The National Democratic Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to support and strengthen democratic institutions worldwide through citizen participation, openness and accountability in government.

In this piece for TechPresident, David Eaves writes about efforts around the world to monitor parliaments and legislative bodies, and to make parliamentary information more open and accessible. Eaves notes several parliamentary monitoring organizations (PMOs) that have had success, suggesting that “there is an appetite for better access to legislative bodies through open data.” However, he also says that legislative bodies themselves have a large impact on the success of citizen engagement and access information, and “sadly, legislative bodies have not always been interested in enabling innovation in this space.”

Eaves addresses the launch of the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness by NDI and its partners, but questions the success of such a coalition of PMOs. He notes that though 70 PMOs signed the Declaration, no parliaments were included on the list. Eaves suggests that “such a global partnership of organizations seeking legislative transparency likely has the best hope of success among governments that already have a strong streak of transparency to them, such as Sweden and Norway,” or in newly developing democracies where “outdated and opaque processes have not become hallowed ‘traditions.’”