Today, the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy in the United Kingdom launched their final report detailing recommendations on how parliamentary democracy should respond to the opportunities and challenges presented by technology.

Among its conclusions, the Commission recommended the formal adoption of the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness by the House of Commons.

Read the full report here, and watch a video foreword for the report here.

The Commission on Digital Democracy was organized in 2014 by the Speaker of the House of Commons, Rt. Hon. John Bercow, and was made up of a group of MPs and citizen experts.

The Commission explored five themes: lawmaking, oversight, representation, citizen engagement, and electronic voting. Over the course of 2014, it collected evidence from experts and regular citizens both on and offline, through in-person roundtables, social media, student forums, informal conversations with experts, and by attending several international meetings including events of the Global Legislative Openness Week and the Open Government Partnership’s Legislative Openness Working Group.

The report’s recommendations aim to reach five specific targets:

• By 2020, the House of Commons should ensure that everyone can understand what it does.
• By 2020, Parliament should be fully interactive and digital.
• The 2015 newly elected House of Commons should create immediately a new forum for public participation in the debating function of the House of Commons.
• By 2020, secure online voting should be an option for all voters.
• By 2016, all published information and broadcast footage produced by Parliament should be freely available online in formats suitable for re-use. Hansard should be available as open date by the end of 2015.

A full archive of the today’s launch event is available below:

Blog reposted from OpeningParliament.org