On March 5-6, 2016, the Georgian Parliament’s Permanent Council on Open and Transparent Governance adopted a Concept aimed at promoting the implementation of commitment 3.1. of the Open Parliament Georgia Action Plan. The commitment involves publishing documents on the Parliament website in easy-to-use formats.

The goal of the commitment is to minimize the number of PDF (Portable Document Format) documents being published on the Parliament website by the end of 2016, and to instead use easy-to-use formats for publishing draft laws and related documents, orders, resolutions and projects. Based on the above concept, the Council will then develop draft amendments to the Parliamentary Rules of Procedure, which serve as legal basis for the implementation of the commitment.

As of today, only a part of parliamentary documents are being published on the Parliament website. Most of the available documents (e.g., orders, resolutions, statements, appeals, draft laws and related documents) are in PDF format, making it impossible for them to be processed or searched for using online search engines.

Parliamentary documents must be published in an open and machine readable format (for example, HTML/MS Word).

The Open Parliament Georgia Action Plan (2015-2016) was developed by the Inter-Factional and Civil Society working groups and approved on July 17, 2015. The action plan consists of 18 commitments that reflect OGP’s four basic principles: citizen participation, access to information, accountability, and innovation and technology.

The action plan implementation by the Parliament is supported by the project - Supporting the Parliament of Georgia in Implementation of the Open Parliament Georgia Action Plan, which is implemented by IDFI with funding from UNDP and EU. IDFI acts as a coordinator between the Parliamentary Council and the Consultative Group.