EXPERT PANEL
The delegates first heard from Cristiano Ferri Faria, director of the Hacker Laboratory at the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies. In his presentation he proposed that a new role of the 21st century lawmaker is that of crowdsourcing facilitator whereby they actively seek civil society’s input. Some legislatures are experimenting with information and communications technologies for citizens to more effectively engage with parliamentarians on legislative affairs.
Through the Brazilian Chamber’s e-Democracy portal citizens can collaborate on lawmaking by submitting comments or suggestions on draft laws to the Wikilegis platform. Citizens can also participate in
IN FOCUS: WORKING GROUP ON OPEN PARLIAMENT
"One of the things that we do now as representatives to try to get the information out there with the limited infrastructure and finances that we have, is that we use social media, we use the telecom networks to do text blasting at different levels, and we use newsletters."