Features of Parliamentary Websites in Selected Jurisdictions

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by The Law Library of Congress, Global Legal Research Center: “In recent years, parliaments around the world have enhanced their websites in order to improve access to legislative information and other parliamentary resources. Innovative features allow constituents and researchers to locate and utilize detailed information on laws and lawmaking in various ways. These include tracking tools and alerts, apps, the use of open data technology, and different search functions. In order to demonstrate some of the developments in this area, staff from the Global Legal Research Directorate of the Law Library of Congress surveyed the official parliamentary websites of fifty countries from all regions of the world, plus the website of the European Parliament. In some cases, information on more than one website is provided where separate sites have been established for different chambers of the national parliament, bringing the total number of individual websites surveyed to seventy.

While the information on the parliamentary websites is primarily in the national language of the particular country, around forty of the individual websites surveyed were found to provide at least limited information in one or more other languages. The European Parliament website can be translated into any of the twenty-four official languages of the members of the European Union.

All of the parliamentary websites included in the survey have at least basic browse tools that allow users to view legislation in a list format, and that may allow for viewing in, for example, date or title order. All of the substantive websites also enable searching, often providing a general search box for the whole site at the top of each page as well as more advanced search options for different types of documents. Some sites provide various facets that can be used to further narrow searches.

Around thirty-nine of the individual websites surveyed provide users with some form of tracking or alert function to receive updates on certain documents (including proposed legislation), parliamentary news, committee activities, or other aspects of the website. This includes the ability to subscribe to different RSS feeds and/or email alerts.

The ability to watch live or recorded proceedings of different parliaments, including debates within the relevant chamber as well as committee hearings, is a common feature of the parliamentary websites surveyed. Fifty-eight of the websites surveyed featured some form of video, including links to dedicated YouTube channels, specific pages where users can browse and search for embedded videos, and separate video services or portals that are linked to or viewable from the main site. Some countries also make videos available on dedicated mobile-friendly sites or apps, including Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. In total, apps containing parliamentary information are provided in just fourteen of the countries surveyed. In comparison, the parliamentary websites of thirty countries are available in mobile-friendly formats, enabling easy access to information and different functionalities using smartphones and tablets.

The table also provides information on some of the additional special features available on the surveyed websites. Examples include dedicated sites or pages that provide educational information about the parliament for children (Argentina, El Salvador, Germany, Israel, Netherlands, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey); calendar functions, including those that allow users to save information to their personal calendars or otherwise view information about different types of proceedings or events (available on at least twenty websites); and open data portals or other features that allow information to be downloaded in bulk for reuse or analysis, including through the use of APIs (application programming interfaces) (at least six countries)….(More)”.

Open Data Blueprint

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

ODX Canada: “In Canada, the open data environment should be viewed as a supply chain. The movement of open data from producers to consumers involves many different organizations, people, activities, projects and initiatives, all of which work together to push out a final product. Naturally, if there is a break or hurdle in this supply chain, it doesn’t work efficiently. A fundamental hurdle highlighted by companies across the country was the inability to scale their business at the provincial, national and international levels.

This blueprint aims to address the challenges Canadian entrepreneurs are facing by encouraging municipalities to launch open data initiatives. By sharing best practices, we hope to encourage the accessibility of datasets within existing jurisdictions. The structured recommendations in this Open Data Blueprint are based on feedback and best practices seen in major cities across Canada collected through ODX’s primary research….(More)”

(Read more about the OD150 initiative here)

Connecting societal issues, users and data. Scenario-based design of open data platforms

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Erna Ruijer et al in Government Information Quarterly: “Governments around the world make their data available through platforms but, disappointingly, the use of this data is lagging behind. This problem has been recognized in the literature and to facilitate use of open datasets, scholars have focused on identifying general user requirements for open data platform design. This approach however fails to take into account the variation of open data practices and specific contexts of usage. This study, therefore, argues that next to general requirements: we also need to collect context-specific user requirements for open data platforms. We take different societal issues as the starting point for open data platform design. To illustrate the value of this context-specific approach, we apply scenario-based design methodology in the Province of Groningen in The Netherlands. The results show that different scenarios result partly in similar but also partly in different user requirements, leading to a deeper and richer understanding of user requirements. We conclude that a context-specific approach thereby connecting data, users and societal issues can be used to guide government agencies and designers in efforts to develop open data platforms that actually meet the needs of citizens….(More)”.

Madrid as a democracy lab

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Bernardo Gutiérrez at OpenDemocracy: “…The launch of Decide Madrid, the city participation platform running on the Consul free software, signaled a real revolution. On the one hand, it paved the way for democracy from the bottom up, through direct and binding mechanisms. Unlike other historical participatory budgets, the 100 million Euros devoted to Decide Madrid participatory budgets in 2017 are allocated according to proposals coming from below. The proposals that get the most votes, whenever technically feasible, are approved. The platform also carries a section for “citizen proposals”. …

The Decide Madrid platform was not initially well received by the traditional neighbourhood associations, used to face-to-face participation and to mediating between citizens and government. In order to tackle this, a number of face-to-face deliberation spaces are being set up, such as the Local Forums (physical participation spaces in the districts), and also projects such as If you feel like a cat (participation for children and teenagers), or processes such as G1000, which aims at promoting collective deliberation and fostering proposals from below on the basis of a representative sample of the population, so that the participants’ diversity and plurality is guaranteed.

