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This programmatic option lays out approaches and innovative examples to strengthen the engagement between parliaments and citizens with a focus on digital spaces and tools that may promote public engagement and responsiveness by parliaments.
Public engagement is mutually beneficial for the public, parliament and MPs. Allowing for the people’s voice to be heard and addressed helps improve laws and decision-making processes. Parliaments seem the best positioned institutionally to enable that engagement is gender-sensitive, inclusive of marginalized and vulnerable groups, and non-partisan.
The third Global Parliamentary Report, devoted to public engagement in the work of parliament, distinguishes between the terms “engagement” and “participation” noting many dimensions and stages of people’s engagement. It is important to appreciate public engagement as a two-way street, where dialogue between those elected and those electing commences for a peaceful and equitable society. The Report further takes note of many pillars of public engagement such as information, education, communication, consultations, and participation pointing to the representative nature of the institution constituted to meet the public expectation in law-making and overseeing the government. [1]
How do we measure the impact of digital tools on participation? Primarily, the tools present an open invitation to the widest number of citizens to engage in the work of parliament, ranging from submitting online petitions, to voting, commenting on draft laws, participating in public hearings, watching live streams of the committee discussions and having information about events and the parliamentary calendar, as well as voting on the parliaments website as a result of e-parliament.
Citizens’ demand to take part in law-making is growing and we see some very good examples such as in Thailand[2] and the Netherlands[3]. In Thailand, for example, law proposed by citizens were taken into account and put forward. In the Netherlands, action taken by citizens before the parliament revealed serious misuse due to systematic flaws in the system set up by government, leading to the government resigning. The growing dissatisfaction with being left out of a particular process in pre-legislative or post-legislative scrutiny and having that process solely reserved for experts and civil society creates a widening gap and dissatisfaction amongst people, as research and public opinion polls show. Not only that, as a New Zealand MP states in the Global Parliamentary Report, we should not neglect the fact that solutions to some problems, through legislation inputs, may be found amongst the people[4].
Engagement of citizens is a serious and fragile endeavour that should be approached in a strategic rather than an ad hoc manner. Roles and responsibilities, pathways and steps needed towards closing the feedback loop and ways of engaging participants should be clearly determined and assigned. Participation involves MPs as much as parliamentary staff and parliamentary party groups. Participation means creating platforms for cooperation, multiple access, information sharing, prompt response, ensuring trustworthy and timely information in a rapidly changing world due to the technological development and growing disinformation.
Steps to be taken to facilitate engagement through a digital platform may include:
Innovative approaches are necessary to fight the latest trends in electoral violence such as hate speech, disinformation and online gender-based violence. The Scottish Parliament, for example uses the platform Your Priorities with built in AI system to assess all the data and give it a toxicity score. Anything that scores above 50 percent in the toxicity score is flagged. Overall, the Your Priorities platform aims to explain different parts of a law and people can like or dislike. On the same platform, they can generate questions that committees can ask to ministers.
[1] IPU and UNDP, 2022 Global Parliamentary Report
[2] https://ipen-network.org/citizen-initiated-legislation-the-clean-air-act-in-thailand/
[3] https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-AD(2021)031-e
[4] IPU and UNDP, 2022 Global Parliamentary Report
[5] UK Parliament research shows: In 2024, Ofcom estimated that 6% (1.7 million) of UK households did not have the internet at home. It is not clear how many are disengaged due to motivational reasons. However, multiple surveys indicate that lack of interest is the most cited reason for being offline. Other motivational reasons include fear of scams, or lack of confidence and skills. https://post.parliament.uk/research-briefings/post-pn-0725/
UNDP Malaysia: UNDP Malaysia Electoral Project for years tried to build relations with the Parliament. Although there is no electoral violence in terms of street protest in Malaysia, the country context is such that there is a lot of cyberbullying and racial rhetoric originating with politicians further polarizing the society. In addition, they experienced a quite competitive change of government. Despite investing many efforts in other government bodies, the Parliament proved to have the drive for the reform. It was the Speaker’s Cabinet that provided the entry point with digitalisation.
Scottish Parliament: The Scottish Parliament uses two digital platforms called Citizens’ Space and Your Priorities that allow for the following improvement when it comes to public participation in oversight amongst other. Here are some of the lessons learnt from the Scottish Parliament’s experience
Citizens Space – standard consultations platform
Your Priorities – The platform comprises AI which assesses all the data and gives it a toxicity score. Anything that scores above 50 percent in the toxicity score is flagged, and it can be checked and filtered by the most toxic of language. This is an example of how technology could be used to diminish hate speech.
Brazilian Parliament developed e-Cidadania initiative to allow for public participation in public and confirmation hearings via a toll-free number and an online question and comment facility. As of late 2020, over 10 million users had registered more than 24 million opinions on 9,727 proposals. The Brazil case also shows how digital has been blended with other communication tools to provide a broad-based approach to engagement.
Netherlands: The Case of Netherlands, A Report by the Venice Commission COE opinion[1]: An example of meaningful participation and parliamentary scrutiny, involvement of independent oversight bodies that led to protection of citizens from the government’ AI technology harm. This system was not taking into consideration all important aspect and led to a number of fraud cases and in 2013 that systematically defraud the Dutch state of social aid payments for years. The parliamentary independent body, the Ombudsman, and individual Members of Parliament conducted vigorous questioning of the authorities and proposed a compensation scheme for parents. Another parliamentary body, the Commissioner for Information further found that the Parliament had been misinformed and not provided the information by the government. The Prime Minister The Government stepped down and elections took place. Final conclusion was made on 17 July 2020 by the Data Protection Authority pointing out that the Tax and Customs Administration’s risk assessment system, based on Artificial Intelligence, had not respected the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and had relied on discriminatory data on citizenship. It was later revealed that that between 2012 and 2019, some 25,000 to 35,000 people had been deemed to be guilty of malice or of gross negligence, but it appeared that in 94% of such cases, the designation of malice or gross negligence was unjustified. As for the EU Law, conditions for the use of algorithms for making decisions with legal effects were not allowed and a decision based exclusively on automated processing significantly affected population.
UNDP Uruguay: Parliamentary support for an inclusive public sphere and non-violent electoral climate project by UNDP Uruguay considered Parliament a key actor in creating a vibrant and inclusive civic space that leads to a constructive and non-violent electoral climate. This was pursued through multiple dimensions: Promoting substantive citizen participation, Promoting inclusion in Parliament and the public sphere in general, Information integrity/Disinformation, Advancing the anticipatory governance agenda in Parliament, Support to institutional strengthening and capacity development, Agenda to promote innovation in the public sector and
[1] Council of Europe, 2021, European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission), The Netherlands Opinion on the Legal Protection of Citizens, default.aspx (coe.int)
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