Challenges and Solutions for e-Parliaments

Some challenges facing several e-parliaments include:

Limited resources

Local financial management for parliaments frequently suffer from lacking technological infrastructure and capacity. However, investment in technology will add real value to them in terms of efficiency and cost-saving.

Lack of quality and archived parliamentary data

Data should be good quality, accurate, complete, reliable, timely and relevant. Lack of any of these leads to bias or poor decision making. Good quality data is essential for parliaments to make accurate decisions, enhance transparency and accountability.

Insufficient skills among MPs and parliamentary staff

Some MPs and parliamentary staff are not computer literate which affects their productivity as they do things manually. It is important to improve this by working on their literacy level.

Security Issues

Parliament being a government body, possesses a lot of sensitive data. Its security is very important to avoid theft, leakage of sensitive information, legal liability and corruption of data. Hence, parliaments should invest heavily in technological products that will ensure security.

Solutions

Installing the appropriate and secure digital infrastructure

This has been done in the meeting rooms and chambers to allow the members to register, work, meet remotely and access documents. Infrastructure like plenary devices allow them to vote, live stream the proceedings; video record the plenary and committee sessions and digitally track amendment of bills.

Digitizing parliamentary information

Minutes, Hansard and library books for the MPs, staff and citizens by uploading them on the parliaments' portals to encourage transparency and empower the MPs.

Training of MPs and parliamentary staff

Some MPs insist on using hardcopies instead of softcopies because of inadequacies in computer skills. Thriving parliaments have training programs for their MPs on how to use parliamentary systems.

Developing and implementing a formal citizen engagement policy

Parliaments should have a communication policy that should be used on social media for MPs to encourage public participations in the proceedings. Additionally, they should develop parliamentary applications for better optimization on mobile devices as majority of citizens use mobile devices across the internet.

Implement the pre-conditions necessary for the effective rollout of e-Parliament

IPU report, 2020, indicates that 37% of parliaments could not hold remote plenaries because it was considered illegal. Therefore, parliaments need to strengthen laws concerning parliamentary technologies. Security might be their key concern in not legalizing remote attendance and functioning of the parliaments.

However, the parliamentary systems should use encryption to secure data. This added with cloud-based technologies and distributed databases for storage and back up in ensuring data security, and for archiving parliamentary data should be enough reasons to give them confidence in parliamentary systems.

Conclusion

A virtual Parliament or e-parliament, is a very important tool in shaping the future of parliaments. It will help the legislators become more efficient, improve citizen engagement and encourage the younger generation to join the parliament and participate in democratic processes. It will also allow parliaments in Africa, to progress into a new era. The future is definitely digital and parliaments that will adopt new technologies will thrive best.