Most projects are being carried out with the support of the new Laboratories of Citizen Innovation of the prestigious Medialab-Prado. The Participa LAB(Collective Intelligence for Democracy), the DataLab (open data) and the InciLab (Citizen Innovation Lab) are joint public/common initiatives, acting as a bridge between local government and citizens. The Participa LAB, which is the one working more closely on participation, is collaborating with Decide Madridin a number of projects (Codat Madrid hackathons, If you feel like a cat, community lines, gamification, G1000, narrative groups…) and coordinates the Collective Intelligence for Democracy international call. InciLab has launched, among many other initiatives, the Madrid Listens project, to connect City Hall officials with citizens on concrete projects, blending disintermediation and the citizen lab philosophy.

More than 300.000 users strong, Decide Madrid is consolidating itself as the hegemonic space for participation in the city. It activates a variety of processes, debates, proposals, and projects. Its free software means that any city can adapt Consul to its needs, without any substantial investment, and set up a platform. From Barcelona to A Coruña, from Rome to Paris and Buenos Aires, dozens of institutions around the world have replicated the initial Decide Madrid core, thus setting up what Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s digital minister, calls a “liquid federation of cities”. Ada Colau, the mayor of Barcelona, praising the cooperative network of participation cities says: “It is very interesting that in Barcelona we have been able to carry out our first experience of digital participation, Decidim Barcelona, adapting Madrid’s base code. Once we have had a first proposal, we have shared it with many municipalities throughout Catalonia”.

Distributed democracy

The brain as a metaphor. A map of Hamburg (Germany) as a symbol of the networked, decentralized city. Neurons and neighbourhoods connected by flows, inevitably synchronized. Both images are to be found in Emergency, Steven Johnson’s classic book on collective intelligence processes. The city as a brain, as a whole made of decentralized nodes. The city as an open network, where any neighbourhood-node can connect with any other. Caio Vassão’s concept of a distributed city rounds the edges of the city with no centre, “networked, open, fluid, flexible, adaptable, reconfigurable”. A city where the neighbourhoods in the suburbs dialogue and relate to each other without the mediation of a historical center.

Left: Diagram of the human brain. Image source: Mittermeier. Right: Map of Hamburg, circa 1850. Image source: Princeton Architectural Press.

Madrid has kick-started a forceful decentralization policy. Distributed democracy in Madrid can be seen in how budgets are allocated, how city districts have multiplied their resources and partly manage cultural festivals (like the Summers in the City) and cultural projects (Madrid District).

At the same time, the launching of the Local Forums is a clear move to decentralize power and participation in the city. Through projects such as Experiment District (travelling citizen laboratories), Imagine Madrid (rethinking 10 territories) or the M.A.R.E.S project, Spain’s capital city is redrawing its neighbourhood fabric, its economic relations, and citizen involvement in decision making. The successful Medialab-Prado’s Experiment District project, which has already visited Villaverde, Moratalaz and Fuencarral, is in full expansion. It is about to even launch a global call, as dozens of cities around the world want to replicate it. Medialab-Prado, one of the city innovation centres, defines Experiment District as a set of “citizen labs for experimenting and collaborative learning in which anyone can participate”. Citizen (neighbourhood) labs based on the prototyping culture, an open and collaborative way of developing projects. Citizen (neighbourhood) labs for learning and teaching, where the result is not a perfect product, but a process that can be improved in real time through the collaboration of citizens from the Madrid neighbourhoods….(More)”

Open Data as Enabler of Public Service Co-creation: Exploring the Drivers and Barriers

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Maarja Toots: “Open data is being increasingly looked at as a major driver of public service innovation. Open access to datasets and advanced analytical tools are believed to generate valuable new knowledge that can be turned into data-driven services. At the same time, open data is also believed to spur open governance and enable the engagement of various stakeholders in the co-creation of services. Despite this appealing vision of open data-driven co-creation of public services, we are far from understanding how it can be realized in practice. We turned to 63 experts and practitioners in a survey covering six European countries and found a multitude of barriers that need to be overcome first. Luckily we also found some drivers. This paper provides some first insights into these drivers and barriers and proposes policy recommendations to foster a data-driven transformation of public service creation….(More)”.

Open data: Accountability and transparency

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Matthew S Mayernik at Big Data and Society: “The movements by national governments, funding agencies, universities, and research communities toward “open data” face many difficult challenges. In high-level visions of open data, researchers’ data and metadata practices are expected to be robust and structured. The integration of the internet into scientific institutions amplifies these expectations. When examined critically, however, the data and metadata practices of scholarly researchers often appear incomplete or deficient. The concepts of “accountability” and “transparency” provide insight in understanding these perceived gaps. Researchers’ primary accountabilities are related to meeting the expectations of research competency, not to external standards of data deposition or metadata creation. Likewise, making data open in a transparent way can involve a significant investment of time and resources with no obvious benefits. This paper uses differing notions of accountability and transparency to conceptualize “open data” as the result of ongoing achievements, not one-time acts….(More)”.

