CAPTURING LEARNING FROM PARLIAMENTARY

MONITORING SITES IN AFRICAN COUNTRIES

The Indigo Trust,

Loren Treisman,

PhD

Contents Executive Summary ............................................................................................................................. 2

Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 2

Accessing Data .................................................................................................................................... 4

Marketing, Promotion and Engagement ............................................................................................ 5

Advertising and Content Analysis ................................................................................................... 5

Engaging Journalists and other Infomediaries ................................................................................ 6

Social Media .................................................................................................................................... 7

Offline Marketing Strategies ........................................................................................................... 7

Improving Engagement between Leaders and Citizens ...................................................................... 8

Monitoring Impact .............................................................................................................................. 9

Advice for Funders .............................................................................................................................. 9

Take Home Messages ....................................................................................................................... 11

Report Contributors .......................................................................................................................... 12

Executive Summary

The Indigo Trust is a grant making foundation that funds projects and organisations that leverage the

power of mobile and web technologies to foster active, informed citizens and accountable

governments in African countries. As part of this work, we support parliamentary sites across the

continent. We spoke to senior staff in the organisations running these sites. This report aims to

capture learning around how these organisations access data, promote their sites, engage citizens

and leaders and monitor their impact. Examples of best practice are provided, as well as advice for

funders supporting these initiatives.

Recurring themes included the recognition of a need to translate the information on the site into

content which engages citizens, such as videos, infographics and blogs. It’s also worth adopting

strategies which engage journalists and civil society so that they can ensure that pertinent issues are

highlighted to citizens offline and that information from the sites is used in campaigns and

programmes which aim to hold government to account.

It can be challenging to access the required information in most countries. Low bandwidth and high

data costs are prohibitive. The concept of citizens and leaders interacting is also relatively new in

many African countries and citizens often have little faith in their ability to affect change. Therefore,

it can take some effort to engage with both citizens and leaders. One useful strategy for engaging

elected representatives is to celebrate their success.

Funders can support this space through patient, flexible, long-term funding. They should be realistic

about the challenges related to demonstrating impact and help parliamentary monitoring

organisations develop intermediary indicators to monitor progress. They should also support the

sharing of best practice and tools across the continent.

Introduction

Good governance is dependent on a critical set of functioning institutions and enablers including

parliament, government, judiciary, civil society and media. In order for citizens and civil society to

hold leaders of both public and private institutions to account, it is necessary for them to access

basic information about each component.

William Perrin, a trustee of Indigo Trust came up with the concept of an accountability stack, which

can be thought of as the vital pieces of information which should be made publically available, in a

digital, open format to enable this process.

While this list is by no means comprehensive, it provides a good starting point for thinking about

some of the information which may help the public and civil society to hold the powerful to account

and campaign for positive social change:

Constitution – as amended in force

Laws – criminal, civil, administrative (old and new), case law where relevant

Parliaments and assemblies at national, regional and local levels – lists of Members, their

assets and declarations of interests, list of Parties, record of upcoming business, debates,

votes and legislation in debate

Ruling Executive – lists of Ministers, Appointees, bureaucratic executive senior members and

their interests, constitutions and governance of major public bodies, access to transparency

measures e.g. FOI and major permit or licence granting schemes

Companies – Directors, shareholders, accounts

Public expenditure – budgets, expenditure details, beneficiaries, contracts

Very few countries openly provide all this information. However, it wouldn’t take much effort to

release the majority of this information digitally, even if initially in an imperfect form.

Parliamentary monitoring groups across the globe are developing websites which enable citizens to

track parliament and their elected representatives. In 2006, mySociety, a UK based organisation

which builds websites that empower citizens worldwide, adopted TheyWorkForYou, a parliamentary

monitoring website created by volunteers in order to bridge the gap between citizens and state.

Users can find out how their Member of Parliament (MP) voted in parliament, what they said in

recent appearances and see a register of their interests. They can also access Hansard, written

answers to parliamentary questions and information on Bill committees.

