Parliamentary Data Science thematic hub

On 24 October, the Open Data Hub (hosted by the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil) and the IT Governance Hub (hosted by the European Parliament) brought the 2022 Transforming Parliaments webinar series to a close with a session on the state of open data in parliaments. The webinar included a presentation of the 2022 Open Data Survey results, plus an in-depth round-table discussion on open data publishing and usability with experts from the Saeima of Latvia, the UK Parliament and the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil. Across the year, the sessions were regularly attended by 50–60 participants, including senior IT and information management staff from parliaments, and the two hubs have committed to running a new series in 2023. The recordings of the 2022 Transforming Parliaments webinar can be found here.

The Open Data Hub has conducted a second survey on the state of open data in parliaments. The previous survey, completed in 2021, provided the first-ever perspective of what parliaments have done to publish data to the public. The results of the second survey will be presented during a webinar on 24 October 2022.

The Open Data Hub and the IT Governance Hub have concluded the second edition of the Transforming Parliaments webinar series. The sessions followed up on the first series, which was inspired by the 2021 virtual World e-Parliament Conference, and aimed to continue the conversation among parliamentary innovation specialists. The second series featured discussions on parliaments and the cloud, and on digital transformation in the legislative process and archiving. The sessions were well-attended, with average participation of 60–80 parliamentary staff. To watch the webinars from both series again, see this playlist.

As part of the World e-Parliament Conference 2021, new videos are available for all our thematic innovation hubs.

The hub team is currently preparing a set of videos aimed at introducing to newcomers the hub and modalities of data exchange with the Open Data Inter-Parliamentary Cloud. Beyond English and Portuguese, those videos will be translated to French and Spanish through a collaborative work with the European Parliament.

The Chamber of Deputies of Brazil and IPU also signed a new Memorandum of Understanding extending the collaboration within the CIP framework throughout 2021 and 2022.​

In coordination with the secretariat of the Centre for Innovation in Parliament (CIP), the Open Data hub has revised its planned outputs for the Inter-Parliamentary Open Data Cloud project due to the pandemic and resulting disruption. The hub will focus on two key outputs in the short term: 1) a series of videos to engage non-G1 audiences; and 2) a second virtual hub meeting to discuss a new schedule for the project. 

Videos: In addition to its existing videos about the open data website, the hub will produce new ones aimed at non-G1 parliaments. The new English, French and Spanish videos will encourage these parliaments to contribute to the hub’s work and the Open Data Cloud project. The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies will provide elements including the script, images and sound, and will invite hub members to feature in the videos. The videos will be produced through a series of virtual meetings with hub members between November 2020 and May 2021. The videos’ aims are:

• For managers: to explain the idea behind the open data cloud project and showcase parts of it, including an overview of the main deliverables, the implementation schedule and the expected benefits for parliaments and society.
• For technical staff: to outline all of the above and a more detailed technical perspective on open data file structures and data exchange technologies; and to demonstrate the use of search engines and open data samples, including by end users doing legislative research and comparative analyses.
• For users: to set out the idea behind the project, and showcase its key benefits for parliaments and society through a detailed demonstration of how, for example, MPs and legislative advisors can best use search engines, and how those in academia and related fields can use open data when writing on comparative legislation. 

Second Open Data hub meeting: In addition to the videos, the Open Data hub is also aiming to host its second virtual meeting in March 2021. An in‑person meeting was originally planned for May 2020 in Ottawa but was postponed due to the pandemic. The meeting will aim to review the most recent technical definitions (which was 20 per cent of the agenda planned for Ottawa) and discuss ways to collaborate on a hybrid schedule of virtual and face‑to‑face meetings.

Since the second meeting (Ottawa – March 2020) was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the members have been focused on putting in place conditions for remote meetings and deliberations during the crisis.

