The Legislative Yuan is hoping to become a more transparent body that is more open to citizen participation by following a global Open Government Partnership (OGP) initiative, Legislative Speaker You Si-kun said yesterday.
The initiative was launched on Tuesday last week, with the legislature making a series of commitments to improve its transparency, openness, public participation, digitization and literacy between now and December 2024.
You was attending a news conference to mark the launch of a new page on open governance on the legislature’s Web site.
The new page aims to fulfill some of those goals and promote exchanges with the OGP to enhance parliamentary diplomacy, You said.
More concrete actions expected to materialize include sharing materials such as the texts of bills and transcripts online, and livestreaming legislative committee hearings and floor sessions to encourage citizens to discuss policies, he said.
At present, most of the commitments made involve planning responses to issues raised in the open government plan.
For example, on the issue of registering lobbyists, the plan commits to investigating how other countries handle lobbying and gathering opinions by the end of this year, and to develop a plan to revise the system by the end of next year.
The initiative came about after Taiwan announced at the OGP summit in Canada in May 2019 that it would launch its own open government national action plan to show its determination to embrace the OGP’s goals of transparency, You said.
Established in 2011, the OGP is a voluntary international initiative with 78 member countries that aims to secure commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption and harness new technologies to improve governance.
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