Last Wednesday one of my colleagues unexpectedly invited me to attend a conference in her place. I couldn't refuse, knowing that the subject matter is about bringing more transparency via Internet into politics and governance :) So by 5:30 early next morning I was on my way to Vilnius.
You can learn more about the conference organized by the local Transparency International branch by clicking here.
I'll write down 10 of the most useful findings/insights gathered in Vilnius, that I myself would prefer to keep in mind:
1) German website http://www.abgeordnetenwatch.de/ That's a site which allows to keep the members of parliament (and, if I remember correctly - regional level politicians) accountable. It also provides for transparency and opportunities to interact with members of parliaments by asking them questions. In Latvia we have two similar websites: www.deputatiuzdelnas.lv (focused on accountability and transparency) and www.gudrasgalvas.lv (focused on communication). There are four interesting things in German website that we might consider striving for/implementing for Latvia: [1] More than 90% of MoP respond to questions there; [2] the website is financially self-sufficient, BUT it asks every MoP a 200 euro payment for each additional photo, election manifesto etc. [3] there's a cool card game based on statistics for each MoP; [4] great code of ethics for people asking questions to MoP's
2) I've learned so much about open data ... Now I know that there are 8 principles of open data, there's a new handbook out and there are VERY interesting activities already going on in my home country of Latvia (hackathon, google group, some projects already accomplished with public procurement data, party donation data, parliamentary votes data) - there is also a community of open data enthusiasts reachable via twitter and opendata.lv
3) Previously I didn't know than in Slovakia all public contracts (with some exceptions - like work contracts and military contracts) have to be made available online as a precondition for them being legally valid (with all the attachments). That also includes the contracts of public companies (only if they are 100% public). That's so great! There are more than 100 000 contracts freely available online. We should definitely strive for the same in Latvia - otherwise sometimes we are not even aware of the existence of a contract.
4) There should be a new Internet website in Lithuania by July this year, which - if judging from its presentation - should be the most innovative tool in the world for controlling and collaborating with parliament. Some of their ideas were amazing. I wish the developers good luck, and hope that they succeed prior to the next parliamentary elections this year! Meanwhile it was interesting to learn that funding for this project is being raised via http://www.aukok.lt - which is a great website in itself. In Latvia we do have something similar - ziedot.lv, but it is not much used for citizens' initiatives. So maybe there might be a place for an additional fundraising website?
5) It's always nice to learn how Estonia is doing. They electronic services are just without parallel anywhere in the world. Allegedly it takes just a few minutes to fill the tax form. There was a great discussion on the safety of e-voting, and what Estonia is doing in order for the e-voting system to not be compromised. But it was also interesting to learn that Estonians are not yet so good with online communication between decision makers and the voters - no good and successful initiatives there. Feels like a mirror image of Latvia :) So many of our ministers, members of parliaments are now exceptionally good at communicating with voters via twitter, facebook, gudrasgalvas.lv - yet we're struggling with e-services :)
6) It seems that it is not just Latvia, where implementing open budget principles is a struggle. There were several examples of countries not quite succeeding to visualize budget data successfully due to the very technical nature of the state budget structure.
7) I love the Macedonian idea to use mobile phones in order to report on corruption cases. You can see the results here. It would be interesting to analyze the reasons why not that many did in fact report corruption cases. I doubt, though, if it would work in Latvia.
8) At first I didn't think too highly of KąVeikiaValdžia.lt But then I got the point! This Lithuanian website crawls around all the governmental sites in Lithuania gathering information on newly-produced documents, updates. You can then enter your keywords in its search field, and get an e-mail whenever that keyword is mentioned in a newly produced document/information. That's how you'll never miss a new document or a meeting announcement. Simple. Great. We should have something like this in Latvia.
9) This website due to financial reasons will be offline soon, but till then check out the schooloscope. Basically it's a good way how to compare various schools - according to their exam results and other criteria. Excellent not just in order to pick a good school for your youngster, but also in order to grasp the differences between the best and the worst schools.
10) The giant of e-participation is definitely the Sunlight Foundation. They have a number of new projects, that I wasn't aware about. You can check out all of them here Most intriguing for me in the Latvian context were: the campaign ad monitor (people can report political advertising wherever they see it), http://capitolwords.org (which keywords appear in congressional record - for example, the website shows that the word "freedom" is used mostly be Republicans, most often in Texas, in 2006 etc.); http://subsidyscope.org and http://poligraft.com
You can learn more about the conference organized by the local Transparency International branch by clicking here.
