Download or read book World E-parliament Report 2016 written by Andy Williamson and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report is intended to be read as a stand-alone document but can be seen as a continuation of the series that began when the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament published the first World e-Parliament Report, in 2008, and continued with the 2010 and 2012 reports. It contains an analysis and discussion of the survey of parliaments, which drew responses from 114 parliamentary chambers in 88 countries, and the PMO survey of 33 organizations from 31 countries. This report highlights the following: ICT is a core enabler in strengthening and transforming parliaments. Parliaments should do more to engage at the highest political level with the potential for digital transformation. To realize the real benefits of ICT, parliaments need to make a commitment to a vision and to strategic change supported at the highest levels of the institution. Lack of funding and insufficient knowledge among staff and members remain as key challenges for parliaments to use ICT effectively. Parliaments are continuing to adopt technologies internally, including: document management systems to support the legislative process, though often hampered by a lack of resources; cloud-based technologies, which are starting to change the way parliaments manage documents and data; wireless networks, now ubiquitous within parliaments; Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) for parliamentary documents along with the adoption of open data standards. Parliamentary libraries remain a primary source of such innovation. The external face of parliament has changed, though the importance of existing assets such as websites and email remains strong: In a digital world that is now decidedly multi-channel, social media has become a key strategic communication channel for parliaments. It can be difficult, however, for parliaments to know how members are using these new tools and how best to support them. Email remains a primary communication channel for members; parliamentary websites are another continuing core asset in providing information, documentation and data. A small but growing number of parliaments are evaluating their web assets. The importance of open data for parliaments will continue to grow, but there is evidence that parliaments are struggling to make such data available and accessible for citizens. Parliaments need to reach out more effectively to citizens and others: They have not been very innovative in finding ways to engage citizens directly in the legislative process, though an increasing number are now experimenting with different forms of citizen participation in parliamentary work. They are currently unable to offer sufficient inter-parliamentary support to their peers in the areas of open data, application development, social media, or engagement and outreach generally.