Embracing digital parliaments: An international perspective

COVID-19 has catalysed digital transformation in parliaments around the world

A year ago, the COVID-19 pandemic affected parliaments, forcing a shutdown of their largely in-person activities. Parliaments are particularly critical in a context where citizens are subjected to decisions that suspend their rights and freedoms. To prevent the rule of law from giving room to rule by decree, parliaments must continue their core functions to ensure democratic stability.

While digital parliaments have not been detached from overall digital transformation efforts within broader public sector reforms towards the establishment of digital states, COVID-19 has prompted parliaments to accelerate digital transformation, strengthening their resilience and preparedness for the current and future pandemics.

How are parliaments changing?

Since March 2020, national parliaments have advanced in the use of digital technologies to ensure the continuity of democratic institutions during the pandemic. I conducted a case-by-case analysis and grouped countries as below:

A. Thriving parliaments:

Operate fully digitally. These countries progressed from analogue to digital parliaments, with remote deliberation and voting systems with multi-factor authentication: Argentina, Belgium, Chile, Colombia, Estonia, Luxembourg and Spain. Other countries have gone further, designing systems to foster openness and transparency, such as the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies mobile application Infoleg, the Latvian platform e-Saeima and the United Kingdom’s ParliamentNow.

B. Half-way digital parliaments:

The majority of countries to date. A significant number — Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States — have adopted voting by proxy and reduced or required no quorum for plenaries, allowing for hybrid “analogue-digital” sessions. For most, only committees take place remotely. This is also the case for Canada, Israel and Slovenia. Remote voting remains a challenge for procedural rather than technical reasons, even for countries that have implemented videoconference and platforms to continue parliamentarian activities, such as Finland, France, Iceland and Ireland. In Hungary, the ParLex system allows for electronic submission of parliamentary motions, such as bills, proposals for amendments and questions, but remote voting remains an exception.

C. Analogue parliaments:

With the exception of remote work for administrative staff, few significant measures were taken towards digital parliament. Decisions varied from suspending activities or limiting the agenda to critical matters to virtual meetings, fast-tracking legislative procedures, sitting arrangements, and social distancing. This is the case for Austria, Costa Rica, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Japan, Netherlands, Slovak Republic and Turkey. Formal rules obliging in-person sessions and reluctance to change are among the reasons for remaining analogue. Even though COVID-19 has affected each country differently, these countries would greatly benefit from improving the use of technologies for democratic continuity and resilience.

What has accelerated parliaments’ digital transformation?

Parliaments’ greater resilience and responsiveness to new circumstances reflect foundational reforms for coherent and sustainable digital transformation. They rely on changes to underlying cultural and practical approaches, embedding digital technologies and data into broader, long-term strategic efforts of modernisation. Recent examples show:

● Successful cases combine political will, leadership, and a strategic vision to adapt parliamentarian activities. For example, the United Kingdom’s Commission on Digital Democracy has the mandate to identify how the UK Parliament can advance towards digital transformation. The Parliament also counts with an actionable digital strategy and has a team in charge of bringing it to life. Argentina is a similar example;

● Long-term institutional arrangements and strategic planning have created the right conditions for digital transformation in parliaments, favouring resilience. In Brazil, long-term arrangements and strategic planning equipped the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies with enablers and frameworks to put in place in a week projects on hold for years;

● Capacity building and infrastructure to open up data favoured a fast transition when the pandemic started;

● Collaborative networks (e.g. IPU, OECD Global Parliamentarian Network, OGP, European Centre for Parliamentary Research) favour knowledge-sharing and exchange of good practices among parliaments worldwide;

● Experimental spaces such as LABHacker in Brazil, or Bureau Ouvert in France, are fertile ground for openness and experimentation through ongoing research, agile development, prototyping and user-testing of digital solutions;

● To identify pertinent data, improve internal processes and deliver relevant outputs for MPs and citizens, civil society, experts and research centres (e.g. Argentina’s Directorio Legislativo and Colombia’s Congreso Visible) should be considered in this process. Civic challenges, collaborative residencies, and hackathons facilitate participation and stakeholder engagement.

Some barriers persist:

● Few countries have managed to shift from digitisation to the coherent application of digital technologies and data to support openness in parliaments;

● Robust and secure infrastructure remains an Achilles heel as parliaments have relied on closed source software solutions (e.g. Skype, Whatsapp, Zoom), entailing personal data and other security risks for both users and governments;

● End-to-end application of digital technologies in plenary sessions remains a challenge. Contrary to committee meetings, plenaries are harder to convene remotely, either due to formal rules and strong traditions or technicalities;

● Connection and platform instability are common when hosting remote meetings with hundreds of MPs;

● Many MPs are new to digital tools and not fully aware of the opportunities and challenges of digital transformation.

Beyond digitising processes and moving parliaments online, digital parliaments play a critical role in rebuilding trust in democratic institutions, notably in times of falling public trust in governments and democratic disenchantment. Embedding digital technologies and data to re-design processes and channels that give citizens a central role will foster a culture of openness and transparency, which is part of the broader paradigm shift to a more collaborative governance.

Mariane Piccinin Barbieri is a Junior Policy Analyst in the Digital Government and Data Unit at the OECD. A graduate in Law and Political Sciences, she advocates for strategic use of technology towards open, participatory and innovative governments.

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