The Workshop “ICT Strategic Planning in the SADC Parliaments”, held from 26 to 28 July 2010 in Windhoek, Namibia, provided a regional platform to raise awareness among the SADC parliaments on the potential of ICT in parliament and on the importance of strategic planning for the effective adoption and integration of ICT in parliamentary processes.

Following a two-day meeting held at the National Assembly of Panama, on 15 April 2011 the Secretaries General of sixteen parliaments of Latin America and the Caribbean agreed to establish the Exchange Network of Parliaments of Latin America and the Caribbean with a view to strengthen cooperation among the parliamentary administrations of this region.

El Taller, que se llevo a cabo durante tres días completos en el Congreso Nacional de Chile en Valparaíso, desde el 19 al 21 de enero de 2011, tuvo como objetivo, aprovechar las TIC para mejorar los servicios y promover la creación de redes y el intercambio de conocimientos entre Bibliotecas Parlamentarias de América Latina, proporcionando una plataforma para funcionarios de los poderes legislativos de América Latina para intercambiar opiniones y experiencias sobre el uso eficaz de tecnologías de la información y de

The  Workshop on ICT Strategic Planning in Parliaments of the Caribbean, held from 27 to 29 September 2010 in Bridgetown , Barbados, provided a regional platform to exchange practices among the Caribbean parliaments on the potential of ICT in parliament and on the importance of strategic planning for its effective adoption and integration in

This report contains the proceedings of the Workshop on Technological Options for Capturing and Reporting Parliamentary Proceedings, which was hosted by the European Parliament in Brussels on 14 -16 July 2010. Parliamentary documents such as committee reports and texts of debates and hearings are fundamental records of the legislature. These documents must be prepared quickly, efficiently and accurately. They must be distributed easily and then amended, revised and redistributed just as easily. And they must be archived effectively to ensure availability and long-term preservation.

The 2009 edition of the World e-Parliament Conference took place from 3 to 5 November 2009 at the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. It was built on the results of two previous conferences held respectively in Geneva (2007) and Brussels (2008), as well as on the findings of the World e-Parliament Report 2008.

The Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations, Mr. Sha Zukang; the Secretary General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Mr. Anders Johnson; and the Secretary General of the ITU, Mr. Hamadoun Touré opened the Third Parliamentary Forum “ICT and the Global Economic Crisis: Current Situation and Future Perspectives”. The event was the third meeting of members of parliament focusing on issues relating to the Information Society and the aim of the Forum series was to further dialogue among legislators on parliamentary actions that can contribute to the shaping of the future Information Society in view of the WSIS implementation, follow-up and future 2015 review. It also intended to strengthen the interaction at international level between members of parliaments and representatives of international organizations working in this domain with a view to identifying good parliamentary practices for the advancement of ICT-related policies in favour of the internationally-agreed development goals.

The World e-Parliament Conference 2008 took place at the European Parliament in Brussels on 25 and 26 November 2008. The World e-Parliament Conference 2008 represented a unique opportunity for leaders and members of parliaments, parliamentary officials and experts to exchange views at a global level on new technologies and innovation as tools to strengthen the representative, legislative and oversight functions of regional and national assemblies.

In 2000 the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) published Guidelines for the Content and Structure of Parliamentary Websites. In late 2008, the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament, in consultation with the IPU, undertook the task of updating the Guidelines to reflect advances in technology and new practices in parliaments that have emerged in the last several years. As with the 2000 Guidelines, the Guidelines for Parliamentary Websites are intended to provide recommendations that are practically oriented to facilitate the task of planning and overseeing websites and to enable parliaments to provide concrete guidance to their website designers, developers and managers.

The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) organized the Second Parliamentary Forum on “Shaping the Information Society: the Role of Parliaments and Legislators” on 2 December 2008 at the International Convention Centre in Hyderabad, India. The Forum was held on the eve of the third Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, through the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament, held the Parliamentary Forum “Shaping the Information Society: the Role of Parliaments and Legislators” at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
The meeting was convened in conjunction with a cluster of events that is organized in Geneva from 13 to 23 May 2008 to advance the implementation process of the World Summit on the Information Society.

In recent years, parliaments have begun to exploit advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) to support their many functions and modernize their institutions. However, to date, there has not been an assessment on how these technologies are being employed across the array of activities for which a parliament is responsible.

The World e-Parliament Report 2008 represents a first effort to establish a baseline of how parliaments are using, or planning to use ICT to help them fulfill their responsibilities and to connect to their constituencies. The Report also provides an opportunity for sharing lessons learned and good practices from different regions of the world.

This working paper, commissioned by the Global Centre in preparation for the World e-Parliament Report 2008, aims at providing an overview of the state of the art and of the prospects of the application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the legislative domain, in particular concerning the management of legislative documents. The paper introduces the concepts of legal informatics and legislative informatics, describes the evolution of the ICT-based management of legislative documents and identifies and evaluates emergent approaches, focusing on those based on open standards.

This working paper is aimed at providing guidance to ICT administrations in parliaments on the available approaches for developing and consolidating requirements for ICT systems. It intends to offer useful guidelines on how to raise stakeholder involvement and secure their support during the critical start-up phase of ICT system implementations. The audience that this paper aims at includes decision makers and ICT administrators in parliaments, as well as ICT project managers and system analysts who are technically responsible for implementing systems that meet user needs.