Transcript Critical Role of ICT in Parliament ICT is a vital tool for enabling parliaments to • Fulfill legislative, oversight, and representative responsibilities • Achieve.

Critical Role of ICT in Parliament
ICT is a vital tool for enabling parliaments to
• Fulfill legislative, oversight, and
representative responsibilities
• Achieve the goals of transparency,
openness, accessibility, accountability, and
effectiveness
• Be active participants in the global
information society
Objectives of the Report
• Establish authoritative baseline of use of ICT
in parliaments
• Provide opportunity for sharing lessons
learned and good practices among
parliaments
• Serve as reference source for parliaments,
multilateral organizations, development
agencies, donors and experts engaged in
inter-parliamentary cooperation and in
assisting legislatures to fulfill their
constitutional duties
e-Parliament: evolving concept
• A legislature that is empowered to be more
transparent, accessible and accountable through
ICT
• Empowers people, in all their diversity, to be more
engaged in public life by providing greater access
to parliament
• Connects stakeholders through ICT to support lawmaking, representation, and oversight more
effectively
• Fosters the development of an equitable and
inclusive information society through the adoption
of standards and supportive policies
Topics covered in the report
1. Parliament, ICT and the information society
2. Vision, innovation, and leadership
3. Management, planning, and resources
4. Infrastructure and services
5. Documenting the legislative process
6. Parliamentary websites
7. Building a knowledge base for parliament
8. Parliaments and citizens: enhancing the dialogue
9. Cooperation and coordination
Sources
• Survey results from 105 assemblies
• Results of the World e-Parliament
Conference 2007 and related meetings
• Publicly available documents
• Contributions of experts
Participation by region
Geographical groupings:
• European Union area (28 respondents from the European
Union, including the European Parliament)
• Sub-Saharan Africa area (29 respondents)
• Latin America area (14 respondents)
Primary conclusions
• Some parliaments have been very successful in
their use of ICT to support and even enhance
their most important activities
• However, there is a substantial gap in most
parliaments between what is possible with ICT to
support the values and goals of parliaments and
what has been accomplished
• This gap is especially pronounced among
legislatures from countries with lower income
levels. The digital divide that exists between high
income and low income countries is reflected in
parliaments
Primary conclusions (continued)
• Although many parliaments may not yet be
employing ICT to its fullest, most have plans to
improve their use of technology to support their
stated values and goals
• With sufficient political will, availability of
resources, and increased collaboration there can
be a far more effective deployment of ICT in
parliaments in the future
Requirements for successful implementation
• A clear vision
• Committed leadership
• Strong management
• Effective planning and oversight
• Informed and engaged members
• Collaboration among key stakeholders
• Highly trained and knowledgeable staff
• Cooperation with other legislative bodies
Recommendations: managerial
• Engage all major stakeholders, including members
of parliament, in establishing a vision for ICT in
parliament based on the values and goals of the
institution, providing a shared view of priorities and
leading to consensus on what needs to be achieved
• Develop a strategic planning process that creates
project plans, assigns management authority and
responsibility, allocates resources, establishes
deadlines, and ensures that implementation is
managed effectively
Recommendations: managerial
• Promote strong management by Secretaries
General and other senior officers of the innovation
process to ensure that resources are allocated
appropriately, and that ICT projects are sustained
over time and meet their objectives
• Invest in human resources, including by providing
training for ICT specialists, other legislative and
research staff, and members
• Advocate collaboration at all levels, internally
among IT specialists and major operating units,
between chambers, at regional levels, and on a
global basis to enable sharing of resources, good
practices, and expertise
Recommendations: technical
• Implement a parliamentary information system
that encompasses all bills and amendments,
plenary debates and votes, and committee
documents and actions
• Create an authoritative, accessible, timely, and
engaging website that provides a complete and
understandable view of parliamentary activities and
documents and offers multiple formats and
channels of access
Recommendations: technical
• Adopt open standards for all legislative documents
to facilitate wider citizens’ access and the creation of
a comprehensive legislative information resource
that can be shared and integrated with other
material both internally and externally
• Build a coherent knowledge base for parliaments
that links all relevant internal and external
information resources into an organized system that
facilitates search and retrieval of needed information
for members, staff, and the public
• Continue to explore ICT tools to engage citizens
and civil society, perform assessments of their
utility, and adopt those that support fruitful
interaction between parliament and the public
Recommendations: cooperation and
coordination
• Establish a global dialogue on open document
standards among legislatures to learn from others
and to expand interoperability among different
legislative systems and build a global legislative
knowledge base
• Develop common guidelines for parliamentary,
committee, and member websites based on an
update of the IPU Guidelines to serve the goals of
greater and improved transparency, as well as
providing more effective tools for access to
parliamentary information
Recommendations: cooperation and
coordination
• Share experiences in the development of the
most widely used legislative systems that
would be particularly helpful to those who
currently lack the resources and expertise. In
certain situations this could open the possibility
of collaborative applications development
• Design common interactive capabilities for
communicating with citizens and training
programmes, including using e-learning tools,
for a wide range of parliamentary staff and
members
Final thoughts
• Sometimes there is a lack of understanding of
what can be achieved with ICT
• Innovation is a continuous challenge for all
parliaments regardless of economic level
• Cooperation and coordination among legislative
bodies can help greatly to level the playing field
• In the information age, parliaments have a unique
opportunity to use ICT to engage citizens---in all
their diversity--in creating an equitable, inclusive,
and open society
Next challenges
• World e-Parliament Conference 2008 – coorganized by the United Nations, the
European Parliament and the Global
Centre for ICT in Parliament – Brussels,
25 and 26 November 2008.
• Revision of the IPU Guidelines for
parliamentary websites issued in 2000
• Assess possible convergence in open
standards for parliamentary documentation at
regional and global level
• Launch of the 2009 Survey and release of
the World e-Parliament Report 2010