In the box on the right principles are presented in accordance with the International Open Data Charter, an initiative of Open Data Charter, a joint effort between governments and organizations working to open up data.
For more information on each of the elements, please access the Legislative Transparency Toolkit publication (pp. 49-50).
The following stages outline general considerations for the preparation of databases.
For further information on each of the elements, please consult the publication Legislative transparency toolkit (pp.51-52)
Stage 1: Awareness of technical standards and good practices for open data
One aspect to consider when releasing information is the need to prepare and display public data in accordance with the technical standards for publishing open data in the corresponding country.
Stage 2: Database prioritization
The parliament needs to establish which databases will be published in open data format, considering the public interest and the transparency of parliamentary management as relevant criteria.
Stage 3: Database preparation
The dataset preparation work should consider the csv (comma-separated values) format as a minimum standard, which corresponds with publishing in three-star format. The 5-star model represented in the following diagram should be taken into consideration during preparation.
Stage 4: Database publication
The publication of open data should be accompanied by a dissemination strategy to create awareness around the parliament’s efforts to make information available in formats that are suitable for its reuse.
For further information on each of the elements, please consult the publication Legislative transparency toolkit (p.52).
Some practical examples can be found below. For a more exhaustive list, we invite you to consult the Legislative transparency toolkit (pp.53-55).
The Legislative Open Data Portal provides access to background information from the law-making process and information on legislators and published laws in an open format. The publishing mechanism is the extraction of data through web services.
The Open Data Portal includes a list of data, with its respective catalogue, published in various open data formats. It also provides applications and displays generated from legislative open data.
The “Open Data” section provides access to open data on the Members of Parliament, bills, spending and petitions, among other information.
The Public Data Portal in open format contains various datasets related to parliamentary work published in CSV and JSON formats, including a preview and a catalogue for each dataset.
Some practical examples can be found below. For a more exhaustive list, we invite you to consult the Legislative transparency toolkit (pp.53-55).
This platform promotes the analysis of public spending data to increase the transparency of Chilean public institutions.
The Inter-Parliamentary Open Data Cloud is a platform that allows access to legislative information from various jurisdictions in open data.
The Government of Canada’s Open Data Portal displays the different datasets provided by the government to the public in a structured way and through a search engine.
The unified Open Data Portal of the Government of Mexico makes the databases of the different branches of Government available to users.
The following practices have been submitted by parliamentarians and related stakeholders, and describe techniques that can be applied to:
Open data
