The role of parliaments in advancing the open government agenda has gained interest in recent years, with growing recognition that legislatures can be strong drivers of openness reform. This has led to increased support for Open Parliament, where lawmakers work alongside civil society to commit to improvements in transparency, participation, accountability and ethical standards. Thus far, over a dozen countries have developed Open Parliament Plans. These have produced more inclusive and responsive forms of lawmaking and, as a result, they have brought citizens and legislators closer together.

The purpose of this tool is to pull together early lessons from a project being undertaken by the Open Parliament e-Network (OPeN) with support from the Multi Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) of the Open Government Partnership (OGP). This is aimed at advancing parliamentary engagement in open government in Mexico, Tunisia and Kyrgyzstan, and is being supplemented with case-study research of parliamentary openness in these and seven other countries across Latin America, Africa and Asia.