Welcome to the Global Legislative Openness Survey
The Open Government Partnership's Legislative Openness Working Group (LOWG) is gathering comparative, global information on legislative openness practices and policies. This survey is one of several surveys that will be circulated to gather this information. All the collected information will be displayed on the Legislative Openness Data Explorer website, where users will be able to easily search, analyze, and sort the data.
This survey considers what information parliament makes available about legislative ethics. Additional surveys cover information about plenary, MPs, committees, and administration of parliament, as well as citizen participation, and accessibility of legislative information.
For more information on how you can contribute, please visit: beta.openparldata.org/contribute.
The LOWG's survey work is intended to inform and encourage the inclusion of legislative commitments in OGP national action plans and to collect information on parliamentary adoption of emerging international standards on parliamentary openness, including the
Declaration on Parliamentary Openness and the Santiago Declaration on Transparency and Integrity in Parliaments and Political Parties. Additionally, the global comparative database on parliamentary openness resulting from this survey work can help identify areas of success and weakness in parliamentary openness practices, support advocacy on parliamentary openness, and provide a global platform to share best practices.
Survey Overview and Instructions
The survey is composed of 21 total questions. Survey respondents are able to save their progress and complete the survey later by clicking the "Save and continue survey later" button at the bottom of the screen. If respondents elect to save and continue the survey later, they will be asked to enter an email address and will be sent a link where they can complete the survey. Limited personal information is being collected in order to identify who completed the survey and to conduct follow-up as necessary to clarify responses and ensure that the collected data is as accurate as possible.
Throughout the survey, respondents will be prompted to provide links to certain information that is available online. This will assist the researchers in ensuring that the collected information is objective and complete. Respondents will also occasionally be asked to answer open ended questions or to provide examples of good practice, which will allow the resulting data to provide a more full picture of global best practice in the area of legislative openness.
The survey is designed to assess what information parliaments officially publish, not parliamentary information that may be collected and published by civil society organizations, parliamentary monitoring organizations, or other groups. Throughout the survey, respondents should only refer to information that is made publicly available by an official body of the parliament.
In parliaments with more than one chamber, practices and procedures may differ widely between chambers. As a result, survey respondents are asked to provide answers for only one chamber of parliament at a time. If a respondent is able to provide information on more than one chamber, we ask the respondent to complete a separate instance of the survey for each chamber.
To ensure accuracy and to recognize diverse perspectives, government officials, parliamentary staff, civil society organizations, and other experts are encouraged to participate. In cases where there are discrepancies or disagreements, efforts will be made to resolve them in a way that is accurate and fair, either by further research to resolve the discrepancy or by noting a divergence of views on a particular issue. It is also recognized that legislatures vary widely in terms of what information they publish about their activities. For this reason, some of the questions below may not apply in every circumstance.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the survey or how the information you provide will be used, please contact Greg Brown at gbrown@ndi.org, who is providing staff support for the LOWG's research efforts.
