Data

Location
Helsinki
Finland

ORGANIZATION

The Open Ministry (Avoin ministeriö)

July 12, 2013 GJM
Location
Helsinki
Finland

Open Ministry is an online tool for crowd sourced legislation and participative democracy. It is about crowd sourcing legislation, deliberative and participatory democracy and citizens initiatives. It is a non-profit organization based in Helsinki, Finland. It helps citizens and NGO's with national citizens' initiatives, EU citizens initiatives and develops the online services for collaborating, sharing and signing the initiatives.
In March 2012 the Finnish Parliament passed the Citizens’ Initiative Act. The Act allows any citizen to present a law to Parliament, providing they can get the support of 50,000 citizens. If a proposal gains more than 50.000 signatures within six months,
then the Parliament is obliged to discuss and vote on the initiative.
However, there was no ministry to accompany the Citizens Initiative i.e. no one to help citizens to weigh options or draft the text for proposals. The Open Ministry tries to fill this gap and to help people make laws.
The site allows Finns to submit proposals for legislation, which are then debated and refined by the site’s membership.
The Open Ministry doesn’t have opinions as an institution. The Open Ministry doesn’t present any ideas or have any opinions itself.
Issues dealt with have included: copyright, gender-neutral marriage, bullying in schools, open data, one official language.
http://openministry.info/
http://avoinministerio.fi