The role of Open Data in driving sustainable mobility in nine smart cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Piyush Yadav et al: “In today’s era of globalization, sustainable mobility is considered as a key factor in the economic growth of any country. With the emergence of open data initiatives, there is tremendous potential to improve mobility. This paper presents findings of a detailed analysis of mobility open data initiatives in nine smart cities – Amsterdam, Barcelona, Chicago, Dublin, Helsinki, London, Manchester, New York and San Francisco. The paper discusses the study of various sustainable indicators in the mobility domain and its convergence with present open datasets. Specifically, it throws light on open data ecosystems in terms of their production and consumption. It gives a comprehensive view of the nature of mobility open data with respect to their formats, interactivity, and availability. The paper details the open datasets in terms of their alignment with different mobility indicators, publishing platforms, applications and API’s available. The paper discusses how these open datasets have shown signs of fostering organic innovation and sustainable growth in smart cities with impact on mobility trends. The results of the work can be used to inform the design of data driven sustainable mobility in smart cities to maximize the utilization of available open data resources….(More)”.

Open Government: Concepts and Challenges for Public Administration’s Management in the Digital Era

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Tippawan Lorsuwannarat in the Journal of Public and Private Management: “This paper has four main objectives. First, to disseminate a study on the meaning and development of open government. Second, to describe the components of an open government. Third, to examine the international movement situation involved with open government. And last, to analyze the challenges related to the application of open government in Thailandus current digital era. The paper suggests four periods of open government by linking to the concepts of public administration in accordance with the use of information technology in the public sector. The components of open government are consistent with the meaning of open government, including open data, open access, and open engagement. The current international situation of open government considers the ranking of open government and open government partnership. The challenges of adopting open government in Thailand include clear policy regarding open government, digital gap, public organizational culture, laws supporting privacy and data infrastructure….(More)”.

The State of Open Data Portals in Latin America

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Michael Steinberg at Center for Data Innovation: “Many Latin American countries publish open data—government data made freely available online in machine-readable formats and without license restrictions. However, there is a tremendous amount of variation in the quantity and type of datasets governments publish on national open data portals—central online repositories for open data that make it easier for users to find data. Despite the wide variation among the countries, the most popular datasets tend to be those that either provide transparency into government operations or offer information that citizens can use directly. As governments continue to update and improve their open data portals, they should take steps to ensure that they are publishing the datasets most valuable to their citizens.

To better understand this variation, we collected information about open data portals in 20 Latin American countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. Not all Latin American countries have an open data portal, but even if they do not operate a unified portal, some governments may still have open data. Four Latin American countries—Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua—do not have open data portals. One country— El Salvador—does not have a government-run open data portal, but does have a national open data portal (datoselsalvador.org) run by volunteers….

There are many steps Latin American governments can take to improve open data in their country. Those nations without open data portals should create them, and those who already have them should continue to update them and publish more datasets to better serve their constituents. One way to do this is to monitor the popular datasets on other countries’ open data portals, and where applicable, ensure the government produces similar datasets. Those running open data portals should also routinely monitor search queries to see what users are looking for, and if they are looking for datasets that have not yet been posted, work with the relevant government agencies to make these datasets available.

In summary, there are stark differences in the amount of data published, the format of the data, and the most popular datasets in open data portals in Latin America. However, in every country there is an appetite for data that either provides public accountability for government functions or supplies helpful information to citizens…(More)”.

Using Collaboration to Harness Big Data for Social Good

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jake Porway at SSIR: “These days, it’s hard to get away from the hype around “big data.” We read articles about how Silicon Valley is using data to drive everything from website traffic to autonomous cars. We hear speakers at social sector conferences talk about how nonprofits can maximize their impact by leveraging new sources of digital information like social media data, open data, and satellite imagery.

Braving this world can be challenging, we know. Creating a data-driven organization can require big changes in culture and process. Some nonprofits, like Crisis Text Line and Watsi, started off boldly by building their own data science teams. But for the many other organizations wondering how to best use data to advance their mission, we’ve found that one ingredient works better than all the software and tech that you can throw at a problem: collaboration.

As a nonprofit dedicated to applying data science for social good, DataKind has run more than 200 projects in collaboration with other nonprofits worldwide by connecting them to teams of volunteer data scientists. What do the most successful ones have in common? Strong collaborations on three levels: with data science experts, within the organization itself, and across the nonprofit sector as a whole.

1. Collaborate with data science experts to define your project. As we often say, finding problems can be harder than finding solutions. ….

2. Collaborate across your organization to “build with, not for.” Our projects follow the principles of human-centered design and the philosophy pioneered in the civic tech world of “design with, not for.” ….

3. Collaborate across your sector to move the needle. Many organizations think about building data science solutions for unique challenges they face, such as predicting the best location for their next field office. However, most of us are fighting common causes shared by many other groups….

By focusing on building strong collaborations on these three levels—with data experts, across your organization, and across your sector—you’ll go from merely talking about big data to making big impact….(More).