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
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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
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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
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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
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AISI Launched in 1996
Focus Areas
Outreach
&
Communication
E-Strategies
AISI
Info & Knowledge
Development
Partnership
&
Networking
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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
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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
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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
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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
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ICT empower Parliaments Main
Functions
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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
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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
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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
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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
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What are the opportunities?
Civil society participation in
diagnosis
Monitoring of results on the ground
Transforming representative
democracy into a participative one;
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Way Forward
Create in the Parliament or
strengthen
APRM COMMITTEE
ICT COMMITTEE
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Thank You !
http://www.uneca.org/aisi/
[email protected]
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