For parliaments

Parline Correspondents are staff members of national parliaments who act as the IPU focal point for Parline within each chamber or parliament. Their main role is to make sure that all data in Parline for their parliament is up-to-date and correct. This includes:

• Completing (or coordinating completion of) questionnaires that the IPU sends to parliaments to gather or verify data in Parline
• Proactively informing the IPU of any changes that impact their parliament’s information in Parline; see the Checklist, which details updates that should be sent to the IPU every time there is a change
• Providing feedback and suggestions for improvements to Parline.

Parline is unique as a free public resource that comprises information on all national parliaments around the world, regardless of their IPU membership status. It is frequently used by parliaments for research, correspondence and briefing purposes, and supports their day-to-day work. It also provides information to citizens, academics, journalists and international organizations, thus enhancing knowledge, transparency and comparative research on parliaments.

The composition, working methods and structure of parliaments are ever-changing. Around 70 parliamentary chambers are renewed every year. Some 100 new or re-elected Speakers and secretaries general are recorded in Parline annually. Yet those are only a small part of the 600+ data fields for each of the 270+ chambers included in Parline.

We count on parliaments to take ownership of their own data in Parline and to provide regular updates to the IPU.

The latest changes made to Parline have provided improved capacity to compare data across parliaments for more than 100 data points. This includes the historical record of annual activities for the first time.

However, the quality of Parline is contingent upon the quality of the data provided by parliaments. Parline is a collective effort. The Parline Correspondents Network ensures shared responsibility for Parline, and the integrity and timeliness of the data it houses.

We look forward to working with and growing the Parline Correspondents Network.

For more information, please contact [email protected].

Each parliament can decide who to designate as Parline Correspondent. The person should be very familiar with the parliament, and very comfortable working with data. Being precise and details-oriented are great qualities for a Parline Correspondent! In many cases, this role might be suitable for someone working in the parliamentary library or research services.

By including the role of Parline Correspondent in a job description, the task is recognized as being significant. The parliament knows who to speak with about its data in Parline. The Parline Correspondent is acknowledged and recognized for their work. The IPU has more certainty about who to contact in the parliament

It depends. Some parliaments may prefer to designate the IPU Group Secretary as the Parline Correspondent. After all, the IPU Group Secretary is already in very regular contact with the IPU, knows the organization and the people, etc.

But IPU Group Secretaries already have a lot of other responsibilities. Being a Parline Correspondent implies an additional responsibility for collecting and communicating data about the parliament. That role could fit better with a member of the parliamentary administration who is already doing this work as part of their job, for example from the parliamentary library.

Each parliament has to decide how to organize its work. If the roles of IPU Group Secretary and Parline Correspondent are held by different people, they will need to find a good way of working together, and keep each other in the loop.

Currently, around 35 per cent of those in the Parline Correspondents Network are both the Parline Correspondent and the IPU Group Secretary.

Yes. Particularly in bicameral parliaments, each chamber may wish to designate its own Parline Correspondent. That is up to the parliament to decide.

The IPU has been collecting data on parliaments since the 1960s and expects to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. So the role of Parline Correspondent is an ongoing one. Each parliament can choose whether to keep the same person as Parline Correspondent or rotate the role every year or two. Please let the IPU Secretariat know at [email protected] if you have specific arrangements regarding the role.

The IPU will contact the Parline Correspondents at different times during the year to request data, clarify information reported, or verify that data in Parline is still up-to-date.

The Checklist provides an overview of the regular schedule and the data that Parline Correspondents should provide.

The IPU Secretariat may also contact Parline Correspondents on an ad hoc basis to collect or check information for thematic areas covered by the IPU’s programme of work (e.g. Speakers of parliament, gender, youth, human rights).

Each parliament uses different statistics on the number of laws adopted and the definition of laws themselves vary from one country to the other. Some parliaments count only new laws while other parliaments include amendments to laws. The answer to this question may include Acts (‘primary legislation’, law made by Parliament) and secondary legislation (law created by ministers). In addition, what’s entailed in the law with the same name may be different. For instance, some parliaments adopt the State budget as a single full-fledged Budget Act while others adopt firstly the budget (money) and then related laws.

