Voters should know about activities of their representatives in Parliament

Daily parliamentary activities of each MP must available to the public. This has been reinforced by the principle that serves as the basis of the state structure of parliamentary democracy as well as the practice of publishing proactive information on the official websites of the parliaments of those countries that are at a much higher level of democratic development.

"Democracy Index - Georgia" calls on the Parliament to ensure that the profile of each MP contains information describing their daily activities in order to strengthen parliamentary democracy, increase the accountability of MPs, and promote the development of balanced and fact-based assessments in the society.

The official website of the Parliament of Georgia offers the list of MPs. Each member's profile includes only an MP's identification information, CV, and information about their party or various association/delegation memberships. Nothing is said about the activities of members of the Parliament - their public speeches, statements, draft bills presented with their co-authorship, and their meetings or participation in any form of parliamentary life.

The activities of MPs can be found scattered in different sections of the website. The interested person has to scan through the initiators and authors of each specific law or decision, as well as watch the entire footage of plenary, committee, commission, task force or other sessions. This definitely provides an opportunity to fully assess parliamentary activities in one way or another, however, does not help the public develop the perception concerning a specific member of the Parliament - what worldview specific MPs have, how active they are, whether they remain dedicated to the values ​​and goals for the fulfillment of which they gave generous promises and came to the Parliament.

Financial expenditure of MPs is not published on their personal pages either. The website user has to scrutinize each financial document published by the Parliamentary Office to locate the data about an MP of interest. Furthermore, the website neither integrates financial declarations nor provides the reference to the webpage they are published on.  

In the countries with successful democracies, at least the following information is dynamically published on the official website of Parliament, on the profile of each Member of Parliament:[1]

- Legislative or other acts initiated by a Member of Parliament;

- Written questions and answers received by a Member of Parliament;

- Video recordings of speeches at plenary, committee and commission meetings gave by an MP;

- Extracts from sittings with the participation of an MP;

- Video recordings of questions asked by an MP during a Ministerial Hour;

- Questions brought forward by an MP through the interpellation;

- Reports of meetings conducted by an MP;

- Financial information relating to a Member of Parliament (including gifts received).

The data is published by date and categorized on the profile of each Member of Parliament as well as posted on the official website of Parliament.

With the given recommendation, we call on the Parliament of Georgia to provide information on each MP on the official website of the Parliament, place the profile of each MP and develop a system of updating the information on a regular basis.

[1] The organization has studied the official websites of the legislative bodies of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and Canada.