The Indigo Trust began funding mySociety in 2009. It has since supported them to work with

partners in select countries in Africa to create similar sites using TheyWorkForYou’s open source

code. These include Mzalendo in Kenya, Odekro in Ghana and People’s Assembly in South Africa,

which is run by Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG). Some of these sites provide even richer

content than the original site including infographics, blogs and surveys which help to drive public

participation.

Other organisations in African countries have started to explore different ways to enable citizens to

better understand parliamentary proceedings and interact with elected representatives. Magila

Tech in Tanzania has built the M-Parliament platform which enables citizens to listen to live

parliamentary sessions on basic mobile phones. It also allows them to voice their opinions on

different parliamentary debates before a final decision is made by parliament, using an Interactive

Voice Response (IVR) system. In Morocco, SimSim Participation Citoyenne created Nouabook, which

among other things, enables citizens to ask questions directly to their MPs via Facebook. Many

others parliamentary sites now exist, including those linked to on this list, complied by Indigo Trust.

While the existence of these sites is a necessary first step towards greater parliamentary

transparency, in itself, this is unlikely to contribute to greater accountability. For this to happen,

there is a need to ensure that the key information contained within them is conveyed to the public

in a manner which is easy to understand and which brings the data alive, making it relevant to their

daily lives. Journalists and civil society can also be supported to utilise the data on these sites to

spark public interest and strengthen evidence based advocacy and campaign work.

We spoke to some of the leaders of the organisations that support parliamentary monitoring sites to

better understand how they access the relevant data, engage with parliament, raise public

awareness and monitor their impact. We also gathered advice for funders around how they can best

support their initiatives.

Accessing Data

We asked our grantees how they access relevant data for their sites, what challenges they’ve

encountered and how they are working to resolve these.

The ease of collecting data is dramatically different in different countries. In Kenya, most of the

required information is publically available. Hansard is automated and much of the information

about members of parliament (MPs) can be accessed from their own campaign pages. Some MPs

(approximately 20) have even submitted their own profiles. Mzalendo works to compile this data on

one site. They are also part of a network of civic groups working on parliamentary issues (the

Parliamentary Initiatives Network) which shares relevant information. Their biggest challenge is that

parliament keeps changing their website, which forces them to regularly adapt their data collection

process.

In Tanzania, Magila Tech has been permitted to broadcast parliamentary proceedings straight from

Parliament House. Challenges can arise when there is a lack of internet connectivity, preventing live

broadcasts.

In South Africa, the parliament also publishes proceedings. However, they publish in a non-machine

readable format, which is constantly changing, so their processes for publishing in an open format

need to be adapted regularly. The team have been battling to get up to date information on MPs,

particularly from the ruling party. They have now been successful but this required a lot of follow up

and dedication. They have still been unable to access MP attendance records so they have been

physically collecting these themselves through parliamentary monitors.

In Ghana, accessing data remains challenging. Some information can be scraped from the official

Parliament website. For most of the information, they rely on the goodwill of a member of the

parliamentary service. Both sources can be unreliable. Odekro is also exploring the integration of

information from the Government Assurances Website, which documents the progress of

government projects. They sometimes have to rely on volunteers directly sitting in on parliamentary

committees and other proceedings in order to capture their content.

In Morocco, it has been a real struggle to access information such as a list of MPs and their profiles

from parliament. When they do, it is often inaccurate and out of date. They are still working hard to

build relationships with relevant bodies to enable them to access more detailed information.

Marketing, Promotion and Engagement

In order for citizens to engage with the information on parliamentary monitoring sites, firstly, they

need to know that this data exists. This can be supported by both traditional and innovative

marketing strategies. It is critical that information from the sites is converted into content which is

simple to understand, engaging and meaningful to users.

It can also be challenging for users to access the sites. Low bandwidth and high data costs can be

prohibitive. In many African countries, internet penetration is very low. It may be necessary to bring

some of the information offline in order to reach the majority of citizens or for them to access

relevant information through intermediaries such as journalists or civil society organisations. In

some countries, like Morocco, language is also a barrier.

We asked call participants to share effective marketing strategies so that we could better

understand how they promote their sites, reach offline citizens and engage with stakeholders to

ensure that content is picked up by the general public, media and campaigners.

