Today the Parliaments Speakers’ Council published their guidelines on how the citizens’ initiatives that pass the 50 000 supporters threshold will be handled in parliament.

The guidelines are a disappointment. As other bills, citizens’ initiatives are sent to a committee that would normally hear experts and prepare a statement on the bill, which would then be voted on by the parliament.

The Speakers Council decided, however, that in the case of citizens’ initiatives the committee does not need to give a statement “if it does not want to”. This would mean that the initiative would not be voted on by the parliament. The council specifically referred to political reasons as possible reasons for not giving a statement on a proposal, thus blocking it from the normal parlimantary process.

These guidelines are not in the spirit of the original constitutional amendment that promised citizens a chance “to directly influence the political agenda and to have the parliament process the initiative”.

The Open Ministry will continue its efforts to protect the fledgling initiative right in Finland. We will announce next steps soon.

Joonas Pekkanen

Chairman of the Open Ministry, Member of the Board of Open Knowledge Finland, Member of the Finnish Open Government Partnership committee

The whole story on the YLE website

The Open Ministry is an official partner and has been involved in planning and preparing the initiative and campaign for the Equal Marriage Law initiative (in English read http://www.tahdon2013.fi/in-english/briefly/).

The initiative rewrote the history of internet democracy as almost 3% of the whole voting population signed the initiative electronically on the very first day. The threshold of 50 000 supporters needed to pass the initiative to Parliament was met within 9 hours of launching the campaign and by midnight some 120 000 people had signed the initiative with their online bank codes or mobile phone.

The whole story on the YLE website

The Open Ministry has actively lobbied the Parliament directly and through press to ensure that Citizens Initiatives would be handled in Parliament in a decent manner. The Speaker’s Council considered giving Citizens Initiatives a lower status than bills proposed by a majority of MP’s (although originally the law intended citizens initiatives and majority bills to be handled in a similar fashion). 

Due to the public outcry the Speakers Council has now asked the parties in Parliament to issue statements by April the 8th. The council will then issue the protocol on how initiative are to be dealt with in Parliament.

Read the whole story on the EDRi-gram newsletter

“A campaign group is hoping to change Finland’s stringent copyright legislation by taking advantage of a law that means any petition that reaches 50,000 signatures must be voted on in the country’s parliament.

Finland’s government amended the national constitution so that, from March 2012, citizens could submit petitions to the so-called Open Ministry and crowdsource drafts before putting them to public vote. Unlike other countries (like the US or UK) where reaching a certain number of signatures only means that the government has to take a look at it, or discuss it in the legislature, the amendment forces the Finnish government to examine the law, make any clarifications it feels necessary, and then put it to a vote.”

Read the whole story on The Wired

Internet activists in Finland, upset with the country’s strict copyright laws, are ready to take advantage of the country’s promise to vote on any citizen-proposed bill that reaches 50,000 signatures.

The group Common Sense in Copyright, which is organizing a campaign for the bill, says its aim “is simple and reasonable: We want a fair and just copyright law in Finland.”

And while that’s true of digital rights groups in any country, Finland is unique: In accordance with a 2012 law, any citizen can create or sign on to a bill using a system called Open Ministry. If it receives 50,000 names in six months, the Finnish Parliament must put it to a vote.

Read the whole story by Kevin Collier on The Daily Dot

Open Ministry is a civil society organization aiming to crowdsource the way laws are drafted. It was founded in spring 2012 on order to help citizen movements and CSO’s to influence what kinds of laws are passed in Finland. Since the Citizens Initiative Law and the Constitutional amendment came into force on March 1st 2012, all law proposals that gather 50,000 supporters are passed to parliament.

Open Ministry has been involved in a number of citizen initiatives by helping draft laws and design campaigns, for example, to ban the farming of animals for their furs, to legalize same-sex marriages, and to change donation laws to allow crowdfunding projects.

The initiative to change the copyright law was suggested to the Open Ministry by a street artist called Sampsa in October 2012. We helped bring in volunteers to work on the project and to gather expert advice and opinions. During the drafting of the law proposal more than 30 influential people from the cultural, corporate and academic sectors joined to endorse the campaign publicly.

All stages of the drafting of the proposal have been open to the public for comments and additional ideas on the Open Ministry platform and active comments have been asked for from countless experts and copyright organizations. There is widespread agreement, that the Finnish copyright law is too strict and allows for excessive infringements of privacy and penalties.

The case of the confiscation of the 9-year old girls Winnie the Pooh laptop in November 2012 made headlines internationally, but was only a tip of the iceberg. Since 2006 when the current copyright law came into force, countless youngsters have been found guilty of copyright crimes and sentenced to pay thousands, in some cases hundreds of thousands, of euros in punitive damages to the copyright organizations.

This crowdsourced law proposal suggests several changes to the current copyright law including allowing the fair use of copyright-protected material for parody and satire and in teaching situations and impriving the situation of freelance artists. It is not a pro-piracy law proposal. However, it does suggests that the individual downloading of copyright-protected material from the internet should be a misdemeanor - and no longer a crime. This is actually what the law in Finland was until 2006. It is also in line with the international tendency, for example, in countries like Holland and United Kingdom, to alleviate the overly strict copyright regulations.

Open Ministry hopes that, in the spirit of deliberative democracy, this grassroots initiative will spur public discussion and continue to gather support and media attention. We can no longer afford to stand by and allow the corporate copyright lobbyists to dictate what is considered fair and legal. Now is the time for the people to unite, be heard and demand a change through the democratic means we have been awarded.

Joonas Pekkanen
Chairman, Open Ministry

joonas.pekkanen@avoinministerio.fi
mobile +358 505 846 800
Our English blog: www.openministry.info

MSLGROUP’s People’s Insights Volume 1, Issue 46 is on Open Ministry. Click the image or here to view the report on slideshare.

This week, we distill insights around Open Ministry - an open web platform that enables Finnish citizens to propose and vote on legislature. Proposals with 50,000 signatures are entered into parliament.

100+ thinkers and planners within MSLGROUP share and discuss inspiring projects on corporate citizenship, crowdsourcing, storytelling and social data on the MSLGROUP Insights Network.

Every week, we pick up one project and do a deep dive into conversations around it — on the MSLGROUP Insights Network itself but also on the broader social web — to distill insights and foresights. We share these insights and foresights with you on our People’s Insights blog and compile the best insights from the network and the blog in the iPad-friendly People’s Lab Quarterly Magazine, as a showcase of our capabilities.

For more, see: http://peopleslab.mslgroup.com

In Crazy Open-Source Project, Finnish Citizens Propose Laws for Parliament To Consider

Slate.com - Nov 5th 2012

“As the U.S. Election Day draws terrifyingly near, many Americans are frustrated as ever that their voice isn’t heard in the legislative process. But maybe Finland has a solution to that problem.

Through the open-source web platform Open Ministry, launched in March by a group of nonprofit entrepreneurs, citizens of Finland can propose legislation and throw their support behind laws of interest. Any legislation that receives 50,000 shares will be voted on by Parliament.”

(full article)