN A DIALOGUE • Guillermo Avila (@guillermoavilar) RESEARCHER IN TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY AT FUNDAR AND PROMOTER OF THE CITIZEN PLATFORM CURUL 501, MEXICO.

• Eduardo Bohórquez (@ebohorquez) EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF TRANSPARENCIA MEXICANA, THE MEXICAN CHAPTER OF THE INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL AS WELL AS THE DIRECTOR OF FUNDACIÓN ESTE PAÍS, MEXICO.

• Vicky Bolaños (@VickyBol) DIGITAL JOURNALIST FOR RTVE.ES AND CO-FOUNDER OF QUE HACEN LOS DIPUTADOS, A SPANISH ORGANIZATION THAT MONITORS SPANISH PARLIAMENT.

• Agustina De Luca (@agus_deluca) LEGISLATIVE TRANSPARENCY COORDINATOR FOR DIRECTORIO LEGISLATIVO, ARGENTINA

• Diego Ernesto Díaz Iturbe (@DiazIturbe) GENERAL DIRECTOR OF IMPACTO LEGISLATIVO, A PARLIAMENTARY MONITORING ORGANIZATION, MEXICO.

• Fernando Dworak (@FernandoDworak) ACADEMIC AT THE INSTITUTO TECHNOLÓGICO AUTÓNOMO DE MEXICO (AUTONOMOUS TECHNOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF MEXICO), POLITICAL CONSULTANT AND EXPERT LEGISLATIVE ANALYST, MEXICO.

• María Jaraquemada (@majaraquemada) COORDINATOR FOR RED LATINOAMERICANA POR LA TRANSPARENCIA LEGISLATIVA (LATIN AMERICAN NETWORK FOR LEGISLATIVE TRANSPARENCY).  204 

AUTHORS

OPEN PARLIAMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHORS: TO MAINTAIN A DIALOGUE ACHIEVEMENTS & CHALLENGES

• Giorgi Kldiashvili (@g_Kldiashvili) DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE FOR DEVELOPMENT OF FREEDOM OF INFORMATION, GEORGIA.

• María del Carmen Nava Polina (@MaricarmenNava) GENERAL DIRECTOR OF THE ORGANIZATION VISIÓN LEGISLATIVA, MEXICO.

• Muchiri Nyaggah (@muchiri) EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AT THE LOCAL DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH INSTITUTE, KENYA

• Alejandra Rascón (@alerascon) PROGRAM COORDINATOR FOR TRANSPARENCIA MEXICANA, THE MEXICAN CHAPTER OF THE INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL, MEXICO.

• Leticia Salas Torres FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE MEXICAN CONGRESS CHANNEL.

• Pablo Secchi (@pablosecchi) EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF PODER CIUDADANO, THE ARGENTINE CHAPTER OF THE INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL, ARGENTINA.

• Dan Swislow (@DanSwislow) SENIOR PARTNERSHIPS OFFICER, NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTE, USA.

• John Wonderlich (@JohnWonderlich) POLICY DIRECTOR, SUNLIGHT FUNDATION, USA.

 206 

“Open Parliaments: Results and Expectations” was printed in Mexico City in the month of October 2015 at Nova Gráficos. 1,000 copies were printed.

CONTRIBUTORS

GUILLERMO

EDUARDO

ÁVILA

BOHÓRQUEZ

VICKY

BOLAÑOS

AGUSTINA

DIEGO ERNESTO

DE LUCA

DÍAZ ITURBE

DWORAK

MARÍA

FERNANDO

JARAQUEMADA

GIORGI

MARÍA DEL CARMEN

KLDIASHVILI

NAVA POLINA

MUCHIRI

ALEJANDRA

LETICIA

NYAGGAH

RASCON

SALAS TORRES

PABLO

DAN

JOHN

SECCHI

SWISLOW

WONDERLICH