Politicians, we're watching you!

In a quest to provide more political transparency in Luxembourg, a new website has just been launched, “depuwatch.lu". A project run jointly by Luxembourg's Pirate Party and the platform “Politikercheck”.

Essentially what depuwatch.lu aims to do is document politician’s voting trends in Luxembourg since 2004, but goes beyond that.

The site contains information, a lot of which can be found of the official Chambre de Députés website but depuwatch has 1 clear advantage: it is clear, precise and easy for the public to find the information they need.

This “transparency” is exactly a point that the relatively new Pirate Party highlight in their campaigns. A lot of government-related information may well be available to the public, but how and where to find it?

This means that the information on the website is not totally new, but laid out in such a way that the reader may well read details they never knew.

Visitors to depuwatch.lu can therefore discover a whole range of things about "their" MP - and possibly unearth one or two surprises. For example, the most striking part of the site is when you click on “Deputéiert” producing an alphabetical list of all MPs. A visit to an individual profile reveals just how they have been voting since 2004 with a “for” and “against” percentage graph for the party they currently represent. Interestingly the results are not always "for"!

Wort.lu/en wanted to find out just how the website could benefit the international community and foreigners just arriving in the country or planning to vote for the first time in Luxembourg and so posed that very question to Sven Clement, one of the site creators and leader of the Pirate Party in Luxembourg:

“Newcomers benefit from the site because it shows on the front page all the current parliamentarians as well as on how they use their votes. This includes foreign voters who would like to check whether a politician votes really in the same direction they say they do. Another advantage is that we illustrate the votes graphically so the information can be understood without understanding the language, while enabling everybody to contact the politicians via Facebook, Twitter or Politikercheck.lu”, explained Clement.

It is interesting to note that the Pirates are not the only partly demanding more transparency in Luxembourg politics. Déi Gréng have had this idea as part of their policy campaign for some considerable time. The website creation therefore, has been met with approval by the Greens.

Luxembourg does seem to suffer from particularly confusing information sources, not just in politics, and several state website are a maze to navigate around causing the user, after a period of frustration, to give up and it is not always language related. Websites like guichet.lu and unemployment office, ADEM may have “all the information you need” somewhere but how do we get to it? Maybe sites like these are due for the same depuwatch style treatment.