Advertising and Content Analysis

Facebook and Google adverts have helped boost traffic to parliamentary monitoring sites like

TheyWorkForYou and People’s Assembly. Registered charities can sometimes benefit from free

advertisements.

Usage of Google Adverts led to an increase in traffic on the People’s Assembly site in South Africa

from 17,000 to 33,000 monthly users at a cost of $10,000/month. As well as increasing traffic, this

resulted in an increase in return visits and more engagement, such as sharing of posts.

Paul Lenz from mySociety believes the phrasing of advertisements is important. You can also target

adverts to particular user groups and direct users to specific pages on your site. Andrew

Mandelbaum from Nouabook cautioned parliamentary monitoring sites to choose their indicators

carefully when monitoring the impact of advertisements as clicks aren’t always converted to

engagement.

Analysing what content is popular on your site and making that content prominent is also important.

Most parliamentary monitoring organisations recognise a need to engage people through pertinent

issues as opposed to the intricacies of parliament. They’ve found that making blogs, infographics

and other engaging content front and centre on their sites leads to spikes in engagement. In South

Africa, they’ve also seen higher hits for any content which reveals something personal about MPs,

such as interviews with MPs and blogs about their life stories.

MP profiles are most visited on Mzalendo in Kenya. Copies of draft bills and their newsletter are also

popular. Blogs and infographics were found to be most popular in South Africa. Videos are popular

where low bandwidth isn’t too restrictive. In Morocco, a series of MP interviews featuring 10 MPs

was seen by more than two or three thousand citizens. In Tanzania, Magila Tech sees spikes in their

traffic when scandals are announced in parliament and on question and answer sessions around

issues gaining significant media attention.

Engaging Journalists and other Infomediaries

As well as driving traffic to these sites, engaging with journalists can have the added benefit of

highlighting issues which won’t be obvious through accessing the site without analysis. Journalists

can also ensure that this information reaches a wider audience, including those offline, in a manner

that is easy for them to understand. Civil society groups can also utilise the information on these

sites in evidence based campaigning and advocacy work.

Our grantees recognised the importance of helping such stakeholders to understand how they can

use the data on their site to access information for stories or campaigns more efficiently. They

found that these groups best engaged when they highlighted relevant information from their sites,

using simple formats like infographics or summaries of briefings.

As an example, Mzalendo provided an infographic to the press which showed MPs level of

participation in parliament. This resulted in front page news stories in two of Kenya’s major

newspapers. Mzalendo in Kenya has also engaged journalists through an awards ceremony and MP

score cards. They noticed a spike in traffic when journalists wrote stories around these initiatives

and linked to their website.

Mzalendo’s Director Jessica reminds us that driving traffic to your website shouldn’t be an end in

itself. Unearthing this information via the media is equally important, even if it doesn’t lead people

directly to your site. This enables offline citizens to benefit from a site’s content.

To build relationships with journalists and civil society, Odekro in Ghana provided them with data

journalism training. They have also worked with bloggers through the Inform Ghana project of

Blogging Ghana. They help them to identify newsworthy information from their site, which they

then write about. They have also started building relationships with more traditional media groups

like CitiFM (radio), Graphic Corporation (print) and ATV (television).

Both Mzalendo and People’s Assembly also cited the power of influential individuals like well-known

bloggers, journalists or social media influencers sharing their work.

In some countries, it is necessary to translate content to increase engagement. Nouabook in

Morocco received 4,000 new visitors and 40 new questions overnight when Online Arabic Video, an

Arabic site translated their work and republished it on their site.

Social Media

Social media was found to be one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to the sites and to

actively engage citizens who aren’t already active in open data and accountability communities. It’s

often the most cost effective approach.

In Kenya, Mzalendo has acquired more followers on Facebook (approximately 17,000) than Twitter

(approximately 8,000). Jessica Musila, their director believes the two platforms attract different

audiences, with Facebook attracting those with lower or middle incomes, while Twitter attracts

those with high incomes. Citizens often engage directly through Facebook as opposed to the

website and they find that they are able to stimulate discussion around controversial bills and issues

through this platform.

