Background
Parliamentarians must address a broad array of complex issues as they develop legislation and debate public policies. It is of strategic importance to be able to have the capacity and skills within the parliament to provide policy makers and citizens the best possible research relevant to the problems they are addressing. In addition, policy makers and citizens need to learn how to apply such research results and to understand the benefits and limitations of available information sources.
It is a fact now that most recent information is available in digital format and exploiting this information can be complex and thus there is a need to build a critical mass of expertise in parliamentary staff who can access this information and data as well as ensuring that parliamentary information is available in digital format too.
Information and Research was identified as one of the priority areas of the Africa Parliamentary Knowledge Network (APKN) established in June 2008 by African parliaments following a consultative process supported by the United Nations. Ensuring resident capacity to exploit information resources for the benefit of parliamentarians and leveraging technology to ensure that parliamentary libraries remain relevant sources of information for parliaments were considered key issues to be addressed at the regional level. The same skills building need was confirmed at the conference of the IFLA Parliamentary Libraries and Research Services Section in Rome in August 2009, where a group of representatives from African parliamentary libraries met and agreed on the need to chart the way forward to build a platform for the sharing of experiences and challenges and the promotion of collaboration.
developed and hosted by