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ParlAmericas delegation highlights regional leadership in Open Parliament at OGP Global Summit

October 10, 2025 | Activity

At a time when public trust in institutions is being tested around the world, openness emerges as an essential principle for revitalizing democracy. Under this premise, more than 2,000 representatives from governments, parliaments, and civil society organizations gathered in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, to participate in the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Global Summit—a space designed to promote open government values and share experiences, best practices, and progress. A ParlAmericas delegation actively contributed to the Summit, reaffirming hemispheric parliamentary leadership in promoting openness to advance transparency, inclusion, and innovation.

A central message echoed throughout the Summit: openness provides a meaningful and timely response to the challenges confronting democracy, and remains essential to its vitality. In this spirit, legislative openness was reaffirmed as a cornerstone of open government and a means to strengthen the bond between citizens and their parliaments. Guided by this conviction, the ParlAmericas parliamentary delegation brought to the Summit the experiences and perspectives of the hemisphere, reflecting a region that has been a pioneer in adopting action plans, legal frameworks, and innovative open parliament practices.

This hemispheric voice was strongly represented at Open Parliament Day 2025, organized by the Congress of Deputies of Spain, the Basque Parliament, OGP, and the Open Parliament e-Network (OPeN), of which ParlAmericas is a founding member. The meeting, one of the events held on the margins of the Summit, brought together parliamentarians and representatives from civil society and international organizations to share experiences and best practices on transparency and access to information, accountability, citizen participation, and ethics and integrity.

Representing ParlAmericas, Magda Salgado, Member of the Chamber of Deputies of Mexico and Vice-President for North America of the ParlAmericas Open Parliament Network, underscored the importance of strengthening ties between parliaments and civil society to counter public distrust and advance towards more ethical, inclusive, and citizen-centered parliaments. Luz Mary Alpízar, Member of the Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica and Vice-President for Central America, emphasized the importance of making citizen participation accessible, diverse, and sustainable through inclusive approaches that remove the barriers still limiting representation.

The ParlAmericas delegation’s agenda at the Summit included a range of spaces that reflected the convergence between openness, cooperation, and digital transformation. Over the course of the week, delegates participated in various activities, including a high-level session on the future of parliaments, sharing regional perspectives on how to strengthen democracy, protect civic space, and harness technological innovation to promote more transparent and responsive institutions.

As part of the official Summit program, Carolina Delgado Ramírez, Member of the Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica and member of the ParlAmericas Board of Directors, participated in the high-level panel “From Transparency to Trust: Shaping the Open Parliament of Tomorrow,” where she reflected on how gender equality and citizen participation enrich the open parliament agenda and help build more inclusive and trustworthy institutions. She also emphasized the importance of having institutionalized dialogue mechanisms that ensure the continuity and legitimacy of openness policies, such as Costa Rica’s Joint Committee on Open Parliament, which is composed equally of parliamentarians, parliamentary staff, and civil society representatives.

This vision of openness is evolving through digital transformation, which frames technological innovation not only as a tool for institutional renewal but also as an opportunity to redefine the connection between parliaments and citizens.

In keeping with this vision, the ParlAmericas delegation contributed to the global conversation on technological innovation and legislative openness. On the margins of the Summit, ParlAmericas and the POPVOX Foundation co-organized a session on the use of artificial intelligence in parliaments, which brought together parliamentarians, experts, and representatives from international organizations across Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The exchange underscored the value of artificial intelligence for strengthening parliamentary work and provided an opportunity to share experiences and challenges in this field. During the session, Luis Rojas, Deputy Secretary of the Chamber of Deputies of Chile, presented the CAMINAR project, an initiative designed to support legislative work through artificial intelligence tools such as debate transcription and legal argumentation, while also enhancing efficiency, transparency, innovation, and openness. The POPVOX Foundation also presented the Digital Parliaments project, aimed at supporting parliaments in their modernization processes.

During the Summit, Luz Mary Alpízar, Member of the Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica and Vice-President for Central America of the ParlAmericas Open Parliament Network, and Natalí Casanova-Burkholder, Project Manager for Open Parliament at ParlAmericas, met with Aidan Eyakuze, Executive Director of OGP, together with representatives of OPeN, to continue strengthening parliamentary participation in the Partnership. The meeting highlighted the strategic role of parliaments in the open government agenda and the importance of promoting greater visibility for these initiatives within OGP discussions and policies.

ParlAmericas’ participation in the OGP Global Summit reaffirmed the commitment of the hemisphere’s parliaments to building the parliaments of the future—institutions that are more open, transparent, and connected to citizens—and to advancing a global openness agenda that strengthens democracy while promoting equality and the representation of all people in all their diversity.

The participation of ParlAmericas in this activity was made possible with the support of the Government of Canada through Global Affairs Canada.