Many of these sites are keen to produce content like short videos to convey messages efficiently, as

they realise these are popular and encourage sharing and engagement. However, low bandwidth

and high data costs can inhibit them exploiting multimedia.

In some countries, this is less of a problem. For example in Morocco, Nouabook found that users

most frequently share videos, particularly ones showing MPs speaking about their work. They have

employed young ambassadors who go into communities and gather questions for MPs, who are then

given a chance to respond.

Highlighting relevant content is key. It is important for parliamentary monitoring sites to monitor

which content is viewed most regularly. As an example, Mzalendo found issues around

unemployment or local issues from specific home counties attracted the most attention. Odekro in

Ghana found it helpful to embed their Twitter feed onto their website and People’s Assembly in

South Africa develops infographics and videos, which attract the most attention.

Some participants found access to social media consulting really helpful. Parliamentary Monitoring

Group in South Africa saw likes on their website double in 1 day after they adopted a new strategy

as a result of this support.

Offline Marketing Strategies

Parliamentary monitoring organisations also adopt strategies to reach predominantly offline users.

Some organisations highlighted their work at conferences while others engaged with

parliamentarians directly. As an example, Odekro engaged with elected representatives through

stakeholder sessions held by Star-Ghana.

Magila Tech in Tanzania distributed brochures and runs SMS broadcasts and has found both to be

effective. Mzalendo in Kenya sends a newsletter out to 2,200 followers and conducts outreach in

universities. They may provide podcasts to radio stations at a later date.

Radio talk shows which address issues relating to the content on parliamentary monitoring sites can

help drive engagement and highlight content to those offline. People’s Assembly in South Africa has

also provided infographics that they’ve created to 200 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to

share with communities in rural areas through posters.

Improving Engagement between Leaders and Citizens

According to our call participants, in some countries, there isn’t a culture of citizen engagement.

One contributing factor cited was that many citizens don’t believe that they are able to affect

change. Sometimes, political leaders are reluctant to respond to their queries and requests.

Parliamentary Monitoring Group in South Africa believes individualism is frowned upon in politics, as

politicians take the party line. This makes MPs reluctant to engage with their organisation and

citizens. They’ve been struggling to get MPs to update their information on their website, even with

4 interns in parliament working on this.

Nouabook in Morocco feels they are struggling to work in a closed party system, which hampers

citizen engagement. They have been trying to enable citizens to ask questions to MPs, but despite

significant efforts, only 37 out of 400 have agreed, with 20 actively participating.

They’ve most successfully engaged MPs through Google Hangouts. Responses from the hangout are

then added to their website. MPs like the idea of video and interact with this approach. They’ve

also provided MPs with individual Facebook timelines on their site so that they can share their own

information.

In some countries, such as Morocco, traditional NGOs don’t recognise the value of lobbying

parliament and working with government. Training can be necessary to address this. Nouabook

believes that young people best understand this, so they are starting to adopt strategies to engage

with them.

Mzalendo has been exploring interesting ways to engage both citizens and MPs. For example, they

have produced report cards showing MPs performance in parliament and celebrate MPs that make

significant impact. They also facilitate discussions around policy issues being discussed in the media

e.g. the gender imbalance in parliament. They provide data around these issues to the media e.g.

demonstrating that female MPs were performing better in parliament.

Mzalendo has some evidence that these strategies have helped to engage MPs. Many have stayed

in touch with them through social media and have contacted them to get put on their lists. MPs

sometimes ask them for assistance in publicising their work. One MP contacted them to promote a

youth employment bill. Mzalendo then partnered with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

to sample opinion on the bill from 255 constituencies. This campaign also encouraged citizens to

look at their records more.

Godfrey Magila from Magila Tech in Tanzania feels that the best strategy for engaging MPs,

government and parliament is to highlight how your services can benefit them e.g. raising their

profile or promoting issues which they care about. His initiative is directly attached to the Tanzania

Commission of Science and Technology which is under the Ministry of Science. This helps him to

engage with leaders more easily.

As the majority of citizens are offline in Tanzania, they have developed a platform which operates on

basic feature phones. They provide SMS updates for Parliamentary timetables and use Interactive

Voice Response (IVR) to enable citizens to listen to parliamentary sessions through voice messages.

