This Guide is intended to be used by parliaments for the purposes of effectively engaging citizens through their websites. It stems from research conducted as part of the Managing Parliament’s Image project.

This Guide is intended to be used by parliaments for the purposes of effectively organising and managing their websites and the staff responsible for them. It stems from research conducted as part of the Managing Parliament’s Image project.

The 2012 Law Via the Internet (LVI 2012) took place at the Cornell Legal Information Institute (Ithaca, New York) from 7 to 9 October 2012 and covered themes on free and open access to legal information: open government and e- participation, legal publishing, open access and sustainability, applications, data management, etc.

• Agenda and Annotated Agenda (PDF)

The World e-Parliament Conference 2012 was held at the Chamber of Deputies of Italy, in Rome, on 13, 14 and 15 September. The Conference concluded on the International Day of Democracy, established in 2008 by the UN General Assembly.

The Reports, prepared by the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament, intend to help legislatures to harness the potential benefits of ICT for their work and establish key goals and priorities for exploiting this valuable resource. While providing evidence of the complexities of e-parliament, the Reports suggest ways to overcome some of the obstacles to the effective use of technology in parliamentary settings.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota will announce the Open Government Partnership (OGP) at a high-level meeting of governments and civil society at the Department of State on July 12, 2011. The Open Government Partnership is a new, multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a new international initiative aimed at securing concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, increase civic participation, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to make government more open, effective, and accountable. A multi-stakeholder International Steering Committee, co-chaired by the United States and Brazil in its inaugural year, is comprised of government and civil society representatives from around the world.

The availability of the record of a parliament’s activities, along with the completeness, timeliness, and clarity of its documentation, provides the means for judging the level of openness a parliament has achieved. Transparency and accountability are the pillars on which openness rests, and the standards for these two goals have evolved significantly over the last decade as citizens have come to demand more from their governing institutions.

Although the media are among the most avid consumers of parliamentary information and documents, they are not the only ones who have benefited from the increased transparency of political institutions. Civil societies and the public, especially those that have access to high capacity digital technology, have also reaped the rewards. In some countries, civil societies have been among the most vocal in calling for greater access and have often developed some of the most creative uses of the information that has been made available.

1. Governing at a time of technological changes
2. An overview of the findings of the World e-Parliament Report 2010

Statements and Presentations - World e-Parliament Conference 2009

Agenda of the World e-Parliament Conference 2009

The World e-Parliament Conference 2009, took place on 3, 4 and 5 November 2009 at the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C., was built on the results of two previous conferences held respectively in Geneva (2007) and Brussels (2008), as well as on the findings of the World e-Parliament Report 2008. The 2009 event was co-organized by the United Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the U.S. House of Representatives and the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament.