An Open Parliament for an Engaged Citizenship
By: Shqipe Gjocaj
Parliaments should be the most open institution compared to any other governing institutions in the country in any governing system. That is due to the fact that parliaments are the representative institutions of citizens and in it are represented by all political groups. As such, except that the work of the parliaments should be opened, the parliaments should also increase transparency and accountability of other institutions, demanding responsibility on behalf of the citizens they represent.
In Kosovo, the Assembly is one of the most open institutions compared to other governing institutions. The plenary sessions of the Assembly are broadcasted on national television, on other private media, as well as in the Assembly’s official webpage. The meetings of the parliamentary committees, except those on security, are all open for the public. The media, non-governmental organisations and the citizens have access to the work of different legislative committees.
The assessments conducted by Open Data Kosovo (ODK) show an increasing openness of the Assembly of Kosovo. When ODK started measuring the openness of the legislative institution back in 2016, the Kosovo Assembly generally scored 60% out of possible 100%. In the latest ODK report “Analysis of the Openness of the Kosovo Assembly” for 2020, measurements show a more open Assembly compared to the previous years with a general score of 88%.
ODK measures the level of openness of an institution based on the following four main principles. The first is transparency, which requires that the organisational information, the budget and the public procurement procedures to be at the public’s disposal, as well as to be regularly published and updated. The second is accessibility and it has to do with providing and respecting the procedures for a free access to information, improving information disposal through public debates and enforcing cooperation with citizens. The third, integrity includes elements of preventing corruption, respecting the code of ethics and lobbying regulation. The fourth one, awareness refers to the monitoring and evaluation of the concluded policies from the institutions.
In ODK’s latest assessment, Kosovo’s Assembly has scored 91% in transparency, 72% in accessibility, 100% in integrity, and 91% in awareness. The increase in the openness of Kosovo’s Assembly throughout the years is followed by citizens’ satisfaction in the work of the legislative institutions. According to the latest public opinion polls from UNDP published in July 2021, shows that citizens’ satisfaction with the work of the Assembly scored 52.9%, meaning it has increased for up to 30.3 compared to the poll in December 2020 which was only 22.6%. The level of satisfaction with the work of the Assembly is 19.5% higher than in April 2020 (33.4%).
Nonetheless, barriers towards complete openness of the Assembly of Kosovo remain. The restrictive measures due to the pandemics Covid-19 have made electronic opening of the Assembly a must.
Even though all of the plenary sessions of the Assembly are broadcasted live in Assembly’s official webpage, the same opportunity of following the meeting of the parliamentary committees is currently non-existent. Therefore, the Assembly needs to advance the technology in order for the parliamentary committees to be broadcasted online. Furthermore, while the Assembly publishes its transcripts, meeting minutes and electronic voting of the plenary session, the meeting minutes of the parliamentary committees and transcripts of the public hearings are rarely ever published.
The Legislation Monitoring System is a very good tool to monitor the progress of legislation reviewed in the Assembly, from the documents approved by the Government to the final approval. However, this system does not provide the opportunity for the public (citizens, experts, NGOs) to give their suggestions on the draft laws in procedure. The opportunity in question is provided to citizens in the consultation phase at the executive level. The comments gathered at this phase are included by the Government in explanatory memorandums attached to the draft laws when it forwards them to the Assembly. However, this opportunity for the public should be provided at the legislative level, in order for even the MPs to be able to consult the public for various draft laws in the first and second reading.
What could further increase citizens’ engagement in proposing new public policies is electronic petition. Such an opportunity for citizens would improve the assessment on citizens’ accessibility towards the Assembly. The electronic petition is now even easier to enable since last year the Law on Electronic Identification and Trust Services in Electronic Transactions.
The Assembly of Kosovo has assigned the responsible person for access to official documents and the contacts of the person in question are easily accessible in the official webpage of the Assembly. However, the Assembly should not request from the applicant for access to public documents to fill in a form with personal data which they must print, sign and send by email. This procedure stands in contradiction with the Law on Access to Public Documents which allows that the request can be submitted in any form. The obligation to print and sign the form for access to official documents makes it difficult to access the needed public documents.
Forum for Parliamentary Transparency established on 4 May 2015 and consists of MPs, civil servants and civil society representatives, is an advisory body for the Assembly in terms of transparency. The forum has established the action plan for an open and transparent assembly which is quite a detailed document on increasing transparency. Nonetheless, the forum hasn’t been sufficiently active in the last few years. The last information published regarding the activities of the Forum was in September 2019.
To Increase transparency and accessibility of citizens in the work of the Assembly, the institution in question should start publishing the so-called ‘the citizens budget’, which is recommended to be written in accessible budget and published in an easy format in order for non-specialist readers to be able to understand the information. Citizens budget would help increase the transparency of the Assembly of Kosovo regarding the State Budget. It would also contribute to increasing fiscal transparency. Such an example could be Citizens Informant published by the Ministry of Finance, but since 2020 this ministry has also stopped publishing the citizens budget.
Sadly the interest of citizens in the work of the Assembly is low. In the public opinion polls conducted by ODK, through UBO Consulting, with 1,065 citizens on national level, only 4.1% of women and 7.9% of men have declared that they regularly follow the work of the Assembly. The majority of the respondents follow a bit of the work of the assembly (46.4% women and 38.3% men). While more than half of the respondents do not think they can contribute to the initiatives of the Government of Kosovo. On the other hand, 17.8% of men and 12.4% of women surveyed on this issue did not have a certain opinion.
Therefore, electronic petitions, the opportunity to be able to comment on the reviewed legislation, easier access to public documents, the increase of the activity of the Forum on Transparency, the publishing of Citizens Budget, could help citizens to be more employed and engaged in the work of the assembly and their participation improved on a higher scale.
*This article has been published by Open Data Kosovo as part of the “Boost Good Governance 2.0” project funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The article is the sole responsibility of Open Data Kosovo and does not reflect the opinions of NED.