They even manage to generate some revenue through this service through advertisements.

Monitoring Impact

It is often challenging to monitor impact in this space. It is very hard to be able to demonstrate that

the public have altered their opinions due to accessing particular information or that MPs become

more accountable as a consequence of being scrutinised.

Almost all participants use tools like Google Analytics to monitor their impact, looking at their user

numbers, page session durations, bounce rates and other indicators over time. Many also monitor

media citations and social media engagement e.g. shares, likes and followers. To demonstrate

engagement with their content, some organisations monitor comments and feedback to newsletters

and blogs as well as responses or requests from MPs and other leaders.

Intermediary indicators can help. For example, TheyWorkForYou noticed that MPs started more

frequently asking questions in parliament once they started publishing their participation and MPs

are starting to call Mzalendo requesting changes to their profiles, which indicates that they are

taking notice.

Advice for Funders

We asked the staff of Parliamentary Monitoring Organisations what advice they could give to

funders in order to best support them. Listed below are some of their key suggestions.

Core funding can make a huge difference and allows better response to needs on the ground

Grants should be for longer than one year. Short grant cycles put pressure on both cash

flow and decision making processes. For longer grant cycles, flexibility is needed to enable

plans to change over time in response to on the ground needs.

Funders should coordinate reporting cycles and requirements so that organisations can

provide one report to multiple funders. Coordinating reporting cycles with the financial year

can really help.

Keep reporting requirements flexible and simple. This is particularly important for smaller

and newer organisations which may not yet have documents like audited accounts and a full

suite of policies in place despite doing excellent work.

Some funder requirements and processes can take up unnecessary time. As an example, it

can take hours to find one simple statistic requested to provide background context on a

particular country.

Ensure that grant processes aren’t delayed as this can cause real challenges in terms of cash

flow

Competitions and challenges can be frustrating. They often take a lot of work and the

chances of success are relatively low. They also engender competition rather than

encouraging partnership and collaboration. If donors insist on running these, it is critical

that they are transparent about the likelihood of an application’s success and their

requirements. As an example, organisations in Africa have been frustrated by competitions

which claim that they are international but then only award grants in one country.

Grantees appreciate funders that are relaxed and approachable and build partnerships with

grantees which stretch beyond financial support

Funders need to be realistic in their expectations around impact. For example, it can be

hard for new initiatives to show global/international impact or direct attribution in many

cases, particularly in a short time frame. Intermediary indicators are sometimes needed to

show progress.

It would be helpful for funders to support meet-ups and conversations between similar

projects in different countries. The groups believe they could learn a lot and replicate each

other’s best practice.

Funders could support development of an API to enable different groups to use each other’s

services to avoid duplication.

Take Home Messages

The ease of accessing data from parliament dramatically varies in different countries

There is a need to simplify and translate the information on parliamentary monitoring sites

into engaging content such as videos, infographics and blogs and relate these to newsworthy

issues

Journalists and civil society can act as intermediaries to ensure information on the site is

conveyed to the public offline. Strategies need to be adopted to engage with them.

There are often barriers to citizen engagement which need to be addressed including low

bandwidth, a lack of belief in their ability to affect change and leaders being reluctant to

respond to them directly

Monitoring impact can be challenging. Parliamentary monitoring organisations can collect

user stats from their sites and are working towards monitoring engagement but are still

trying to establish ways to demonstrate actual impact.

Flexible, timely core funding over the long-term can really support parliamentary monitoring

organisations

Funders could support meet ups and development of APIs which enable different

organisations to share best practice and utilise each other’s tools

Report Contributors

Country

Organisation Participant

Ghana Odekro

Nehemiah Attigah

Kenya Mzalendo

Jessica Musila

Morocco

SimSim-Participation Citoyenne

Andrew Mandelbaum Hind Kabaj Ismail Ilsouk

South Africa Parliamentary Monitoring Group

Gaile Fullard

Tanzania

Magila Tech Godfrey Magila

United Kingdom mySociety

Paul Lenz