IPU Innovation Tracker

The Parliamentary Data Science Hub has two significant events on the horizon. On 23 March 2026, it is hosting a members-only webinar on AI policymaking in parliaments, bringing together representatives of the Parliament of Austria, the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil, the House of Commons of Canada and Chamber of Deputies of Italy to exchange experiences and current practices. Looking ahead, the hub will hold its annual in-person meeting on 13–15 May 2026 in Rome, hosted by the Chamber of Deputies of Italy. The meeting will take stock of the current state of AI adoption across IPU Member Parliaments and explore next steps for exchanges and collaboration. A key output of the event will be a booklet of parliamentary AI case studies, to which participating parliaments will be encouraged to contribute.

The IT Governance Hub will host a webinar on digital accessibility at the European Parliament on 11 June 2026. Experts from the European Parliament’s Solution Design and Quality Assurance Unit will present the session, drawing on the experiences of the institution’s Directorate-General for Information Technologies and Cybersecurity (DG ITEC). It will explore how the European Parliament approaches digital accessibility across its public-facing websites, mobile applications, intranets and electronic documents. Presentations will cover the core principles of accessibility; the legislative landscape, including the Web Accessibility Directive and the European Accessibility Act; and the European Parliament’s internal governance structures, such as the Digital Accessibility Competence Centre and its Digital Accessibility Officers Network. The session will conclude with a live demonstration of the Citizens' App, illustrating how accessibility policy translates into a practical and inclusive user experience.

The Southern Africa Regional Hub convened its first hub meeting of the year on 25 February 2026, bringing together parliamentary staff from across the region to set a collective direction for the year ahead. Members agreed on a focused set of priorities for the year ahead, including webinars on voice-to-text and AI-supported parliamentary reporting, cybersecurity policies and user awareness, digital accessibility and inclusion technologies, and practical applications of AI in parliament. 

The hub co-ordinators invited parliaments to provide updates on their current digital transformation initiatives as a way of sharing knowledge and building opportunities for focused collaboration.

The Pacific Regional Hub kicked off its 2026 hub webinar series with a session on cyber risks and parliamentary security. The webinar featured a presentation from the House of Representatives of New Zealand, which has developed a comprehensive cyber risk assessment tool for Pacific parliaments, enabling them to accurately measure their current level of cyber readiness. The tool also presents a tailored 12-month road map for improving resilience, spanning a range of interventions from short-term, low-cost measures to more complex technical upgrades, and offering parliaments a practical and graduated pathway to strengthening their cybersecurity.