Enhancing digital governance in African parliaments: The case of the African parliamentary oversight tool

Abstract

In the 21st century we have seen a paradigm shift in governance, from traditional analogue governance systems to digital systems driven by Information Communication Technologies (ICT). Despite introducing terms such as e-governance and e-parliament to signify this digital evolution, parliamentary evidence generation predominantly clings to analogue methods. The COVID-19 pandemic expedited the shift of parliamentary activities from physical engagement to online platforms. However, a significant technological divide persists in internal processes and research procedures for evidence used in African parliaments. In response, the Centre for Learning on Evaluation and Results Anglophone Africa (CLEAR-AA) developed the African Parliamentary Oversight Tool (African POT), which is a mobile application research management tool to undertake digital transformation for evidence generation and use in African Parliaments. This paper examines how the African POT helps take analogue systems into the digital era. Furthermore, it examines the role of the POT in strengthening evidence use in African parliaments, using the Parliament of Zambia as a case study. The methodology adopted in this chapter is essentially centred on action research pursued during the designing, co-planning and piloting of the African POT with the Parliamentary representatives from Kenya and Zambia, as well as the authors’ experiences and insights gained from leading such interventions. The findings indicate that the African POT creates new opportunities for evidence generation and synthesis, a repository for research reports and monitoring and evaluation data, digitalisation of existing parliamentary research processes, and improvement of data curation and evidence synthesis systems. The results posit slow yet gradual progress in adapting research management information systems. Political ideologies often take precedence over the available quantum of evidence. Overall, the findings indicate that it remains uncertain whether the evidence produced through the African POT is considered during the process. At the practice level, this study is a situational analysis of the usability and experience of both designers and users of the POT, and provides parliamentary staff, development practitioners, knowledge brokers and other actors in the space of evidence generation and utilisation with helpful knowledge for consideration when navigating the complexities of introducing and implementing digital governance through mobile applications, particularly in volatile spaces such as parliaments.