Open Ministry - Crowdsourcing Legislation

The Finnish Supreme Administrative Court made a landmark decision today December 20th. The court ruled in favour of Open Ministry’s Freedom of Information request for the Parliamentary visitor data.

“This ruling sets a precedent. Not only can we now access the data about who visits who and when in Parliament. But we can also make similar requests to any other public offices” says Joonas Pekkanen the chairman of Open Ministry, the CSO behind the FOI request.

“This is a fine way to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the first Public Records and Freedom of Information Act” he continues. 

The videos from the D-CENT event in Barcelona are available online, if you missed the live stream.

http://dcentproject.eu/event/d-cent-event-network-democracy-for-a-better-city/

Open Ministry and other approaches to crowdsourcing of legislation are being discussed today in Stockholm at the Crowdsourcing Legislation Conference 2015 organized by the International Association of Legislation.

Finnish public broadcasting company YLE writes up about the citizens' initiatives. It is not as bleak though - Open Ministry is working hard to turn around the situation for the initiative that have been rejected by the parliamentary committees (but are still coming to plenary, where things can change ;)

The Prime Minister's Office, the Open Ministry and a number of government ministries is organising a fully booked (more than 700 people) event on September 15th in Helsinki - the International Day of Democracy. The Open Finland 2014 showcases the benefits of Open Democracy, Open Data and open everything.

The Annual Report of the Open Ministry is finally online. Unfortunately only in Finnish though... 

http://www.slideshare.net/joonastp/avoin-ministerio-toimintakertomus-20132014

Presumably, few people would answer to all of these questions with an unreserved “yes”, even if they have basic confidence in the Finnish decision-making processes. Yet the framework that governs those processes is not set in stone, but keeps developing. A significant recent addition to it is the system of citizens’ initiatives."

Open Ministry in todays Wall Street Journal, http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/08/15/open-government-and-open-data-are-not-the-same-thing/

"While governments have thrown out gigabytes of data “to promote transparency,” few — Finland being among them — have done much truly to “empower citizens,” and certainly not the U.K."

...

"The problem, said Joonas Pekkanen, a democracy campaigner in Finland, is that there is no sense of empowerment. “Why should the people take it seriously if the government doesn’t take it seriously? You need to change the constitution and give people enough power that they feel they have actual power.”

Finland has done exactly that. Last year it passed the Finnish Citizen’s Initiative, which allows citizens to draft legislation that has to be debated by Parliament.

The idea is powerful because “the politicians now have lost their monopoly on setting their own agenda,” Mr. Pekkanen said. “Now they can be forced to take a process, suggestions that they would never want or come around to putting on their agenda.”

To-be-debated proposals must garner the support of 50,000 people within six months. Although the first proposal, on fur farming, was voted down by Parliament, two more have passed the threshold, one on same-sex marriage and one on copyright laws. They will both be debated.

Mr. Pekkanen said the power lies in crowdsourcing actual draft legislation, not merely in instructing Parliament to debate a topic.

The main new broadcast in Finland (MTV3 10 o'clock news) on July 22nd of 2013.

The crowdsourced citizens initiative passed the required 50 000 (or 1,2% of the voting population) hurdle to merit parliamentary process.

"This marks a major paradigm shift for internet democracy and consumer rights. Not only in Finland but internationally. This is in fact the start of an international consumer campaign for deeper copyright reform including other organizations who perform these tasks daily such as La Quadrature du Net in France and individuals like Derek Khanna's camp in the USA. We are all struggling with the vice grip the Entertainment Industries and Silicon Valley have on us - and very few can even begin to understand or map out the manipulation that occurs to this effect on a global scale. Today, we achieved a win, but this is only the beginning in a long road towards separating Industry and State."

A Citizen Initiative dubbed Yes we can - Law for protecting freedom of speach and privacy internationally (Lex Snowden) calls for the criminalisation of spying on citizens and for a safe harbour for whistleblowers in Finland

      The initiative proposes to criminalize spying on Finnish citizens. Companies taking part in spying on Finnish citizens could be prosecuted even if the crimes take place beyond Finnish borders and such companies could face a penalty of up to 25% of their turnover. In addition operators would need to disclose real-time information about all data requests by the government regarding personal communications.

  Whistleblowers who disclose information about any material breaches of basic rights - the right to secure communications being such a basic right in Finland - would be granted safe passage and residence permit in Finland even if they do not carry a valid passport.

  “Edward Snowden has been deprived of his right to effectively apply for political asylum by cancelling his passport. The law we are proposing would give Snowden safe passage to and residence in Finland and ensure that similar breaches of basic human rights will not go unrevealed in the future” says Joonas Pekkanen, chairman of Open Ministry a civil society organization focusing on improving the Finnish legislation through citizens initiatives. Citizens initiatives became possible in Finland in 2012 when a constititional amendment made it possible for 50 000 citizens to put bills directly on the parliaments agenda.

The campaign is organized by Electronic Frontier Finland (www.effi.org). Open Ministry and Effi have recently co-operated also on the internationally covered campaign to improve the copyright legislation in Finland. “We hope that this Lex Snowden initiative will also help us reach to 50 000 target for the copyright initiative within the remaining two weeks” says Pekkanen. The citizens initiatives have six months to gather the needed support which amounts to 1,2% of the voting population.

For more information:

Joonas Pekkanen, Open Ministry chairman (www.openministry.info) [email protected], mobile +358 505 846 800

Links:

The fill law proposal (in Finnish) on the Ministry of Justice’s website: https://www.kansalaisaloite.fi/fi/aloite/442

The campaign Facebook page (in Finnish): https://www.facebook.com/LexSnowden

Today the Parliaments Speakers' Council published their guidelines on how the citizens' initiatives that pass the 50 000 supporters threshold will be handled in parliament.

The guidelines are a disappointment. As other bills, citizens' initiatives are sent to a committee that would normally hear experts and prepare a statement on the bill, which would then be voted on by the parliament.

The Speakers Council decided, however, that in the case of citizens' initiatives the committee does not need to give a statement "if it does not want to". This would mean that the initiative would not be voted on by the parliament. The council specifically referred to political reasons as possible reasons for not giving a statement on a proposal, thus blocking it from the normal parlimantary process.

These guidelines are not in the spirit of the original constitutional amendment that promised citizens a chance "to directly influence the political agenda and to have the parliament process the initiative".

The Open Ministry will continue its efforts to protect the fledgling initiative right in Finland. We will announce next steps soon.

   Joonas Pekkanen

The whole story on the YLE website

The Open Ministry is an official partner and has been involved in planning and preparing the initiative and campaign for the Equal Marriage Law initiative (in English read http://www.tahdon2013.fi/in-english/briefly/).

The whole story on the YLE website

The Open Ministry has actively lobbied the Parliament directly and through press to ensure that Citizens Initiatives would be handled in Parliament in a decent manner. The Speaker's Council considered giving Citizens Initiatives a lower status than bills proposed by a majority of MP's (although originally the law intended citizens initiatives and majority bills to be handled in a similar fashion).