The Open Parliament Initiative in Ukraine, part of the UNDP "Rada for Europe" project, also took part in the Summit. "Ukraine is one of the few OGP countries which has not only Action Plan on Government openness, but also its own Action Plan to implement the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. Ukraine's expertise and experience are quite valuable for other countries, as was evident from the questions voiced at the panel discussion and follow-up personal conversations. This is why my speech at the panel discussion "Boosting engagement in open parliament" was focused on two key issues: How can civil society convince parliament to engage in open parliament reform? And how has the implementation been included in the open parliament action plans?", says Natalia Vatamaniuk, coordinator of the Open Parliament Initiative.

 

Governmental agencies all over the world generate terabytes of information each year. These are the results of voting, draft laws, regulatory databases, information about plenary meetings, public hearings, committee meetings, government sittings, protocols, verbatim reports, photos, videos, audio content, financial reports, etc. Once the issue whether this information is used by the reporters, public representatives, experts, and think tanks, or is rather kept in the governmental archives has been raised, the United Nations Development Program in Ukraine jointly with the Civil network OPORA and the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine launched a project to develop an Open Data Portal which was presented in spring 2016. As this issue is one of the key ones on the world agenda, there was an entire panel discussion "Open legislative data: how parliaments publish open data, who uses that data, and how open legislative data commitments can be included in OGP National Action Plans" devoted to this topic during the Summit in Paris.

 

Nadia Babynska, activist of the Open Parliament Initiative: "Open data is a key instrument to understand the trends in policy, forecasting, public policy- and decision-making. The better and more complete the output data are, the better the ultimate decision and the result will be. In the present-day world, we must demand that this information should be published in an open data or a machine-reading format."

 

The participants of the Summit could learn about the Ukrainian Open Data Portal from an informational video: Analyze Rada! Code for the community!

 

Among all the panels presented at the Summit in Paris, it is worth noting the OGP Legislative Openness Working Group. We are glad that Tetiana Podolska, Head of the Secretariat of the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Andriy Parubiy, has also joined the Ukrainian delegation with the support of the Regional UNDP Office in Turkey. A proposal to hold the next International Parliamentary Openness Conference – 2017 in Ukraine has been voiced at the meeting with the participation of representatives of many foreign countries.

 

"The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has stepped on the path of democratic transformations. One of the key tasks on the agenda is to ensure procedural openness and transparency. Therefore, we would gladly help with the organization of the next International Parliamentary Openness Conference in Ukraine", - said Tetiana Podolska, Head of the Secretariat of the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Andriy Parubiy.