Context and Rationale
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Africa Parliamentary Information...
Africa Parliamentary Information Exchange (APEX)
Online digest regarding...
Online digest regarding best-practices and technical guidelines for ICTs
Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can empower parliaments to better fulfill their democratic functions by providing MPs and parliamentary administrations with access to documents and information in order to improve their efficiency, transparency, accountability and accessibility. ICT can be used to increase the quality of parliamentary services, facilitate the work of parliamentarians, and create new ways to promote the access to the work of parliaments by citizens and civil society.
Parliaments have to deal with new challenges of promoting, regulating and safeguarding the development of an equitable information society. Parliaments are the ideal institutional forum where the positive effects of new technologies can be enabled, monitored and appraised in terms not only of economic development but also of the need to protect the citizen’s rights and the more deprived and disadvantaged sectors of society.
To benefit from the opportunities that ICT can deliver, parliaments need to build expertise to deal with, on the one hand, the managerial and technical capacities to deploy ICT effectively within the legislature and, on the other hand, the legal and regulatory issues of the information society. Although there will be an initial policy focus on issues related to the information society, it is anticipated that in the long term, other policy issues might be addressed.
Following the Cairo Conference it is proposed that the APKN – ICT Group articulate its capacity building activities of the first year focusing on:
- Online digest regarding best-practices and technical guidelines for ICTs;
- ICT Governance in Parliaments;
- ICT managerial and technical skills;
- ICT policy briefs for MPs.
