The Declaration on Parliamentary Openness is a call to the world’s parliaments to increase their commitment to citizen engagement in legislative work. Collaboratively drafted by the global parliamentary monitoring community, the declaration has been endorsed by more than 180 civil society organizations (CSOs) in over 80 countries. Increasingly, parliaments are also signing on to the declaration. On May 4, the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo formally endorsed the declaration, joining a small vanguard of parliaments around the world.

No single trend -- neither retreat nor revival -- defines the direction of democracy in Asia. We recently have seen a military coup, followed by a ban on political activity in Thailand; in Hong Kong, the government in Beijing has remained intransigent, insisting on its version of universal suffrage; and in Burma, progress toward political reform seems to have stalled as critical elections approach, although constitutional reform remains a possibility.

The Third International Open Data Conference in Ottawa last week brought together more than 1,000 open data advocates from a diverse array of countries and professional backgrounds for discussions intended to add transparency to government Compared with the First International Open Data Conference -- a small gathering of technologists at the World Bank in 2010 -- the event’s growth constituted a clear statement that open data is here to stay and the global community of advocates is growing.

Each week, NDI’s Citizen Participation team sends materials to staff around the world that offer practical tools and guiding concepts to consider in their programming. In a rapidly changing world, new ideas and strategies are constantly being developed by practitioners, funders and other organizations. By sharing a digest of our “Citizen Participation Weekly Resource,” we hope to highlight the most innovative and effective knowledge-based approaches to making democracy work.

NDI is excited to announce the launch of the Open Election Data Initiative. The goal of the initiative is to ensure that citizen groups have access to election data that can give a true picture of an election process, including how candidates are certified, how and which voters are registered, what happens on election day, whether results are accurate and how complaints are resolved.

The Open Election Data Initiative, openelectiondata.net, adapts open data principles that are designed to enhance government transparency in other areas, such as service delivery, to elections. The initiative encourages governments to be more accountable and citizens to take a more active participatory role. While primarily geared toward civil society -- including election monitoring organizations, many of which are partners of NDI -- the initiative can also inform the efforts of political parties, election management bodies and other actors concerned with electoral integrity.

Through the website of the National Democratic Institute NDI website, NDI.org, students have access to handbooks on political participation, public opinion polls from many countries, a global elections calendar, and press releases and stories about the Institute’s work around the world. In the publications section students can search by country or topic, such as citizen participation, debate, technology and marginalized groups.

This week, NDI joins thousands of open government advocates, civic hackers, policymakers and journalists in attending the 3rd Annual International Open Data Conference (IODC) in Ottawa, Canada. It is going to be a week of workshops and discussions exploring open data issues and strengthening coordination among open data initiatives. Throughout the week, NDI will be hosting or participating in several events where we'll address how citizens can use data to make government more transparent and accountable. Whether your interests are in opening up election data or in promoting a parliamentary code of conduct, we'd like to talk to you at these events.

The words “crime” and “violence” seemingly go together when talking about the Northern Triangle countries of Central America (El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala). The words “data” and “hackathon” go together when discussing technical innovation, intricate computer applications and groups of hackers writing computer code to create the next billion-dollar application. Rarely do these four words merge on the same plane, but when they do, opportunities abound for conversations that have lots to do with innovation and more to do with citizen security and social development. I had the opportunity to take part in such conversations during a USAID-organized hackathon on April 30 and May 1, focusing on security levels in Central America and the Caribbean.

Georgia lags behind most European countries when it comes to women’s political participation. Only 12 percent of the members of the parliament are women and only 11 percent of those in local councils are women. That is a just a 5 percent and 1 percent improvement respectively compared to parliamentary and local council elections in 2008 and 2010 respectively. Out of 12 directly elected mayors of self-governing cities, not one is a women and all 63 directly elected governors are men. Women make up only 17 percent of the Cabinet of Ministers.

There’s something new in the Gender, Women and Democracy (GWD) program at NDI. In evaluating existing programming within the democracy and governance community, the GWD team found a gap. As we examined the social, political, and economic barriers preventing women from participating fully in democratic governance, we found that one such barrier -- violence against women in elections (VAW-E) -- was absent from the conversation, largely because it had not been distinguished from wider studies of electoral violence. So, in partnership with NDI’s election team, and with funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, GWD is putting VAW-E on the map.