The MP, Khatuna Gogorishvili participated in the discussion on Institutionalizing Parliamentary Openness - Innovative Models for Driving Reform held within Open Governance Partnership Global Summit.

The topic of the discussion was concerning the experience of the panel participant countries in terms of creation of unique institutional mechanism to facilitate to reforming of Parliamentary openness especially within OGP.

The moderator, the NDI Governance Program Director, Mr. Scott Hubli emphasized successful cooperation between the Parliament and civil sector upon development of the open Parliament action plan and noted the leading role of IDFI in this process. He reminded the audience about the OGP Government Champions Award in 2015 granted to the Parliament of Georgia.

According to Kh. Gogorishvili, the civil sector was the driving force upon development of the open Parliament action plan. The international and donor organizations also contributed a lot. “I represent the Parliament of Georgia and would like to speak about the role of the Parliament and attract your attention to significant dates. In a very short period since establishment of the Inter-Faction Group of the Parliament, the Parliament and the Open Parliament Working Group member international organizations and NGOs have signed the Memorandum of Parliamentary Openness and the Declaration of the Open Parliament. In 6 month since, the Parliament has already had the ambitious action plan serving for encouragement of Parliamentary openness and transparency”.

She spoke about the challenges upon implementation of the action plan duties and considered enactment and regulation of comment mechanisms to the drafts. “The society, through the web-site of the Parliament, has the access to the legislative base. One of the obligations under the action plan envisages creation of the system allowing the Parliamentary audience and society concerned using new interactive function to leave a comment to the drafts, which I hail”.

Other participants of the discussion were the Director of Institute for Development of Freedom of Information, Giorgi Kldiashvili (Georgia), Director of the Brazilian Parliament (Brazil) and the researcher (Mexico).

The Parliament of Georgia joined OGP on April 30, 2015 when signing the Declaration and the Memorandum. As a result, the Parliament assumed to ensure active participation of citizens in legislative process.

On July 17, 2015, the Bureau endorsed the Open Parliament Action Plan. Hence, Georgia has become one of the leading countries in this regards.