Critical Role of ICT in Parliament

2. Critical Role of ICT in Parliament • Fulfill legislative, oversight, and representative responsibilities • Achieve the goals of transparency, openness, accessibility, accountability, and effectiveness • Be active participants in the global information society ICT is a vital tool for enabling parliaments to

3. 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

4. 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 law-making, representation, and oversight more effectively • Fosters the development of an equitable and inclusive information society through the adoption of standards and supportive policies

5. Topics covered in the report • Parliament, ICT and the information society • Vision, innovation, and leadership • Management, planning, and resources • Infrastructure and services • Documenting the legislative process • Parliamentary websites • Building a knowledge base for parliament • Parliaments and citizens: enhancing the dialogue • Cooperation and coordination

6. Sources • Survey results from 105 assemblies • Results of the World e-Parliament Conference 2007 and related meetings • Publicly available documents • Contributions of experts

7. 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)

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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 collaborationat 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. Next challenges • World e-Parliament Conference 2008 – co-organized 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