How to improve communication between parliaments and citizens

The World e-Parliament Conference and related meetings held in October in Geneva provided an expert forum on the promises and challenges of using information and communication technologies (ICT) in parliament. Jointly organized by IPU, the United Nations and the Association of Secretaries General of Parliaments (ASGP), with the support of the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament, it brought together parliamentarians, secretaries general and parliamentary staff who work with ICT, such as legislative staff, IT administrators, knowledge managers and librarians from more than 70 countries.

Participants shared their experience of using ICT to modernize parliamentary processes and to improve communication between parliaments and citizens. They identified as key success factors: a clear vision; strategic planning; the ongoing engagement of parliamentarians; training for ICT staff and parliamentarians; and close collaboration between ICT specialists, librarians and major operating units - as well as between chambers in bicameral parliaments.

One of the recurrent themes was the need for parliaments to share best practices in areas such as open standards for marking-up parliamentary documents, collaborative software development and parliamentary websites. The Conference showed that many good practices do already exist, while others are emerging in new areas such as mobile computing for parliamentarians. Through the Global Centre, IPU is encouraging regional and global cooperation on the development, implementation and sharing of best practices among parliaments.

The digital divide is of course a reality for parliaments. In countries where resources are scarce, it was suggested that one of the first objectives of a democratic parliament must be to ensure that legislation is widely accessible to citizens. Using ICT, parliaments can contribute to fulfilling the fundamental right of access to information by taking small, concrete steps such as publishing legal texts online.

Building on the findings of the Conference, the first Global Report on ICT in Parliament will establish much-needed baseline data on how and why parliaments around the world are using ICTs. The Global Report will be presented at the 118th IPU Assembly, to be held in Cape Town, South Africa, in April 2008.