LegisTech Americas

I'm launching the Govable.ai blog with a series of posts about the [amazing!!] Legistech: Americas conference organized by the Bússola Tech and hosted at the Brazilian Senate, in Brasilia.

The conference brought together parliamentary technology professionals from Canada to Brazil, and Chile to the West Cape of South Africa, covering topics from accessibility to AI. Each person I spoke with gave me a new perspective on how dedidicated public administrators make democracy possible. Concrete examples:

In Mexico and Perú, transcriptions of legislative sessions are published in indigenous languages. However, since many speakers of those languages do not read, the transcriptions are then converted into audio, both by people and by text-to-speech software.
As part of a panel on drafting, Wade Ballou and Fotios Fitsilis began a fascinating thread on the science of drafting, a concept that merits a more in-depth discussion to explore the differences between the Continental and U.S. perspective. Wade is the Legislative Counsel of the United States House and Fotis the Head of the Scientific Service for the Greek Parliament.
Remote participation took a variety of forms in the pandemic and has persisted in many countries, including committee hearings with experts testifying remotely, some committees themselves meeting remotely, and remote voting. Most of these steps required changes in tradition, process and technology. Security considerations (what if someone other than the member votes?) as well as the trade-offs of decentralizing the work of Parliament. The Canadian House of Commons has a report, and we heard from a number of countries about their approaches and challenges.
We heard the many forms that technology takes, from equipping legislatures to make their own applications with Microsoft Power Apps (shout out to Chad Alexander at the West Cape Parliament!) to enabling citizens to draft proposed amendments to laws and submit them on the same public portal that legislators use (Brazilian Senate).

There was a great deal of innovation in the solutions we discussed, but what most struck me was the scope of the problems that conference participants have taken on. In Canada, for example, all IT challenges in Parliament are managed within the same organization; also, recognizing the capacity differences, the House of Commons manages the core infrastructure for both chambers. This has allowed the CIO's office to provide a consistent experience in all interactions with Parliament, from the legislative data portal to software systems in the cafeteria.

In upcoming posts, I'll dive deeper into some of the more eye-opening approaches I learned about. For now, I'd like to thank Luis, Sarah, the Bússola Tech team, and the Brazilian Senate for the care with which they curated this conference and to the colleagues who I met or met again, for sparking a million ideas and reinforcing my optimism for the future of parliamentary transparency and technology.

Participants at the conference included (in their own languages):

Asamblea Legislativa de Costa Rica
Assembleia da Republica de Moçambique
Assembleia Legislativa do Estado do Rio Grande do Norte | Brasil
Assembleia Nacional de Angola
Assembleia Nacional Popular de Guiné-Bissau
Association of Secretaries General of Parliaments
Bússola Tech
Cámara de Diputados de la Nación of Argentina
Cámara de Diputados de México
Cámara de Senadores of Uruguay
Câmara dos Deputados do Brasil
Commonwealth Parliamentary Association
Congreso de la República de Perú
Congreso Nacional de Chile
Govable.ai
Hellenic Parliament
House of Commons of Canada / Chambre des Communes
Israeli Knesset
La Convención Constitucional de Chile
National Assembly of Zambia
Nationale Assemblee of Suriname
NovaWorks Australia
ParlAmericas
Parliament of Namibia
Senado de Chile
Senado Federal do Brasil
Sindilegis
U.S. House of Representatives
UNALE (Brazilian equivalent to NCSL)
Universidad Austral in Argentina
Western Cape Provincial Parliament
Xcential Legislative Technologies