Covid-19 Pandemic: Ghana well placed to Leverage on its E-Parliament Infrastructure

Although the Parliament of Ghana doesn’t have the full complement of its e-Parliament infrastructure yet, based on what is on paper and what we are privy to, the Legislative Arm of Government should be in a good position to take full advantage of what it has put in place so far to better serve its people despite the constrains the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to bear on public gatherings and Parliaments around the world.

The Majority Leader and Leader of Government Business in Parliament, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, confirmed this position in a recent interview with Parliamentary News Africa at the sidelines of a recent engagement with the media to deliberate on the agenda for the Third Meeting of the Fourth Session of Parliament.

“You know, even now we have some facilities. We don’t have the full complement of it anyway, but we have some facilities to the extent that we want to do away with the issue of having everything on hard paper. Unfortunately, not too many of us access it. I think I am also guilty. I don’t access it, but was I born before computer? I am not too sure,” he said in a jest.

Some Members of Parliament and some pressure groups among others have called for a total shut down of Parliament following the confirmation of positive cases of the Novel Corona virus within the precincts of Parliament.

When it was suggested that perhaps this was a good opportunity for the country to put its e-Parliament infrastructure into good use by going virtual to avoid physical contact in order to prevent a further spread of the disease in Parliament, the Suame Member of Parliament concurred.

“If we were accessing it, then of course, the virtual Parliament would be something that would become an in thing. Recently, we had some training for the Members of Parliament. Unfortunately, not all of us accessed the programme. So I think increasingly, we must be working towards that. But it is good if we were proficient in that area, perhaps given the current environment, it would be most helpful to Parliamentarians and indeed to Parliament in the conduct of business,” he said.

The revised definition of the term e-Parliament by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) to better capture how technology is fast changing Parliaments and the difference it has brought to the Parliament and public interaction over the years, even makes it better and highlights Ghana’s Parliament as one of the most equipped Parliaments for such a time as this.

Apart from Ghana’s robust Information Communication Technology and Integrated e-Parliament System infrastructure which is capable of hosting virtual meetings of the Parliament of Ghana and its committees, but for a few challenges, it has also invested into and leveraged on the power of new media and new technologies to bring the Parliament closer to the people. Thereby increasing the level of interaction with its audiences.

With the help of a World Bank Facility in support of all the e-Governance projects in the country, the Parliament of Ghana can boast of a dedicated fiber optic network overlay for the exclusive use of Parliament as part of the operationalization of the Integrated e-Parliament Project.

The project which should have been completed and handed over to Parliament by the end of February 2020, is supposed to make it possible for MPs to participate in activities in Parliament when they are away from the House including filing questions and other similar procedures online and receive instant feedback; access Parliament’s digitized library resources including Parliament’s Order Papers, Votes and Proceedings and the entire agenda for a whole Session among others; as well as enable electronic voting.

Though our last publication on this subject some few weeks ago indicated that Software incompatibility, inadequate IT staff and the unwillingness of MPs to adapt to change was delaying the rollout of the (e-Parliament) project which was behind schedule, it is still not clear when the project would be finally completed and handed over to the institution of Parliament.

The last activity we witnessed in connection with this project before the outbreak of the Coronavirus in the country, was the training programme Members of Parliament were taken through in order to familiarize them with the e-Parliament platform created for both internal and external Parliamentary work and to give them guidance for the use of the special tablet which will connect MPs to Parliament when they are away from the House through a Private Virtual Network (VPN).

Aside this, the Parliament of Ghana has made gains with the adoption of the newest technologies and new media to increase its interaction with the people it serves as well as its visibility on the traditional media, social media and online.

The very interactive social media accounts of the Parliament of Ghana which live streams every sitting of Parliament on a daily bases and the resourcefulness of its website, which makes almost every Parliamentary information available to the public, is worthy of note.

All these make the Parliament of Ghana come close to fitting the redefined term of e-Parliament by the apex Parliamentary body, IPU which reads: “An e-Parliament places technologies, knowledge and standards at the heart of its business processes and embodies the values of collaboration, inclusiveness, participation and openness to the people.”

According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s World e-Parliament Report 2018, the term e-Parliament has evolved over the past ten years and still counting since the first World e-Parliament Report was issued to include the transformational changes the technologies adopted by Parliaments within this period have brought to bear on the performance of the traditional roles of Parliament.

It paints a picture of how digital tools, in their broadest sense, are changing and transforming parliaments, how they are managed and how new media and open data are helping parliaments connect with new audiences.

BY: Clement Akoloh || PNAfrica