E-Parliament planning in Algeria

Project Purpose

In support to WFD mission, the EDGE experts upgraded the Algerian Parliament’s website pages to open it up more to interactions with citizenry, through open forums and social media accounts. Monitoring the current usage rates of those new pages and trending topics help the Algerian Parliament services to plan what is most needed to improve transparency and accountability.
The presentation of the potential  enabling power of e-parliament functions in terms of transparency and accountability, generated an ongoing discussion of the structural changes the institution would need to undertake, not just in terms of digital infrastructure, but also its modus operandi and political engagement.
  • Piloted Modules:6
  • Quantity of projects:2
  • Launch Year:2019
  • Current versions:2
  • Architects:Khaldoun & Ever
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Project Description

Towards the end of 2019, EDGE experts started using their extensive personal experience in supporting e-parliament solutions to cooperate with renowned actors in this sector. The Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) contracted the EDGE Foundation to support their ongoing parliamentary capacity building programme in Algeria. The WFD’s programme aims to support the two chambers of the Algerian Parliament through providing training and capacity building to both elected and administrative staff and organizing study visits to share experience with their counterparts in the UK and other countries.

To start, the EDGE Foundation provided specific services to upgrade the Algerian Parliament’s website following the request to improve access of the information contained in it to citizens and provide a platform for expanded interaction with the civil society. This prompted a redesign of the Parliament’s social media strategies and an overall recalibration of how the parliamentary services intend to communicate and promote its activities in the information-sharing era.

The final and most intriguing aspect of this project was to set forth a blueprint to undertake a complete overhaul of the communication systems in both Upper and Lower Houses and the requirement and challenges related to embracing an e-parliament revolution.

Implementation Challenges

Undertaking a digitalitasion of the information and communication system can be a complex experience for any organization. Achieving such objective for a parliament and a society in full evolution, such as the Algerian one, present an additional set of challenges that the main implementor (WFD), is fully aware of, and where it can apply the important lessons learnt in other countries. The EDGE experts could therefore focus on:

  • Identify technology options
  • Test the options in case studies
  • Analyse benefits and risks
  • Change management challenges
  • Review regional experiences
  • Social media filtering
  • Disinformation threats alerts
  • Public dissemination

What We Did

  • Redesign and enable current Parliamentary ICT system to be synchronised and accessible to interactions with citizenry through social media channels.
  • Identification of the technical options and technologies available for the creation of a robust, holistic platform for quicker access to legislative documents, business information processing and documents management.
  • Presentation and briefings with secretariat services of both Houses on the requirements in terms of internal expertise, training for secretariat staff and parliamentarians, maintenance and upgrade services that need to be factored in from the outset.
  • Illustration of e-parliament measures as a step towards a full e-government approach.

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