Transcript Document

Enhancing the Role and Effective
participation of Parliamentarians in the
APRM process
12 -14 May 2010, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Strengthening African Parliaments Role
through the use of ICTs : ECA’s
Experiences
Girma Dessalegn
ICT and Science & Technology Division (ISTD)
Economic Commission for Africa
www.uneca.org/aisi
Contents
 Background
 AISI Implementation: ECA activities with
African Parliament
 ICTs for effective Participation of MPs in the
APRM process
 The Way Forward
www.uneca.org/aisi
Information Society – A
Development challenge
Potential threats
 Tendency to expose and exploit inherent weaknesses
in the economies of developing countries, particularly
Africa
 Widening the disparities at domestic levels and
internationally
 Consequently, new thinking on the relevance
of Information Society to development
www.uneca.org/aisi
Information Society – A
Development challenge?
 Digital gap in Africa represents a development
gap, and also
 Information factor of production
 Critical factor in poverty reduction
 Important in socio-economic sectors, health,
education, agriculture, etc
 ICTs useful tool in addressing all MDGs
 Effective implementation of national and subregion ICT strategies can address APRM Goals
www.uneca.org/aisi
AISI IMPLEMENTATION
& African Parliaments
What is the AISI ?
African
Information
Society
Initiative
Regional framework for ICT development – 1996
Effective mainstreaming of ICT in national development agendas: PRSPs, MDGs, etc
www.uneca.org/aisi
AISI Launched in 1996
Focus Areas
Outreach
&
Communication
E-Strategies
AISI
Info & Knowledge
Development
Partnership
&
Networking
www.uneca.org/aisi
E-Strategies
 Regional Information and
Communication
Infrastructure (RICI)
AISI
 National Information and
Communication
Infrastructure (NICI)
NICI
SICI
 Sectoral Information and
Communication
Infrastructure (SICI)
 Village Information and
Communication
Infrastructure (VICI)
VICI
SCAN-ICT
RICI
Parliaments’ Involvement
www.uneca.org/aisi
AISI & African Parliament
ECA’s work with Africa Parliaments, is geared towards
equipping members and staff of African parliaments with
the ICT tools and adequate knowledge to support its
primary functions of representation, law-making and
oversight more effectively - Strategies include:
 Strengthen Human and Institutional Capacity: Making
ICT Work within Parliament
 Strengthen oversight over Policies role
 Strengthen capacity in harnessing ICT for good
Governance (e-Governance) and democratic processes
(e-democracy)
 Promote ICT for constituencies development and interparliamentary cooperation
www.uneca.org/aisi
Making ICT Work
in Parliaments
 Train MPs and Staff to use ICTs to access information,
as well as Internet / Intranet document
 Support/ advise on the development, extend the
deployment of ICT infrastructure
 Develop strategies to raise awareness within
parliaments on practical benefits of ICT for
development, national and sub-regional e-strategies
 Enhance the parliamentary-constituency interaction and
outreach
 A total of 500 MPs and staff benefited for training, 120
Ethiopian MPs by ITCA , Swaziland, Gambia and Niger
Parliaments
www.uneca.org/aisi
ICT to strengthen Oversight role
 Organise capacity building workshop for the role of
Parliament in building the Knowledge Society Promoting
ICT Committee creation
 Ensure that policies are inclusive, sustainable and
equitable
 Ensure adequate national budget and mobilize other
innovative financing mechanisms
 Adopt adequate legislation for the Information Society
 Ensure that policies monitoring portal made available by
government
 Deploying ICT applications tools for better Hearings,
questions to Governments, other policy setting and
scrutiny documents
 SADC PF, Niger, Gambia, Swaziland, Kenya, Uganda,
Zambia have benefited from this activity more requests
are received from ten other Parliaments www.uneca.org/aisi
Promoting ICT for Good-Governance
and effective Democracy

Learn from best Practices in
e-Governance and e-Democracy
 Undertake research on strategies for
promoting e-governance and e-democracy
 Deploying ICT applications tools for
better inter-action with citizens
 Promote e-governance/ e-democracy
legislations
www.uneca.org/aisi
ICT empower Parliaments Main
Functions
www.uneca.org/aisi
What are we expecting to assess
under APRM?
How can ICT Contribute?
RICI
NICI
Democracy and Political
Governance;
Economic Governance and
Management;
Corporate Governance; and
Socio-Economic
Development
SICI
- Promoting e-democracy Tools:
- E-Government
- E-Governance
- Effective e-strategies implementation
- Mainstreaming ICT in development Agendas:
MDGs-PRSP-YP
 Good governance
 Trust and Accountability
 Citizen’s awareness and empowerment
 Citizen’s welfare
 Democracy
 Nation’s economic growth
www.uneca.org/aisi
How ICT can empower Parliament in APRM
Process- what are the opportunities?
 Informed elected representative required access to
real time
information, best practice
 It is vital that Parliament knows what it knows, where to find
this knowledge, and how to share accumulated information
 ICT can help MP to connect to existing networks, (South
African) ex: Government Communication and Information
System (GCIS)
 ICTs make it easier and faster for constituents to interact
with Parliamentarians and influence lawmaking and
oversight of public affairs of direct concern to them
www.uneca.org/aisi
How ICT can empower Parliament in APRM
Process- what are the opportunities?
 ICT enable MPs know the demands of the
stakeholders and hence become more
Responsive to their needs
 ICTs can render the MP role in APRM process
more efficient by providing the means for
citizens to express their concerns online
 ICTs, therefore, have a vital role to play in
providing both MPs and citizens with access to
ready-to-use, reliable data and specialized
information
www.uneca.org/aisi
What are the opportunities?
 Knowledge repository, blogs, personalized websites,
citizen portals, webcasting, radio-streams, public access
points, database, e-mails, e-forum can be used by MP in
the APRM process, these applications can help to :
 to strengthen interaction between Parliament,
Government Departments, civil society and the public
(case of India)
 to get views, analyze, assess a situation etc
 to undertake research tasks to be well informed about
citizens’ concerns
benchmark with other best practices in other countries
 assess any shortcomings in the performance of
ministries in APRM framework
www.uneca.org/aisi
What are the opportunities?



Civil society participation in
diagnosis
Monitoring of results on the ground
Transforming representative
democracy into a participative one;
www.uneca.org/aisi
Way Forward
Create in the Parliament or
strengthen
 APRM COMMITTEE
 ICT COMMITTEE
www.uneca.org/aisi
Thank You !
http://www.uneca.org/aisi/
[email protected]
www.uneca.org/aisi