Nevertheless, the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies continued to develop the inter-parliamentary open data website (https://ipuopendata.camara.leg.br) as planned. Brazilian laws from 2015 to 2020 were translated into English by eTranslation and moved into the open data cloud in the format agreed with the hub members. A process to check the quality of the translations was also initiated, particularly those related to expressions for which translation was not necessary. In addition, new educational videos are being produced: a video for parliaments’ IT staff to learn all about the process of preparing their data to be moved into the open data cloud, and a set of videos for citizens about open data concepts and benefits, and how to understand them and use them. This second set will be available on the inter-parliamentary open data website.

The European Parliament continued to move their laws to the open data cloud during the pandemic.  The Open Data Hub coordinators are looking into a strategy to facilitate other members’ efforts to follow suit and restart their data processing.​

In December 2019, the Inter-Parliamentary Open Data Cloud, the first project of the Open Data Hub, published its first Proof of Concept which demonstrated that it was possible to search English translations of legislative documents from five parliaments: Brazil, Canada, Estonia, the European Parliament, and Spain.

The project team will now invite more parliaments that produce open data to join. This will mean more data, more sophisticated tools, and more value for MPs proposing new bills and researchers working on comparative legislation. The Open Data Hub will meet from 16 to 19 March 2020 as part of a Thematic Hubs event to be held at the House of Commons of Canada in Ottawa. The meeting will evaluate progress made so far and plan for the next steps. This will be an opportunity for parliaments that are not yet participating to get more information and consider joining the project. The meeting is particularly suitable for IT directors and technical specialists.

More information about the Inter-Parliamentary Open Data Cloud is provided by this introductory video at bit.ly/opendatahub-ipu.

Image: Proof of Concept website 

The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies as hub host is continuing with the development of the proof of concept (POC) which aims to provide a search web interface that selected users will be able to access and test how the real world application will work. Some parliaments have made contributions which are being considered in the POC. Through this interface, it will be possible to query the laws from selected countries (Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Israel, and South Africa) and the European Parliament, which will provide a preview of how the interface will benefit parliaments (MPs, advisors, consultants, etc.) and citizens. During the Legislative Research Conference in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies (16-17 September), Patricia Almeida presented the Open Data Hub. Its audience was composed by master-degree students, by the Chamber of Deputies, Senate and State legislatures staff.

During the Legislative Research Conference in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies (16-17 September), Patricia Almeida presented the Open Data Hub. Its audience was composed by master-degree students, by the Chamber of Deputies, Senate and State legislatures staff.

From 27 to 31 May 2019, a working meeting was held in Brasilia, of the Inter-Parliamentary Open Data Cloud (IPODC)—a thematic hub hosted by the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil. Participants represented the ICT, Communications and Research divisions of the parliaments of Canada, Chile, Estonia, Finland, Israel, South Africa; Spain and Ukraine, as well as the Pan-African Parliament and the European Parliament.

The meeting agreed on the concept and proposal of the Open Data Cloud; established technical definitions for open data exchange between the gathered parliaments and the Open Data Cloud; and agreed on milestones and the next steps towards a first functional prototype. It was furthermore agreed to restructure the hub, renaming it as the thematic hub on Open Data. The Open Data Cloud will remain the hub's primary project. Other projects focused on promoting open data will be explored. The Open Data hub is hosted by the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil, as before.

A short video presenting the Open Data Cloud project and the May 2019 meeting, by the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil.

Image: First Meeting of the Open Data hub, Brasilia, 27 May 2019. © Parliament of Brazil

The goal of the Inter-Parliamentary Open Data Cloud is to help people find information on bills and laws from other parliaments quickly and easily, thus enhancing the law-making process. Since December 2018, the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies has been working to improve its automated translation tool, with the help of a dataset provided to the machine-learning algorithm. Ultimately, the tools should be able to translate parliamentary documents from one language to another.

This work is done in partnership with open data experts from "G1" parliaments (that is, those already producing and publishing open data). A group has been set up on the Centre for Innovation’s Yammer channel to discuss specific issues. These exchanges will feed into an Expert Meeting hosted by the Chamber of Deputies in Brasilia from 27 to 31 May, where experts will explore options for how to connect their parliaments’ open data source systems to the Inter-Parliamentary Open Data Cloud.