I'll write down 10 of the most useful findings/insights gathered in Vilnius, that I myself would prefer to keep in mind:
1) German website http://www.abgeordnetenwatch.de/ That's a site which allows to keep the members of parliament (and, if I remember correctly - regional level politicians) accountable. It also provides for transparency and opportunities to interact with members of parliaments by asking them questions. In Latvia we have two similar websites: www.deputatiuzdelnas.lv (focused on accountability and transparency) and www.gudrasgalvas.lv (focused on communication). There are four interesting things in German website that we might consider striving for/implementing for Latvia: [1] More than 90% of MoP respond to questions there; [2] the website is financially self-sufficient, BUT it asks every MoP a 200 euro payment for each additional photo, election manifesto etc. [3] there's a cool card game based on statistics for each MoP; [4] great code of ethics for people asking questions to MoP's
2) I've learned so much about open data ... Now I know that there are 8 principles of open data, there's a new handbook out and there are VERY interesting activities already going on in my home country of Latvia (hackathon, google group, some projects already accomplished with public procurement data, party donation data, parliamentary votes data) - there is also a community of open data enthusiasts reachable via twitter and opendata.lv
3) Previously I didn't know than in Slovakia all public contracts (with some exceptions - like work contracts and military contracts) have to be made available online as a precondition for them being legally valid (with all the attachments). That also includes the contracts of public companies (only if they are 100% public). That's so great! There are more than 100 000 contracts freely available online. We should definitely strive for the same in Latvia - otherwise sometimes we are not even aware of the existence of a contract.
4) There should be a new Internet website in Lithuania by July this year, which - if judging from its presentation - should be the most innovative tool in the world for controlling and collaborating with parliament. Some of their ideas were amazing. I wish the developers good luck, and hope that they succeed prior to the next parliamentary elections this year! Meanwhile it was interesting to learn that funding for this project is being raised via http://www.aukok.lt - which is a great website in itself. In Latvia we do have something similar - ziedot.lv, but it is not much used for citizens' initiatives. So maybe there might be a place for an additional fundraising website?
5) It's always nice to learn how Estonia is doing. They electronic services are just without parallel anywhere in the world. Allegedly it takes just a few minutes to fill the tax form. There was a great discussion on the safety of e-voting, and what Estonia is doing in order for the e-voting system to not be compromised. But it was also interesting to learn that Estonians are not yet so good with online communication between decision makers and the voters - no good and successful initiatives there. Feels like a mirror image of Latvia :) So many of our ministers, members of parliaments are now exceptionally good at communicating with voters via twitter, facebook, gudrasgalvas.lv - yet we're struggling with e-services :)
6) It seems that it is not just Latvia, where implementing open budget principles is a struggle. There were several examples of countries not quite succeeding to visualize budget data successfully due to the very technical nature of the state budget structure.
7) I love the Macedonian idea to use mobile phones in order to report on corruption cases. You can see the results here. It would be interesting to analyze the reasons why not that many did in fact report corruption cases. I doubt, though, if it would work in Latvia.
8) At first I didn't think too highly of KąVeikiaValdžia.lt But then I got the point! This Lithuanian website crawls around all the governmental sites in Lithuania gathering information on newly-produced documents, updates. You can then enter your keywords in its search field, and get an e-mail whenever that keyword is mentioned in a newly produced document/information. That's how you'll never miss a new document or a meeting announcement. Simple. Great. We should have something like this in Latvia.
9) This website due to financial reasons will be offline soon, but till then check out the schooloscope. Basically it's a good way how to compare various schools - according to their exam results and other criteria. Excellent not just in order to pick a good school for your youngster, but also in order to grasp the differences between the best and the worst schools.
10) The giant of e-participation is definitely the Sunlight Foundation. They have a number of new projects, that I wasn't aware about. You can check out all of them here Most intriguing for me in the Latvian context were: the campaign ad monitor (people can report political advertising wherever they see it), http://capitolwords.org (which keywords appear in congressional record - for example, the website shows that the word "freedom" is used mostly be Republicans, most often in Texas, in 2006 etc.); http://subsidyscope.org and http://poligraft.com
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