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Open Parliament Data: from a trend to a necessity

Open Parliament Data: from a trend to a necessity

As modern informational technologies develop and public demand on them increases, state authorities, local self-government bodies and executive bodies all over the world have to use them in their work and communication with the public, what increases the quality of administrative decisions. Electronic governance, electronic parliament, electronic council, smart-city – these terms are not new, and many countries have already been either implementing these systems, or declaring the corresponding aims and priorities. New countries join the initiatives “Open Government” (69 countries) and “Open Parliament” (82 countries), they draw up new action plans to increase openness, and non-governmental organizations start monitoring their implementation.

Open data is one of the most important openness components of state institutions. Openness today is not only open publication and update of the data, produced by state institutions and authorities in the process of their work, – these data should be machine readable, i.e. it may be processed by machines, computer programs etc.

Publication and update of open parliamentary data gives the public means to analyze parliamentary processes, monitor activities of MPs and committees, control, and seek accountability. The products, which may be created of open parliamentary data, help the citizens understand how the parliament works, involve them in parliamentary processes, explain them a law-making logic, and increase their political culture.

Open parliament data portals worldwide

According to the data gathered by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, there are 189 countries in the world with functioning parliaments as of the beginning of 2016, and 181 of them have their own websites. The sites have different content, completeness of the information, availability of machine readable data, and means of communication with the public etc. A complete list of links to websites of parliaments, as well as sites or sections dedicated to open parliament data and open data portals is available at: http://bit.ly/parliamnet_links .

The parliaments of Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Italy, Norway, Paraguay, Russian Federation, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom and Scotland have their own websites or a special site dedicated to open parliament data.

However, each country understands open parliament data in its own way, and publish the data in various formats. Thus, Bosnia and Herzegovina publishes PDF files in section “open data”; Bulgaria and Czech Republic have special websites, which are either not filled with content, or are not finished on technical side; Costa Rica placed excel files on Google Drive. Russia, Switzerland and Ukraine provide access to a limited number of data sets. Although Austria doesn't have a separate website for open data, there are 15 data sets on activities of the parliament on government portal.

Comprehensive open data portals are available in Brazil (in both chambers), Chile, Denmark, France, Italy, Norway, Paraguay, Sweden and, of course, in the initiator of this instrument – Great Britain.

Website of Scotland's Parliament deserves a special attention, with its 75 data sets (expenses on MPs, councilors in committees, offices in the parliament, events, electronic addresses of MPs etc.).

Open data portal of the British Parliament is one of the best. It contains 34 data sets, and the number is constantly increasing. The portal contains information about electronic petitions, electoral constituencies, agenda, voting results etc.

Open data portal of the French Senate contains four large data sets (law-making, amendments, questions and reports), as well as information about MPs and election outcomes.

Sweden Parliament has 200,000 documents available on its portal, dating from 1971. For example, calendar, list of speakers, legislation, information about MPs, voting results, and speeches of MPs.

Norwegian Parliament's open data website contains information about voting, legislation, questions and representatives.

Most of open data portals belonging to the abovementioned parliaments have all the functions that an open data portal should have: raw data download, use of an API (application programming interface), examples of using open data, support, consulting and trainings for users.

Canada, USA and Australia don't have open parliament data sections on their parliament websites, or open parliament data websites. However, there are citizen initiatives, which create products based on parliament data of these countries. Website of the European Parliament contains only some data sets on the general EU open data portal (information about election outcomes, members of European Parliament, list of texts adopted by the Parliament, calendar, agenda etc.)

From the parliament data to products

Parliamentary information technology – is application of informational technologies in documentation of law-making activities. The major issue in this sphere is securing information and statistical data (in a form, readable for both humans and machines) on: the certain lawmakers, draft laws, voting for initiatives and text of the legislation.

Parliamentary information technology is used by legislature officials, private commercial and non-profit subjects for various purposes, including administration of parliaments, lobbying and facilitation of democratic discourse.

Judging from experience of countries which parliaments chose to open their data, they not only provide files available for download, but also make application programming interfaces (API), allowing to use the data in more effective way. Besides that, open parliaments provide examples on how to use their open data, teach users how to use them, and ask citizens which data sets they would like to get published.

