Open Parliament: Improving Representative Democracy through Multimedia and Digital Edition

1. “Multimedia, digital Edition, open data and Social Networks: experiences towards an open Parliament” Javier de Andrés, Director of the Congress ICT Centre Miguel Ángel Gonzalo, Webmaster

2. Agenda OpeningParliament Transparency Accountability Participation

3. Openingparliament Spain is going through a period of citizens’ disaffection with the Parliament. The concept of “Open Parliament” includes some ideas to improve the functioning of representative democracy.

4. 1. Transparency Everyone has a right to know about all information from all public bodies. “Provide real-time broadcasting and on-demand: efforts shall be made to provide citizens with real-time and on-demand access to parliamentary proceedings through the radio, television and the Internet”. The main goal of CongressTVis to make possible for citizens to know first hand, without any intermediaries, how MPs work.

5. ParliamentaryChannel The Parliamentary Channel is a TV channel broadcast by satellite, cable and Internet, produced by the Congress of Deputies and whose programmes are based on the live and recorded broadcasting of Plenary and Committee sittings, as well as information in-house programmes.

6. Live Congress TV Live Congress is the most complex project from a technological and organisational point of view. It allows to follow live all parliamentary sittings held daily in the Chamber through the simultaneous broadcasting of up to five different audiovisual signals. Direct link tostreaming

7. Live Congress TV (“cataloguedlive”) In each sitting there is the chance to see the MP who has the floor and also have direct access to any of the speeches delivered by other MPs before him/her, knowing moreover at which stage of the debate we are. Directaccesstothespeeches A real-time agenda

8. Audiovisual Archive The “Audiovisual Archive” is the custodian of the Parliament’s audiovisual memory, since it contains tenths of thousands of hours of video recorded and freely available for citizens. Selectplenary meeting, committees, etc Cataloguedsession Streaming of thewhole of the debate

9. Audiovisual Archive Within each sitting, there is the chance to view the whole of the debate of a given item, the speech delivered by a given MP or person and download the speech as an independent video clip. View thewhole of the debate Speechdeliveredby a MP Downloadthespeech

10. Audiovisual: Mid-termprojects Among the mid-term projects, there is that of offering all videos, not only live streaming, according to standard H.264 compatible with any device having a mpeg-4 code. Moreover, we are working for individual speeches to be directly embedded to a web site or social network without having to previously download it, which guarantees maximum data openness

11. Audiovisual: A common project A common project of the General Secretariat of the Congress • In times when the task of civil servants is being questioned, the Congress audiovisual project is a work conducted by the General Secretariat of the Congress of Deputies in which many actors, with different responsibilities, are taking part: • Directorate for Communication • ICT Centre • Directorate for Committees • Department for Official Editions

12. Transparency: Digital Edition

13. Digital Edition As from August 1, 2012, sections “Congreso de los Diputados” and “Cortes Generales” started to be published solely in electronic version, being this fully valid.

14. Digital Edition All bulletins and journals of debates published in the web page are signed with an electronic signature which guarantees the official nature and integrity of those archives. Declarationof activities and Declaration of assets of MP’salso are signedwithanspecificalelectronicsignature

15. 2. Accountability: XML Voting Accountability can be achieved through guaranteeing clear standards of behaviour enforced by independent bodies. They can oversee effective lobby controls, limiting conflicts of interest and reducing corruption opportunities.

16. Accountability: XML Voting The Declaration on parliamentary transparency underlines that one of the main principles of a culture of parliamentary openness is the publication of the individual votes cast by MPs in an open and structured format. In the Congress web site, when the parliamentary sitting has concluded, the detailed results of each voting on each item included in the agenda are published.

17. XML Voting A summary in PDF format is likewise offered and there is the chance to download a file in XML format, so that you can know if a given individual MP voted in favour, against, abstained or did not take part in the voting.

18. 3. Participation: Social media • “Declaration on Parliamentary Openness” recall the principle on open parliaments, inviting us to “facilitate bidirectional communication”. • The Bureau of the Congress of Deputies adopted in November 2012 the “Manual on how to use the social network Twitter at the Congress of Deputies” • The Congress is in Twitter since December 2012 • It was especially useful to have the “Social Media Guidelines for Parliaments” drafted by the Interparliamentary Union and coordinated by Andy Williamson

19. Social media • Remarks concerning our experience • Being present in Twitter is useful to promote institutional contents and to act as consultation channel for citizens. • It is advisable to fix a sole communication strategy with the rest of portals and web sites in order to favour integration and coordination • The main difficulties emerge when managing interaction. In this sense, we have a differentiated strategy to reply to the tweets depending on whether they are questions or doubts, suggestions for improvement, political criticism or discrediting remarks.

20. Social Media • 4. It’s necessary to monitor activity in the web in order to improve communication. • 5. Not only quantitative measurements (number of followers, number of tweets) must be taken into account, but also qualitative ones measuring the influence of the account, for example: • Weekly average of RT’s with regards to the total number of tweets • Average of clicks in links as regards the total number of tweets with incorporated links. • Weekly average of mentions

21. Monitoring: Weekly average of RT’s Weekly average of RT’s RT’s total: 3757 Weeklyaverage: 187,85 Rt’s/week

22. Average of clicks in links Average of clicks in links as regards the total number of tweets with incorporated links Tweets: 850 tweetsfromDecember, 11 Clicks in links: 14.112 clicks Average: 16 clicks/tweet

23. Monitoring social media Weekly average of mentions Mentionstotal: 13.301 Weeklyaverage: 665 mentions/week

24. Conclusion Theprojectsshowncannotsolveontheirowntheproblems of parliamentaryinstitutions, butindeedthey are stepstowardsan open parliamentthatbetterconnectswiththeconcerns and needs of ourcitizens.

25. Thanks! @deandresblasco javier.andres@congreso.es @miguelgonzalo miguel.gonzalo@congreso.es