Background

Africa i-Parliaments Action Plan builds on the experiences and the achievements of the “Strengthening Parliaments’ Information Systems in Africa” a regional pilot project of the UNITED NATIONS Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN/DESA) initiative and sponsored by the Italian Development Cooperation.

The pilot project aimed at leveraging information and communication technology to support regional efforts to strengthen democracy and good governance in pilot parliaments. African Parliaments have shown the political willingness to cooperate at continental level to leverage the benefits of the regional approach and of the economies of scale that ICTs can deliver. Several Parliaments from outside Africa have also responded positively to the challenge of assisting and cooperating with African Parliaments in strengthening democracy and good governance in the continent.

The strategic uniqueness of the “Strengthening Parliaments’ Information Systems in Africa” Project has been the use of a regional/inter-parliamentary approach to deal with the issues parliaments are facing. The opportunity to view the problems of Parliaments in a broader regional context made apparent that, despite the different parliamentary traditions and languages, many requirements that otherwise could have appeared as unique, were actually common to most or all Parliaments. The regional perspective has managed to highlight issues that can be better and most effectively dealt at a regional/continental level in order to provide high quality and sustainable solutions for African parliaments.

“Strengthening Parliaments' Information Systems in Africa” project’s major legacies have been:

• AKOMA NTOSO - "Architecture for Knowledge-Oriented Management of African Normative Texts using Open Standards and Ontologies" a set of simple, technology-neutral representations of parliamentary, legislative and judiciary documents such as legislation, debate record, minutes, judgments, etc. Africa is the first continent to promote a common open standard for parliamentary, legislative and judiciary documents, turning its position from a latecomer to a world leader, and a model for the rest of the world. For more information please see www.akomantoso.org
• Bungeni – Parliamentary Information System is an end-to-end suite of applications that provides a world-leading solution for drafting, managing, consolidating and publishing legislative and other parliamentary documents. Bungeni aims to increase the efficiency of parliamentary activities and make Parliaments more open and accessible to citizens -- virtually allowing them “inside the Parliament” or Bungeni, the Kiswahili word for “inside the Parliament”. Bungeni automates the information flow of parliamentary works and support the distribution of parliamentary proceedings and documents via the Internet. The goal of is to enable Parliaments to become more open to the citizens to foster accessibility, transparency and accountability of parliamentary activities. For more information please see www.bungeni.org
• Legislative Drafting Guidelines for Africa -  Given the variety of legislative traditions and languages present in Africa, the project promoted the development of common legislative drafting guidelines to support the harmonization of legislation throughout the Continent. The development of the Guidelines has involved experts and parliamentary staff from many African countries and the contributions of the European Parliament, the Senate of France, the House of Lords of the United Kingdom and the National Assembly of Portugal. The Guidelines are available at http://drafting.akomantoso.org/ and they will be made available in the following languages: French, Portuguese, Arabic, Swahili, Spanish and English.
• Africa Parliamentary Knowledge Network (APKN) – APKN is a parliamentary network meant to support capacity building activities, common services, sharing experiences and best practices among African parliaments. It builds on the success of long established parliamentary networks like the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) in USA and the European Centre for Parliamentary Research and Documentation (ECPRD) and on ICTs that have provided very cost effective ways to facilitate communication between parliaments and to deliver information and capacity building services. APKN was promoted in collaboration with the “Global Centre of ICT in Parliament”. In Abuja in March 2007 at a meeting hosted by the National Assembly of Nigeria the proposal to set up APKN was endorsed by the parliaments attending the Conference. APKN's first and founding conference, “Africa Parliamentary Knowledge Network - Building Together Open and Learning Parliaments in Africa” will be hosted by the People’s Assembly of Egypt on 4-5 June 2008 under the auspices of the Pan African Parliament. Thirty delegations from African parliaments have registered and the goal of the Conference is to finalise the APKN Charter and APKN Plan of Action. For more information see http://apkn.parliaments.info/

The Africa i-Parliaments Action Plan has been developed to consolidate the above achievements by both continuing the work undertaken and by adding services and capacity building activities that will support APKN's goal of strengthening the information and knowledge management capacity of parliamentary administrations and members.

Lessons Learned

Many of the shortcomings and challenges that individual African Parliaments have to deal with are common to many Parliaments. In fact, the commonalities in requirements of Parliaments are not only in the information systems, but also extend into other areas such as training needs, knowledge management requirements, information services and building opportunities to exchange information and confront ideas.

A regional/continental approach in the development of the Parliamentary Information System proved to be conducive to economies of scale, quality and sustainability. There is scope and value in creating common and/or centralised services in order to leverage a much wider pool of intellectual resources and strengthen sustainability of the achievements. The benefits will be even more apparent in the case of smaller African Parliaments with meagre resources , as these are really the ones in most dire need of support and quality services.