Early versions of the course The international community recog- nizes the importance of strong public sector governance and well-devel- oped systems of accountability to achieving and sustaining development results.
Since Parliaments play such an
important role in promoting govern- ment accountability – they are the principal ‘accountors’ to whom gov- ernments are accountable – develop- ing the capacity of Parliaments to ful- fil this function has become an important element to parliamentary support programmes of the World Bank, the UNDP and other agencies. Other core functions of Parliament include legislation and policymaking and giving ‘voice’ to citizens, through representation. WBI recognized early on that an
important element of parliamentary capacity is the quality of parliamen- tary staff – they are, after all, the “cor- porate memory” of the institution.As a result, it sought to develop a course designed specifically for such staff. The first attempt, a course on
Good Governance and Parliamentary Management, was developed in collaboration with the Parliamentary Centre and held in September 1999. Bringing together some 20 senior staff from Parliaments in Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East,
the course sought to provide an information base on which staff could draw in serving their ‘clients’ (that is, Members of Parliament). While course evaluations were acceptable, and the Parliamentary Centre went on to adapt the course for its own use in Africa, the course failed to dovetail with the already established MP staff training work- shops and seminars already developed by WBI. A second attempt was tried in
2003, where WBI and the Parliamentary Centre teamed up with the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration and the Nigerian Centre for Economic Management and Administration.There was a bold attempt to combine the capaci- ty development of local institutions through course development/deliv- ery, face-to-face and video confer- ence delivery, adaptation of a com- mon course content to country cir- cumstances and working with local and international partners – the course was generally unsuccessful, due to multiple and conflicting objectives.
Evolution of the current learning programme Recognizing the generally unsatisfac- tory nature of the courses developed through 2003,WBI’s Parliamentary
338 The Parliamentarian 2008/Issue Four
Strengthening programme sought to have the courses evaluated by an independent source. Utilizing a pro- gramme called the Quality Enhancement Review (QER), the Parliamentary Strengthening pro- gramme sought an informal review of the course by an expert panel of peers.The QER aimed to help improve the quality of design of the programme through feedback from pedagogical and subject matter experts who provided constructive comments, suggestions and ideas. The QER Panel encouraged the team to expand the course to a sig- nificantly larger number of coun- tries and regions with enhanced local partnerships to increase the effectiveness and sustainability of the learning programme.They suggested a regional/international approach to the learning programme for which the QER suggested creating a train- ing template including components of a fixed curriculum for legislators and legislative staff. Since there are many prospective countries and par- ticipants, a combination of distance learning and face-to-face delivery were suggested. In addition, the QER encouraged the learning programme to:
• Expand to staff of all standing committees of the Parliament;