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Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Volodymyr Hroisman and OPORA have agreed to strengthen cooperation between the public and the Parliament

On 11 March 2016, representatives of Civil Network OPORA met the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Volodymyr Hroisman to discuss the issues related to transparency and openness of the Parliament and its separate institutions, as well as development and introduction of the Open Data Portal of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Based on the meeting results, Volodymyr Hroisman charged the Parliament's Apparatus to resolve the certain problems in communication between OPORA and the Parliament on the way to reforming of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Civil Network OPORA was represented on the meeting by Olha Aivazovska, Oleksandr Kliuzhev, Anatolii Bondarchuk and Nadiia Babynska.

They discussed on the meeting the list of datasets, required for the development of Parliament's Open Data Portal, which are either closed, or unstructured, or absent. Parliament's Open Data Portal is being developed by the Civil Network OPORA under the UNDP, and is planned to be presented approximately in April 2016. As long as OPORA works in cooperation with the Computerized Systems Department of the Apparatus of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on collection and structuring of datasets for the Portal, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Volodymyr Hroisman and leadership of the Apparatus promised to assist in access to all the parliamentary data including financial.

Besides that, Civil Network OPORA discussed with Volodymyr Hroisman the ways to increase transparency of VRU committees, particularly publication of information about their activities on their online resources. According to the results of a research, made by the Civil Network OPORA in December 2014 – November 2015, most of committees publish less than a half of information, which must be published on their websites. Thus, only 8 committees publish more than 50% of information on their websites, 1 committee – 50%, and other 18 committees– less than 50% of information.

Besides that, OPORA drew Speaker's attention to the fact that decree of Parliament's Chairman on Web-resources of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine #699 as of 19 May 2015 contains incomplete list of information, which is suitable for publication on websites of committees. Thus, this list should be broadened.

It was agreed on the meeting that Civil Network OPORA will provide its propositions in a form of the list of data, suitable for publication on websites of committees. This list is going to be approved by a separate decree. Besides that, Civil Network OPORA took a responsibility of providing a monthly verification of committees' openness, particularly publication of information about their activities on their websites.

Volodymyr Hroisman, for his part, has informed that it's planned to provide online streaming of committee meetings, and that a registration mechanism was developed for individual voting of MPs on meetings of committees, and that all websites of the committees will have a unified standard.

OPORA's representatives exchanged with the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine their views on adherence to the Rules of Parliamentary Procedure by the current convocation and key aspects of planned internal parliamentary reforms. OPORA informed Volodymyr Hroisman about its intention to secure a permanent oversight of adherence to the Rules of Parliamentary Procedure and suggested to introduce the corresponding monitoring by the Parliament itself.

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Civil Network OPORA - is a non-governmental, non-political and financially independent all-Ukrainian network of activists. We united to enhance public participation in the political process by developing and implementing models of citizen participation in the activities of state and local governments.