2016/12/8-9 OGP note

This note is documented by mg lee. It only covers what I attended during 2016 OGP Summit @Paris. CC0.

12/8 Open Parliament

Personal feelings: Around 50-60 attendees, many wearing suits. Feeling lack of diversity and  the voice of civil society (with a few on stage) and (esp.) activists. Many conversations focus on the political perspectives of transparency, openness and equality, but not many case studies and the demo of what open data or civic tech has brought new light. 

Two parts: morning about Assembly (and inside France Assembly), afternoon about Senate (inside the Senate). 

opening remarks 2 /Mrs. Maura Boldrini, President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies

background: 為義大利公投失敗負責 總理倫齊今日正式說掰

background: Laura Boldrini: the Italian politician rising above the rape threats; 

Italy’s inconvenient women: in praise of Laura Boldrini and Cecile Kyenge

summary: 前半段說明義大利在開放國會作了什麼; 後半段談hate speech和網路上針對女性的歧視言論 

• Italian parliament has release its data and invite civic hackers to use its data for better parliament
• Italy’s two highlights on open parliament: 

• 1. joint committee (incl. parliament & civil society) to promote OP
• 2. ...沒聽懂 xd

• hate speech spread around social media. We have to be aware that hate will make our society danger.
• women right, we have to face the problem of discrimination against women on social media and fight for our right on the network
• Mrs. Boldrini starts an initiative to fight against fake news, hate speech eps. against women 
• fake news contributed to populism 
• three actions taken: 1) invent an icon against hate speech; 2) set up a hotline; 3) establish an national office to deal with this issue
• parliament has to duty to make social media more open & transparent, free of hate speech.

9:30 Opening the Parliament: transparency and open data

moderator: Xavier Berne

panelists: Bloche (Deputy of Paris), Lefebvre (Deputy of French established outside France), KcKinney (Advisor of the Ontario Gov on Digital Affair), O-T (Collectif Regards Citoyens)

Ontario’s OG: Ontario Inviting Public Feedback on Open Government Initiatives; Digital Gov

O-T: stock of info has tempered the possibility of popular vote in France

Lefebvre: fake transparency will endanger democracy; note that not all voices can be heard, even not everyone can vote. 

Bloche: anti-parliament activism. we should work on popular vote with digital tools to recreate trust btw citizens and institutions.

11:30 Speech by ??

three achievements by French parliament

1. Improvement of the access to Parliament info

2. release data as open format

3. digital divide

11:45 The inclusion of citizens in the parliamentarian work

moderator:  Xavier Berne

panelists: Raimbourg, F-S, K-M, Marinkovic, Ferri (Hackerlab @Brazil), Scott (NDI)

Scott:  challenges (1) new technologies; (2) story/exp. sharing; (3)

Ferri: two hackathons in 2015 gathered journalists, hackers and diverse ppl to show the parliament the new ways citizens create in public debate.

<translator not working....>

Ferri: how to produce new process of representation?

Scott: how to engage citizens? one key point is education. 

12:30 Closing remarks 1: not the speaker on the OGP booklet

• democracy is the answer to the problems posed by hate speech, terrorism
• key issue to include under-representative group 
• open data

12:45 Closing remarks 2: Mukelani Dimba (Civil Society representative in OGP committee, from South Africa)

• the importance of including parliaments in OGP; law is important element to implement open gov.
• parliament commitment should be included in national OG plan
• it’s "Partnership" btw governments and civil society, but there is a shrinking of civi society. We sadly found that civic space is limiting recently, and this is not acceptable! 

12/8 High tech, low tech – or no tech? Making the OGP work for everyone

panelists: 

Rosie McGee, Making All Voices Count, UK

Fletcher Tembo, Making All Voices Count, UK

Oluwatoyin Badejogbin, Democratic Governance and Rights Unit, University of Cape Town, South Africa

McGee

• how to make gov work for everyone 
• 1990s, a decade of decentralization process in gov, transferring power from high to all. since then, there were ideas like deliberation democracy, participatory democ
• Making All Voices Count: aim to make all diverse voices count in governing processes.

Tembo

Starting from 2014. in 12 countires. 

• what we see as success is the combination online & offline. a space where data facilitate discussion and conversation.
• how to bridge different levels/scales of space

Badejogbin

• national and sub-national engagement

內容有點 general，所以提早閃了

12/8 Open Budget in Israel (pitch)

a project similar to g0v’s open budget & 開放政治獻金. from paper data to open data, 做出很類似的泡泡圖! small world!

最後，弄這個計畫的人還在國會裡發表了這個 project

Spendex

12/8 Jeudigital International "Civic Tech"

介紹五個做 civic tech 的組織和他們的 projects

1. make.org

2. Nesta 介紹了一堆開發的工具, all open source, 

• participatory budget; Decide Madrid
• online+offline
• deliberation+decision
• evidence +expression

3. Amira YAHYAOUI, Al Bawsala (Tunisie)

talk gov as a biz model: what if the gov does not treat citizens as clients

4.Code for Africa 

5.My society (沒聽就閃去下一場)

12/8 TICTec (pitch)

http://ogrx.org/

introduce TICTec

12/8 Uk-French Data Taskforce: How governments can work together to unlock the potential of the data sector. not only about open data

background: On 13 July 2016, the United Kingdom and French Data Taskforce released their report Data Driven Growth: Innovation, Infrastructure, Skills and Empowerment in the Digital Age.

this book is written to think how data economy can be fostered thr the collaboration between the UK and France.

