Parliamentarians from around 66 parliaments recently converged on the Italian capital, Rome, for a two-day international conference on the policymaking role of parliaments in the development of the information society. The meeting was hosted by the Italian Chamber of Deputies on 3-4 March 2007. It took place within the framework of the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament, a joint project of IPU and the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) that fosters parliamentary cooperation on ICT-related initiatives.
 |
Summing up the proceedings, Mr. Fausto Bertinotti, Speaker of the Italian Chamber of Deputies noted that as the use of information technology increasingly pervades our societies, parliaments have to step forward and affirm their role as the guarantor of fundamental rights and freedoms. The need to combat crime and terrorism must not give rise to the emergence of a society of surveillance, selection and control that would interfere with the democratic character of political systems. Meanwhile, parliaments should promote the use of the new technologies to provide citizens with better information, not merely on legislative and other parliamentary activities but also as a condition for the exercise of "active citizenship".
In the margins of the conference, representatives of national and regional parliaments held the first meeting of the Board of the Global Centre. They approved an ambitious programme of activities for 2007, that includes building the capacity of parliaments in Africa and Latin America to use ICT, as well as a world conference on parliamentary use of ICT to increase outreach to citizens and to make parliamentary processes more effective. In May 2007, IPU and UNDESA will co-organize a multi-stakeholder meeting in Geneva where parliaments and other partners will review progress since the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis in November 2005.
In another development, a new sub-group on Parliament and ICT has been created within the follow-up mechanism of the Summit, in recognition of the unique role that parliaments play in the development of the information society.