For these reasons, the number of laws adopted by parliament is not easily comparable across countries. For now, please refer to the past statistics that your parliament has provided for the continuity of the data and provide similar statistics. In the new year, we will ask you to briefly explain what types of laws have been included in the past responses. We endeavor to publish additional information on Parline to make the data in this field more comprehensive.

Figures provided for this question can include the total budget initially passed and authorized by parliament for the given year OR total expenditures, with preference for the latter.

For bicameral parliaments – a figure should be provided for both chambers individually AND the parliament’s budget as a whole as it may not be the case that the parliamentary budget is a sum of the lower and upper chamber budgets combined. In absence of a figure being provided for a parliamentary budget for bicameral parliaments, a sum of figures provided for the lower and upper chamber will be input into Parline.

Examples:

Austria

Parliament: 340,778,000 EUR

• Lower Chamber: 57,943,000 EUR
• Upper Chamber: 7,620,000 EUR

Bosnia & Herzegovina

Parliament: 16,279,000 KM
Note: There is not a separate budget for each chamber.

Canada

Parliament: 628,900,000 CAD

• Lower Chamber: 505,700,000 CAD
• Upper Chamber: 123,200,000 CAD

This question aims to understand the human resources available to a parliament (i.e. total secretariat) thus should be an overall figure for the parliament, not including MPs or personal staff employed by the MP. The total should reflect full-time staff, thus any parttime staff should be included based on the time they work (e.g. calculated as 50% = .5, 80% = .75, full-time = 1). Both permanent and contracted staff may be included.

“Legislature” refers to the full period between the first session of a new legislature until it’s dissolution. Duration is typically the length of a parliamentary term (but may differ, for e.g, if a regular parliamentary term is interrupted by early dissolution and snap elections). If the start and end dates of the two chambers of a bicameral legislature differ, the start and end data of the lower chamber should be reported and will be included in Parline by default.

Examples:

Andorra
23.03.2015 to 19.02.2019
28.04.2011 to 16.01.2015
19.05.2009 to 16.02.2011

Mexico
01.09.2015 to 31.08.2018
01.09.2009 to 31.08.2012

Netherlands
29.03.2017 to 30.03.2021
20.09.2012 to 23.03.2017

First-time parliamentarians are members who have never served in a national parliament before, regardless of their mode of designation. For e.g., those who have served in parliament in any capacity (e.g. as a substitute), whether elected as titular members or not, should be excluded. Similarly, members who have already served in another chamber of a national bicameral parliament should not be counted as first-term (e.g. a member formerly elected to the lower chamber who is then elected to the Senate should be excluded). This data field focuses on the experience of MPs rather than their mode of designation.

The parline module on parliamentary human rights committees focuses on those structures in parliament that explicitly address domestic human rights issues either permanently or adhoc. So the aim is not to include foreign affairs committees, unless there is an explicit human rights mandate in the committee’s terms of reference. In this regard, the IPU module is not meant to convey the message that only the parliaments that are listed therein deal with (or “care about”) human rights. We are aware that all parliaments, through one or more committees, deal with human rights. However, the IPU module really limits itself to those examples where the link between a given parliamentary committee and human rights is sufficiently direct and strong.

Women’s caucuses or parliamentary groups/networks are mechanisms that have been created within the parliaments of many countries to strengthen cooperation among women engaged in political life. Such caucuses can bring women parliamentarians together across party lines in effective alliances around a common goal.1

1. Women’s Caucuses, (Joint AGORA – iKNOW Politics Virtual Discussion, 9-20 May 2011), p.2.

Women’s parliamentary caucuses can be formal or informal. Formal caucuses, by definition, have a formal relationship with the parliament: they may have been formed by a parliamentary resolution and their specific roles and responsibilities may have been outlined in the parliament’s internal rules. Informal caucuses, again by definition, are not formal structures of parliament. Nor are they situated within the structure of a parliament. While composed of MPs they operate outside the legislative body.

[IPU Guidelines for women’s caucuses, 2013]