Enhancing the Role and Effective participation of Parliamentarians in the APRM process

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Enhancing the Role and Effective participation of
Parliamentarians in the APRM process 12 -14
November, Harare, Ghana
Strengthening African Parliaments Role through
the use of ICTs ECAs Experiences 
Thierry H AmoussougboRegional AdvisorICT and
Science Technology Division (ISTD)Economic
Commission for Africa
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• 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?

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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 1996Focus Areas
OutreachCommunication
E-Strategies
AISI
Info KnowledgeDevelopment
Partnership Networking
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E-Strategies
AISI

• Regional Information and Communication
  Infrastructure (RICI) (RECs)
• National Information and Communication
  Infrastructure (NICI) (Country)
• Sectoral Information and Communication
  Infrastructure (SICI) (Country)
• Village Information and Communication
  Infrastructure (VICI) (Country)

RICI
NICI
SCAN-ICT
SCAN-ICT
SICI
VICI
Parliaments Involvement
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National E-strategies Rwanda case Study
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E-Strategies Status
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AISI African Parliament

• ECAs activities with Africa Parliaments, is
  geared towards
• supporting parliaments basic values of
  transparency,
• accessibility, accountability and effectiveness,
  and, at the
• same time, its representative, legislative and
  oversight
• functions through. ICT master Plan- strategy is
  developed
• to
• Strengthening Human and Institutional Capacity
  Making ICT Work in Parliaments
• Strengthening oversight over e-strategies
• Harnessing ICT for promoting effective democracy
• Promoting ICT for constituencies development and
  inter-parliamentary 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- emails, e-discussion
• Reinforce/ extend existing ICT Infrastructure and
  Services to effectively respond to the Parliament
  needs (equipment, software, specific applications
  .. etc..)
• Endow the Parliaments with Research tools, and
  specialized applications to document the
  legislative and other processes
• Assist the parliament to develop /improve/enrich
  its website provide MP with interactive
  web-pages and strengthen the Parliament knowledge
  base (global and Personal website, library
  system, Research systems etc..)
• Parliaments - citizen communication tools
  Enhancing the dialogue
• A total of 500 MPs and staff have benefited from
  the training activities, 200 Ethiopian MPs by
  ITCA , Swaziland, Gambia and Niger Parliaments

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Making ICT Work in Parliaments

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Strengthening Oversight role

• Create ICT Committee in Parliament for better
  oversight over e-strategies, to support/lead ICT
  Master Plan and to promote
• Parliament involvement in e-strategies process,
  ensuring sound policy, policy responding to
  community needs and effective implementation
  mechanism
• Allocate sufficient national budget per sector
  and mobilize complementary funds through various
  bi-lateral an multi-lateral coop initiatives
• Reflect, identify, enact, adopt sound legislation
  for ICT4D with enforcement mechanism
• Understand and tackle emergent issues such as
  e-security, privacy, IPR etc
• Adopt innovative legislation to foster local ,
  Foreign direct investment and effective Private
  sector participation
• Question Govt on the implementation of various
  applications linked to APRM goals

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Harnessing ICT to foster 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 in community (Public
  access point) / tools for better inter-action
  with citizens
• Promote e-governance/ e-democracy
  legislations

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Promoting community development and
Inter-Parliamentary coop through ICT

• Empowering MPs to champion the promotion of ICT
  for community development
• Advocating for Diaspora participation in ICT4D
  projects at the community level
• Establishing innovative mechanisms to facilitate
  information flow between parliaments at
  sub-regional, regional and global levels
• Providing platforms for sharing of experience and
  good practices among parliaments

TRANSLATE ALL ABOVE in ICT MASTER PLAN
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ICT empower Parliaments Main Functions

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What are we expecting to assess ? How can ICT
Contribute?

• Good governance
• Trust and Accountability
• Citizens awareness and empowerment
• Citizens welfare
• Democracy
• Nations economic growth

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How ICT can empower Parliament in APRM Process-
what are the opportunities?

• In the evolving knowledge economy increasingly,
  a new thinking and informed elected
  representative is required
• Elected representative required access to real
  time information, best practice
• It is vital that Parliament knows where to find
  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,
  involve CSO 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?

• Email also encourage more open comments on
  governmental activities from constituents
• Through ICT, individual MPs
•  can create their own networks of people and
  groups
• can coordinate research with focus groups,
• poll people throughout society, and coordinate
  activities in larger groups of people
• Politically useful advice can also be provided
  by fellow MPs from different countries through
  ICT tools, email, e discussing, Parliamentary
  Intranet

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Way Forward- Questions?

• To sustain the MPs involvement Is it possible to
  create APRM Committee in Parliament ?
• Can adopt core list of APRM Indicators with
  computerized data collection and analysis
  mechanism
• Is it possible to request the creation of APRM
  Observatory Portals/database in collaboration
  with the Executive and links to existing and new
  databases
• For effective participation of Parliament and to
  harness the enormous potentials of ICT can we
  have ICT Committee on place ?
• To tackle the issues at the root can we advocate
  for e-Government / e-Governance strategy
  development with establishment of Observator
  System?

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Thank You !
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