The African Parliamentary Index: an update
1 March 2011
The Parliamentary Centre
The African Parliamentary Index (API) measures the level of engagement of selected African parliaments with the budget process in their respective countries. The API is a core component of the Africa Parliamentary Strengthening Program (APSP) for Budget Oversight and provides a scientific assessment of the performance of APSP partner parliaments on budget oversight. The Africa Parliamentary Strengthening Program (APSP) for Budget Oversight is working with partner parliaments to strengthen their capacity to carry out their legislative, financial, oversight and representative functions in ways that engender good governance and values of accountability, transparency and participation, especially in the budget process.
Since the PSC meeting in March 2010 the Parliamentary Centre has completed all the key activities as outlined at the PSC meeting. The following activities have been concluded.
- Framework for an African parliamentary index on budget oversight
- Development of the API self assessment tool
- Development of the API self assessment manual, and
- Self assessment in 6 out of 7 APSP partner countries
The framework reviewed relevant literature to inform the development of the assessment tools and the approach to the assessment. The framework for the API expanded the concept paper to provide details on the thematic scope of the API. It provided a basis for discussion on what to include in the index and even the depth of questions on the issues to be included. It also expanded on the methodology and assessment framework, taking into accounts what works and what does not.
The self assessment tool covers 5 core areas - representation, legislation, financial, oversight, institutional capacity and institutional integrity - related to Parliamentary budget oversight and other core functional areas that directly affect Parliaments' financial and oversight roles. The questions are both qualitative and quantitative, with the latter giving greater clarity of response. Instruments are designed to allow each area of Parliament's responsibility to be assessed separately or in turn. Questions require respondents to make judgement on a four-point scale.
Assessment is done by a select group from parliament, usually members of the budget committee and chairs persons of other related committee. In all country assessment meetings, staffs from the clerk's department and the budget office play a key role in the assessments. They provide members of parliament with reference points from key documents like the standing orders of parliament and the constitution.
Country Assessment Meetings
The assessments have been carried out in 6 (Benin, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and Senegal) out of the 7 APSP partner countries. All the meetings followed the same format; an introduction to the API, done through PowerPoint by the independent assessor, group work session where the actual assessment is done and a plenary where each group presents its assessment to the larger group for validation and also to allow groups to cross fertilize assessments from each group.
The presentation on the API highlighted the purpose and objectives of the project, the broad issues being considered for assessment and how it links to the work of parliament, the indicators and the assessment process. The presentation also explained the group work session to participants and outlined the activities and expectations.
In the group work sessions, participants were randomly selected into four groups. Three groups assess parliament on a number of themes in separate group sessions. A fourth group works on the prioritization matrix. This involves the assignment of weights to determine the relative importance of all the indicators being assessed against each other. The outcome of this session is a system of weights that defines the relative importance of each indicator to a particular Parliament. The weights are used to compute the index.
A plenary session is held where each group presents their assessment to the larger group for discussion. This provides an opportunity for members who were not in particular groups to provide information that may be critical to the assessment. In some cases, the larger group provided detailed information to the group presentation that resulted in a review of their assessment rating of the parliament.
Assessment outcomes
The assessment process has received positive feedback from all the parliaments where it has been implemented. In most cases, members were of the opinion that the process gave them an opportunity to reflect on the work they do in the budget process than ever before. It made them more aware of the responsibilities they have and we believe in most cases will start an agenda for change within these parliaments.
The assessment process is parliament led and driven. The assessment is done by members of parliament; the selection of the independent assessor is done in conjunction with the office of parliament. The Parliamentary Centre only provides the technical advisory needed for the process and the independent assessor provides lead facilitation.
Next Steps
Two validation meetings will be held as a follow-up to the assessment meeting in all the countries. The first would be with the leadership of Parliament. This would provide an opportunity to capture their views in the index. The second one would seek to validate the findings with key stakeholders, i.e. civil societies, who work closely with parliament. The index and individual country reports would be launched simultaneously in all the countries. This would give the index more media coverage and would make it more likely to be captured by the international media houses. The media encounter would engage and coach the media on the use of the indices.
More details on the Africa Parliamentary Strengthening Programme for Budget Oversight (2009-2014) can be obtained here
About the Parliamentary Centre: The Parliamentary Centre is a Canadian not-for-profit, non-partisan organization devoted to improving the effectiveness of representative Legislative assemblies around the world. The Centre has served parliaments and legislatures for more than four decades. Founded in 1968 to strengthen the capacity of Canada's Parliament, the Centre is now a global leader in parliamentary development with projects that support parliaments in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. By far, the Centre's largest programs are in Africa where about 45 projects have been successfully implemented over the last two decades. Read more at: www.parlcent.ca
The Centre's Regional Office for Africa was officially opened in Accra in April 2004. The Centre had project offices in Dakar, Senegal; Khartoum, Sudan; and Nairobi, Kenya. Currently, one project office is operational in Kigali, Rwanda. The decision to locate the Regional Office in Ghana was largely informed by Ghana's democratic credentials and the long-standing relationship between the Centre and the Parliament of Ghana. Currently, the Centre, through the Africa Programs, works with about 20 Parliaments on the continent; 7 of which have signed MOUs with the Centre. These are: Benin, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. The Regional Office also serves as a training facility, with a drop-in Resource Centre for MPs, as well as a contact point for activities of the Africa Parliamentarians Poverty Reduction Network, a Secretariat for the Africa Parliamentary Network Against Corruption (APNAC), which the Centre helped create in 1999, and a host centre for a number of programmes and projects.
The Centre focuses its expertise and institutional capacity building programs in the following areas: strengthening committee oversight and lawmaking; supporting regional inter-parliamentary networks; building the capacity of parliamentary secretariats; supporting legislative development at the state and provincial as well as the national levels; strengthening the role of political parties in the legislature; developing parliamentary performance planning and reporting systems.
Note: The ANSA-Africa website carries a number of important and popular reports on issues of parliamentary oversight and accountability and evaluations of the roles of MPs and parliaments. A number are listed below.
|
