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One Small Step for Technology, One Giant Leap for the Commons

By Louise Thompson

House of Commons Speaker John Bercow suggested in a speech last week that it “wouldn’t be so heretical” to consider whether Commons votes might in the future be taken with the help of modern technology. Housed in the nineteenth century building is an increasingly techy Parliament and a digitally aware cohort of MPs. In the last few years alone we have seen MPs tweeting directly from the chamber, parliamentary papers delivered to Members’ iPads and speeches given from tablets rather than handwritten notes.  Electronic voting then seems quite a natural progression.

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Citizens working with lawmakers to make parliaments more open: a few examples from Brazil

By Cristiano Ferri Faria

In June 2013 the streets of Brazilian cities were taken over with protests by millions of citizens. It started as an outcry against the rise of public transportation fares. Then, many other issues came out including demands for better education and health systems. In short, citizens cried out for higher quality in public services as a whole.

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The four year itch

Please note that this blog piece was originally published in the Revolts blog on 03 June 2014, and is available here.

By Philip Cowley

We’ve been producing end-of-session reports on the behaviour of government MPs at Westminster for almost a decade.  This morning we’ve launched the report on the 2013-14 session, entitled The four year itch (and which is free to download).  It contains plenty to concern the party whips.