• how can innovation b fostered by open data
• building robust data infrastructure: think data as infrastructure. This means to consider data’s structure, quality, frequency
  • "open banking standard" in UK: a shared standard of 
• skills: foster data literacy is the base of data-driven decision
• trust and empowerment: data empowers EVERYONE, not just the big institutions
• GIVE ME MY DATA BACK
• the collaboration btw UK and French govs
  • Taskforce summit next Spring
  • co-host training workshops
  • foster data economy and support data startup

“Fork & Merge” – Collaboration in Civic Tech

(running in late...)

first-run QA

• g0v: multi-centralized 
• Q: Is there any country that publish spending data? A: Greece may be one among the few. 

2nd topic: citizen engagement

g0v: vTaiwan

ODD: no more hackathons. open data doesn’t mean change. if building civic tech means building another tech, it doesn’t mean change.

Code for Germany: Create with not for. 

Civicia Digital: bridging citizens and gov  

3rd topic: DOs and Don’ts

12/9 Boosting engagement in open parliament

• Georgia: has the action plan of open parliament in our OGP declaration. There is indeed some move from the gov, but civil society plays a significant role. Achievement: it’s able to see all the law draft on the parliament website. 
• Costa Rica: before the action, there is nothing at all. we have to strengthen the administrative side of open parliament. 
• Tunisia: we have emergent democracy within these 6yrs. Now we’re drafting the new constitution, and in this new constitution we incorporate civil society. We can see a political will to work with civil society in order to have a more stable politics
• Kenya: trying to put open parliament into the law; parliamentary broadcast; example of co-drafting a bill thr app: about employment. traditional ways may be seen as "gov doing PR", so these new tools open a new possibility to engage with citizens.
• Ukraine: our action plan is made after the revolution of 2014 as more activists and journalists were taking seats in the parliament. 
• QA
  • Someone asks broadcasting; Mg asks any example of releasing open-format parliament data? 
    • Kenya: not yet, need more investment since many of the transcripts are still hand-written > pdf. 
    • Tunisia: we publish our activities, calendar thr FB. 
    • Ukraine: new gov has released a new website of open data 

12/9 Civic tech, outils numériques participatifs : une révolution en marche ou des outils parmi d'autres ?

host: the main topic of this panel is "the reality of civic tech"

Panelists: Ilaria Casillo, Vice-présidente de la Commission Nationale du Débat Public ; Luc Belot, député de Maine-et-Loire ; David Prothais, Eclectic Experience

• David Prothais: from digital gov to civic tech. citizens don’t have time to attend council meetings and civic tech provides a solution to conquer the obstacle of time and location. 
• Chicago example: we didn’t think about civic tech but starting from public data. civic tech as empowerment. example of open school data. example 2: My building doesn’t recycle. 
• Bassem: not civic participation but dialogue. we "co-construct" the city space. 

12/9 Les contributions citoyennes à l'action législative et exécutive des gouvernements

(coming in late) (這場要放空了 lah lah lah)

Q: "I’m upset that as a part of civil society, we have no dialogue at all at this summit". 

A: moderator:  you can host a session. our sessions are all crowdsourcing! 

12/9 Civic perspectives on OGP civil society and government collaboration mechanisms

Panelists (right to left): Tim Hughes (UK), Nkem Ilo (Nigeria),  Ching Jorge (Philippines), moderator Jean-Noé Landry (Canada), Ken Coghill (Australia)

Nkem Ilo: how OGP framework can set up the platform for civil society

Ken Coghill (Australia): the change is that now civil society has been seen as the advisors of policy-making. A mutual confidence is building btw gov and civil society.

Q1: what we should do if civil society is told to do EVERYTHING!

Q2: Nigeria is not yet a member. How you select the "representative" of civil society? 

Q3: how to ensure civil society is an equal partner with gov?

Philippines A: under OGP, we put civil society and gov as equal members. Yes, we do select members of CSOs. We also travel to every corner of the country to make sure we heard all voices. 

Nkem Ilo: Social media also help to engage with the general public who may not have specific interest on tough issues.

Q1: selection & diversity. 

Q2: stories of failure? lesson learned?

Q3: space of civil society is shrinking! what’s the reaction of OGP. 

Ken Coghill (Australia): what we did fail is to fight against corruption and it’s still oning. 

Nigeria: gov is pushing back. There is also conflict within civil society >> who to lead, problem of representation. 

12/9 Measuring Transparency

• what to measure: access to information, eps. gov info. 
• And who to measure and be measured.
• factors to be noted: 
  • quality of information; 
  • institutional framework 
  • should not see gov as a whole but look carefully into different agencies of gov. 
• there is no single measurement. we need multiple, complementary tools. 
• transparency about what & how we do to measure transparency

Comments

• gender aspect should be considered