The World e-Parliament Report 2012 documents the efforts of legislatures to use information and communication technologies (ICT) to support their constitutional functions. The Report is based on the Global Survey of ICT in Parliaments 2012 conducted by the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament between February and May 2012, which is the third in a series of surveys that began in 2007.

The World e-Parliament Report 2012 documents the efforts of legislatures to use information and communication technologies (ICT) to support their constitutional functions. The Report is based on the Global Survey of ICT in Parliaments 2012 conducted by the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament between February and May 2012, which is the third in a series of surveys that began in 2007.

"Parliaments are, after all, the governing institution closest to the citizens, meant to provide citizens with a direct link to the policymaking process and a method of accountability and oversight of other branches of government" says Mr. Ranko Krivokapic, President of the Parliament of Montenegro, and newly elected President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, in this article.  He underlines the importance of  "transparency and openness as key to reinforcing the trust between parliaments and voters".

The Library of Congress of the U.S. launched its second legislative data challenge, Legislative XML Data Mapping.

Like the first data challenge, this challenge incorporates the Akoma Ntoso legislative schema, but instead of asking competitors to apply the schema to bill text, participants should map existing elements from US and UK bill XML to the most recent Akoma Ntoso schema.

The e-Democracia platform offers simple web 2.0 tools to allow citizens to interact with lawmakers on specific issues, helping to connect Brazilian citizens to national lawmakers across thousands of miles of geography. Citizens can use the portal and social media platforms to engage Congressmen, mark-up legislation, and propose and debate solutions to policy problems. The platform has facilitated cross-country dialogue among disparate groups and has thousands of active users. It has also improved legislative transparency.

The Open Government Partnership, National Democratic Institute, and the Congress of Chile will hold a webinar to introduce the Legislative Openness Working Group (LOWG) on 10 September 2013. The LOWG is intended to deepen the exchange of knowledge across governments, parliaments, civil society and international institutions on the opportunities and challenges associated with legislative openness.

As part of the U.S. House of Representatives’ commitment to improving transparency and accountability, the House announced the creation of the new online XML version of the United States Code that is available for bulk downloading. The XML version of the United States Code, which resides on the website of the House’s Office of the Law Revision Counsel, is open and available to all, free of charge at:  http://uscodebeta.house.gov/download/download.shtml

The House Administration Chairman Candice Miller, and Ranking Member Robert Brady,  issued the a statement after the full Committee sent a letter to the Acting Public Printer of the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) rejecting a recent recommendation by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) to charge the public for access to GPO’s congressional documents:

The 24th IPU Bulletin reports that the results from a survey carried out during the 128^th IPU Assembly in Quito have revealed that 80 per cent of MPs back democratic governance as a stand-alone objective for the United Nations Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Nearly all (96 per cent) of the 240 MPs surveyed from 619 MPs present in Quito, believed that the key elements of democratic governance – participation, transparency and accountability – should be embedded into the other SDGs to ensure their success.

Since 23 February 2013 the Senate of Italy started to publish on its website all bills in XML, using an Akoma Ntoso compliant scheme (in addition to the usual HTML, PDF, and ePub formats). Also, the Senate of Italy recently released the open data portal dati.senato.it

The House of Representatives' document portal docs.house.gov, launched in January 2012 with a rich set of data about floor proceedings, including all bills and amendments, makes now also available in bulk XML format extensive information and documents related to committee activities.
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The Seminar on the theme: "The role of Open data, XML and Web 3.0 in the communication within Parliaments and in the society - The secure way of using your own device in the Parliament" was held on 15-16 November 2012 at the Hungarian National Assembly in Budapest.