Parliamentary staff of the Mexican Senate and Chamber of Deputies participated in a virtual meeting on legislative openness with other countries of the region and around the world
A virtual meeting was held on Tuesday, November 23, 2021, for staff and advisers of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies and Senate, to share experiences and learn about the implementation of actions for advancing legislative openness, and thus continue to consolidate these efforts.
The virtual meeting was organized by the Open Parliament e-Network (OPeN), a consortium of international organizations that promote open parliament initiatives and measures around the world, which, on this occasion, was represented by ParlAmericas, the Directorio Legislativo Foundation and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) of Mexico.
Senator Bertha Caraveo (Mexico), Vice-President of the ParlAmericas Open Parliament Network, introduced the meeting by emphasizing that “from ensuring the sustainability and formalization of initiatives in favour of legislative openness to their effective implementation, parliamentary staff plays an essential role in open parliament processes. One of the cross-cutting aspects that we see in other experiences in the region is not only the multi-party nature of these efforts, but also the involvement of staff from different parliamentary offices and agencies that make it possible to meet open parliament commitments and achieve the expected results.”
Experiences and lessons learned on open parliament were shared during the virtual meeting, which included presentations from Mexico, Spain and Panama. Mr. Fredy Erazo, General Coordinator of the Mexican Senate’s Transparency Unit and Regional Coordinator of the ParlAmericas Parliamentary Staff Network on Open Parliament, delivered a presentation on the progress made in Mexico in terms of transparency and collaboration with civil society through an agreement with the Legislative Observatory of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Mr. Miguel Ángel Gonzalo, Head of Project Coordination and Planning Unit pertaining to the Cabinet of the Secretary General of the Spanish Congress of Deputies, highlighted the tools used by the Spanish Parliament to facilitate access to information and citizen engagement, as well as the continuous training of deputies, collaboration and networking to strengthen the commitment to legislative innovation as key elements of the staff’s contribution to legislative openness. Finally, the presentations concluded with a speech by Ms. Marinés Tapiero, representative of the Youth Legislative Impact Program of Panama on the experience of young people in the development of a citizens’ initiative presented to the National Assembly of Panama with the support and contributions of Panamanian parliamentary staff.
There was an interesting dialogue between panellists and participants during the Q&A session, moderated by Keila González, Resident Director of NDI Mexico. The event ended with closing remarks by Noel Alonso Murray, Executive Director of the Directorio Legislativo Foundation.
