[open-government] Open Up Your Legislature (!)

Wed Aug 27 15:04:33 UTC 2014

Hello everyone,

I'm sure most of you are aware of the several events surrounding the Global
Legislative Openness Week <http://www.openingparliament.org/glow> (GLOW)
from September 15 to 25.

In coordination with events during the week, Sunlight is planning to launch
a quick campaign to raise awareness around the importance of open formats
when publishing legislative information. We intend to send a letter to all
the national legislatures around the globe calling them to make
parliamentary data "open data by default," in agreement with the principles
of the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. You can find the letter
attached as a PDF, ODT and in a viewable google document.
<https://docs.google.com/a/sunlightfoundation.com/document/d/1xaqCFi2XKZhMpwZK6BJD6bgPArkrDLKGyfMTbo6lx0Q/edit>

We'd love to get as much support as possible from supporting national and
local level PMOs and members of global transparency community to help
demonstrate the constituents' appetite for transparency, and the local
impact this type of action can have. If you want to endorse the letter,
please let us know before September 10.

We also encourage everyone to not only sign the letter, but also translate
it to your local language and try to get some local media attention through
press releases, social media or other media hooks for the week of September
15. OpeningParliament has grown into a truly global network, and we've
managed to create a strong consensus for how legislatures should operate. We
hope that we can count on you to help us translate these letters, register
your support, and clearly communicate our agenda during GLOW.

We are planning send out the letter to each administrative office via
emails (and in some cases through regular mails) on September 15 and
address it to the current presidents of national assemblies
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_presidents_of_assembly>, or
similar authorities. As we have looked through this list, it has come to
our attention that some of the information on national assemblies is out of
date. We are working to verify the data ourselves, but if you can provide
verification for who the head of your national legislature is, that would
be very helpful!

We are excited to send a clear, global message to legislatures -- your data
should be open, and we are ready to help.

Thanks everyone for your support,

The Sunlight team

-- 
John Wonderlich
Policy Director, Sunlight Foundation
@johnwonderlich <https://twitter.com/johnwonderlich>
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