Challenges

With the COVID-19-related restrictions on physical meetings, social distancing and movements, it became clear that it would be difficult for the Parliament of Malawi (PoM) to deliver its legislative, representative and oversight mandates. This adverse situation was exacerbated by the fact that the 193-member house uses analog systems and archaic technologies in document management, publication of records and plenary management thereby rendering business processes paper-based and inefficient.

This directly affected how PoM interacted with its constituencies as official records of parliamentary deliberations took too long to produce and were not easily accessible. Additionally, due to the inefficient plenary management system, parliamentary sessions were often extended for several weeks, which meant additional public resources were spent that could have been channeled towards developmental activities that benefited the population. As Malawi is a low-income country, it is the responsibility of public institutions to have systems that promote austerity measures in utilizing public resources.  

Toward a Solution

To address these challenges, UNDP–Malawi provided technical assistance to assess the ICT capacity of the Parliament of Malawi to determine strategic recommendations to digitize business processes, which included the scoping of like-minded Parliaments in the region that are using digital tools.

The digitalization process of the Parliament of Malawi through South-South cooperation with the Zambia National Assembly aimed to introduce digital tools for legislative information management, plenary management, document sharing and e-voting. Furthermore, the solution aims to bring efficiency and accuracy in recording proceedings in Parliament through a digitalized Hansard production system with digital storage and sharing. The new tools are designed to be deployed and utilized in the context of virtual or hybrid meetings which is a direct response to doing business in the COVID-19 era.

The eChamber App and digital Hansard lay a foundation for an e-Parliament system that will be paperless and transparent in conducting business by making records of deliberations and proceedings easily accessible to the These solutions are contributing directly to SDGs 16.6, 17.6 and 17.7. 

UNDP played an integrator role by connecting the Parliament of Malawi and the National Assembly of Zambia to collaborate on a legislative management information system “eChamber App” and a Hansard recording and transcription system for plenary and committee record production and publication. UNDP facilitated an ICT assessment, which led to the formulation of a comprehensive Parliament of Malawi Digital Transformation Strategy (2022-2026). The strategy placed ICT as an enabler for a digital, open, accessible, efficient and greener Parliament.

This formed a basis of engagement with the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), and the National Assembly of Zambia, which developed an in-house open source eChamber App and deployed a digital Hansard system. The engagement was carried out through virtual meetings in November 2021, followed by an in-country visit by the Zambia ICT team in February 2022, and the Malawi ICT team visit to Zambia in April 2022.

This led to a road map for collaboration, software customization, training and skills transfer. The process has been fully participatory by all parties involved thus both virtual and physical engagement has been undertaken by the Parliament of Malawi, the National Assembly of Zambia, and UNDP Malawi. There are plans to formulate a memorandum of understanding to ensure a formalized approach to collaboration and knowledge-sharing.

The digital solutions are innovative as they bring in new ways of conducting business at the Parliament of Malawi and ensure that the digital transformation strategy is at the core of business operations and information-sharing. The solutions have made the Parliament of Malawi modernize and move towards a paperless authority and act as a precursor of e-Parliament. This will be a model within the region. For instance, the Parliament of Malawi can produce records of plenary meetings within 24 hrs., as opposed to the analog system, which took five days. Similarly, the eChamber app allows online document sharing, attendance registration and voting by the 193 Members of Parliament.

The proposed solutions are inherently sustainable since the backend technology and software architecture for the legislative management information system (eChamber) is built on an open-source platform and developed in-house by the National Assembly of Zambia. The software development skills were transferred to the Malawi ICT team who can customize and make further changes to the software and fix any issues in the long term. Similarly, with the Digital Hansard system, the Zambia team has been using a similar system since 2015, hence it was easy for training to be done in unison.

The digital solutions that are being utilized by the National Assembly of Zambia are replicable and easily adaptable in the context of Malawi. The setup of both legislative houses is similar, and the solution requirements are not heavily reliant on vendor-lock and high-end expensive technologies which could pose a challenge for scale-up. For these reasons, and the in-house technical expertise that exists in Zambia and Malawi, adaptation and system customization have been easy. The systems were replicated easily in Malawi with both physical and virtual assistance and capacity- building of Malawi teams in ICT, audiovisual and equipment.

The key lesson from South-South cooperation is linked to the suitability of the deployed solutions. It became apparent that there is a need to have Champions within each section of the Parliament of Malawi that will drive utilization of the systems, motivate staff and cascade skills transfer within the institution. To make this a reality, managers from each section were deployed to placement programmes in Zambia, which gave them an opportunity to have hands-on experience to be able to subsequently train others and resolve any emerging issues.