Improving Openness and Accessibility of Parliamentary Information (AL0097)

Brief Description of the Commitment

• Implementation of the E-legislation (part of PACEP project)through AKN4AL (Akomanto so for Albania) Standard will result in an integrated and transparent legislative workflow thatimproves access to consolidated laws and parliamentary records. • The review of the decision 49/2017 of the Parliament of Albania "On the establishment of a mechanism for systematic monitoring of the follow-up and implementation of the recommendations of independent constitutional institutions aims to strengthen the role of the Minister of State for Relations with the Parliament in monitoring the Line Ministries regarding the implementation of the recommendations of independent institutions and to further encourage the use of Online Inter-Institutional Platform.

Problem Definition

1. What problem does the commitment aim to address? • Improvement of the Interoperability between different solutions of the legislative process. • The need to have standard formats to avoid multiplication of formatting work and deviations from drafting rules. • Inability to determine the content of a document at different points in time. • The lack of legislation in an easily accessible format reflecting all amendments up to the present time, otherwise referred to as consolidated version of a law amended several times. • Parliament’s capacities in law making and oversight are low due to a weak system in place in parliament’s administration. • The impartial and evidence-based data and research provision to MPs – although critical for a well-functioning parliament – is missing. • MPs are therefore overly reliant on government analyses to evaluate government laws and policies and are more prone to political polarization of their work. • In terms of parliament’s representation function, there is a big gap between citizens and the parliament. • The input of civil society organizations (CSOs) in the legislative process is limited. • The participation of citizens in decision making is very limited in Albania’s reality. • The lack of responsiveness of public administration bodies according to implementation of recommendations of the independent institutions.

2. What are the causes of the problem? • Some of the causes of the problems are related to the lack of capacity in the Assembly’s administrative staff. • Outdated technology, especially in the legislative workflow and access to information. • Lack of transparency of the legislative process. • Lack ofa long-term strategic plan for the parliament, accompanied by a corresponding modernized concept of human resource management. • Technological deficiencies of the parliamentary infrastructure in terms of archiving or legislative services. • The existence of a high level of distrust of citizens towards the parliament. • Lack of reliable information on legislative developments through the media and access to decision-making. • The lack of reaction of the state administration bodies against the recommendations of independent institutions

Commitment Description

1. What has been done so far to solve the problem? Many practical changes have been made which have reflected a positive feedback According to E-legislation/PACEP project: • The Civic Education Service (SHEQ) is built as part of the Parliamentary Institute (IP), which has a mission to create and implement programs that inform and educate citizens about democracy and governance, as well as encourage citizens to be active in the work of the Assembly. To achieve what it aims, SHEQ implements educational and informative programs and activities, such as: 1) "Democracy Workshop" program: 2) "My point of view" program; 3) The "Model of the Albanian Parliament" program; 4) "Parliamentary Tours; 5) "Open doors", etc. • A Strategic Plan for the Parliament has been drawn up. The Strategic Plan of the Assembly 2020-2025, as the first comprehensive strategic document of the legislative branch of Albania's government, aims, among other things, to modernize law-making and strengthen parliamentary control. • An e-Legislation application has been developed on the phone for MPs • Digitization of past parliamentary data and integration with the e-Legislation system According to the inter-institutional mechanism platform: • The Minister of State for Parliamentary Relations has established a network of coordinators within each ministry in order to support the process of implementing the recommendations of independent institutions. This network is responsible for monitoring progress on the level of implementation and reporting twice a year. • In April 2022, was held the annual meeting, with concrete tasks for the continuation of the reporting process and the improvement of the quality and content of the report. • By order of the Secretary General of the Parliament, a working group has been set up to review the decision 49/2017 of the Parliament of Albania "On the establishment of a mechanism for systematic monitoring of the follow-up and implementation of the recommendations of independent constitutional institutions". This working group is composed by members of Monitoring Service Directory in the Parliament, representative form Independent Institution and representative form Ministry of State for Parliamentary Relations. The work of this group is in progress.

2. What solution are you proposing? • Interoperability: The harmonization of legal document formats through AKNAL will allow interoperability between institutions, data interchange, using common tools, shared templates. • Consolidated legislation: Consolidated legislation will be generated in real time without the need for manual compiling. • Public access: Media, CSOs and the general public will be able to search and find legislation in a compiled format, along with the entire legislative history of each act. • Transparency: The ability to see the entire legislative history of an act will improve transparency of Parliament both internally (among MPs, committees, staff) and externally (towards the public). According to the inter-institutional mechanismplatform: • A very proactive engagement toward a good functioning of the joint mechanism for systematic monitoring of independent institutions’ recommendations and also in fostering the implementation of the recommendations of independent institutions given for executive institutions.

3. What results do we want to achieve by implementing this commitment? The project E-legislation results: • Application of AKN4AL XML standard to Albanian parliamentary and other normative documents • Digitalization of past parliamentary documents and archives using AKN4AL and incorporate digital records into e-Legislation framework. The review and improvement of inter-institutional mechanism platform results: • Improvement of the level of implementation of the recommendations of independent institutions given for executive institutions by: Strengthening the role of the Minister of State for Relations with the Parliament in monitoring the Line Ministries regarding the implementation of the recommendations of independent institutions and further encouraging of the use of Online Inter-Institutional Platform.

Milestones | Expected Outputs | Expected Completion Date

Organize e-Legislation awareness and capacity building events. The Project will conduct a series of events including exchanges with focus on e- Legislation for different target audiences, including MPs, Assembly and ministries staff and CSOs/academia. |  The objective will be to gain knowledge from advanced practices and at the same time demonstrate how the e-Legislation system works and how it will benefit different stakeholder groups | S II 2023- S I 2024

Update Parliamentary Administration’s Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and legal framework to accommodate e- Legislation workflows; The workflow of the parliamentary staff within the legislative department and the committees will need to be updated to accommodate how the legislative documents will be processed using the e-Legislation software. | Incorporating e- Legislation into the overall workflow of the parliamentary staff will be accomplished by preparing SOPs for e-Legislation. Ø The legal framework governing how laws are processed, edited and published, including the Parliament’s Rules of Procedure, will likewise be reviewed to determine if any will be processed using the e-Legislation software. changes will be needed to accommodate the e- Legislation system. | S II 2023- S I 2024

Action Plan Review

Commitment 24. Open and accessible Parliament