As for the interesting products, based on open data on websites of parliaments, the following ones are definitely worth mentioning:

1) The Law Factory / La Fabrique de la Loi – an instrument based on open data of French Parliament. It helps to track the evolution of a legislative initiative starting with the first mention about it to official publication, and shows which amendments were made to the texts, by whom and when.

2) Italian Parliament has three applications on its site with informational content. One of the applications, based on open data, allows to track the history and results of elections in Italy in past centuries.

3) Paraguayan Parliament provides the citizens with an Android application allowing to search draft laws with an additional statistics module.

4) Scottish Parliament provides an example of visualization based on open data with an explanation of which data sets were used for its creation.

5) British Parliament has an open parliament data portal, where it describes various approaches and methods of open data use, publishes training materials and manuals.

A special attention should be paid to so-called independent projects (created by civic initiatives or organizations), based on open data.

We should definitely mention a project TheyWorkForYou, created on the basis of parliament data of Great Britain, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Thanks to the API developed for the project, it was also localized in New Zealand, Australia and Ireland. The site description says: “TheyWorkForYou takes open data from the UK Parliament, and presents it in a way that’s easy to follow – for everyone. So now you can check, with just a few clicks: are They Working For You?” The data are processed per debates, written answers, oral speeches etc.

The project https://openparliament.ca/ searches the requested information in all “activities” of Canadian Parliament. The application presents search results in a form of a time line containing text and statistical information related to the certain political parties, individuals, events and structures. Thus, a user receives quite a full picture of events in a parliament, based on the search.

Australian project They vote for you, which was recently localized in Ukraine as a project They vote for you. The application uses voting data from an official site of parliament, and allows a user to join sets of voting into policies and receive statistical information per faction or an MP, and see whether he is consistent in his choices, who votes contrary to his faction's policy, which MPs vote similarly. They vote for you not only takes data for analysis, but also provides statistically processed data thanks to the use of API.

We should also mention projects of the Sunlightfoundation civic initiative. For example, Email Congress allows to determine who's your congressman using your address and to write him, House Staff Directory allows to search the needed official and his contacts, Capitol words allows to analyze expressions of lawmakers using a search word for the period from 1996 to this day.

Ukrainian Parliament and open data

Ukrainian MPs and representatives of non-governmental organizations, involved in parliamentary monitoring, have started development of the Work Plan for Implementation of the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. On 5 February 2016, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Volodymyr Hroisman approved the Action Plan. The corresponding Monitoring Committee was created, and it gathers monthly to discuss the implementation of the Action Plan, determine problem issues and plan further activities. The public and Parliament are still working together, and there are already first results  of these joint efforts.

Publication of open data is provided by a number of legislative acts, particularly: Law of Ukraine on Access to Public Information; CMU Resolution #835 of 21 October 2015 on Approval of Regulation on Data Sets That Must Be Opened in Open Data Format; and Order #19 of the Minister of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Communal Services of Ukraine Hennadii Zubko on Approval of the Road Map for Development of Open Data in Ukraine for 2016. According to these documents, besides general public information, Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine should publish the following data sets on the Unified Open Data Portal: Regulatory and legislative framework of Ukraine (Ukrainian Legislation database), information about consideration of agenda items in Ukrainian Parliament, and database of draft laws from Parliament's website electronic computer network.

There are six groups of data sets on the beta Open Parliament Data Portal (97 data sets). Besides that, Civil Network OPORA is realizing the Open Parliament Data Portal project, supported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Ukraine. It is planned to launch a new portal under the project with open code and more than 100 data sets and open API. Besides that, we are trying to negotiate further opening of the data, according to the schedule.

Talking about the use of parliament data in Ukraine, it should be mentioned that Civil Network OPORA has developed instruments allowing to track joint voting of MPs, as well as their speeches in the Parliament. The Chesno Movement created an application “Zakonoproekt”, allowing to track draft laws of the President, Cabinet of Ministers, and MPs, and detect Groups of Interest – connections between factions and individual MPs, based on jointly submitted draft laws etc. Besides that, VOX Ukraine and the Teksty are also working with parliament data.

A high-quality open parliament data portal with API will definitely result in development of many other products on its basis and, as a result, it will make the Parliament and the citizens closer, allowing them to track and control activities of the Parliament in an interesting and easy way.

via GIPHY

Hryhorii Sorochan, Nadiia Virna

The material is created under the Open Parliament Data Portal project, supported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Ukraine.