Training courses, tools and techniques
Training is not a staple part of our work with parliaments and parties, as we believe ongoing support for politicians and staff is a more effective way of achieving meaningful change. However, we provide specific training where requested, for example, to Iraqi women parliamentarians on how committees work, using resources, and public speaking; and to members of ARPAC on implementing parliamentary codes of conduct.
Our training often leads to new resources, such as publications or toolkits. For example, we provided an assessment framework for determining parliamentary effectiveness which helped the European Commission develop a toolkit called Engaging and Supporting Parliaments Worldwide. We worked with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and ARPAC to draft the Handbook on Parliamentary Ethics and Conduct, and were part of the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s discussions about their Self-Assessment Toolkit.
In autumn 2011 GPA and WFD will publish The Politics of Parliamentary Strengthening, the first attempt to identify strategies for improving parliamentary structures, while a diagnostic tool will be published later in the year. GPA director Greg Power is the lead author for the first Global Parliamentary Report to be published by the Inter-Parliamentary Union and UNDP in 2012.
