Reinforcing the Role of Parliament in Budget Process (by invitation only)
Keeping the government accountable is a core budgetary role of the parliament. Budget processes are becoming more complex and demanding, requiring parliaments’ enhanced oversight capacity. Developing parliamentary staff’s technical knowledge and soft skills is essential for their efficient, unbiased and unconstrained support of the parliament’s oversight function. However, parliamentary staff has often limited opportunity to access new knowledge and practices, and is mostly under pressure of heterogeneous political actors. Preliminary assessment of donors’ support to parliaments in South East Europe (SEE) revealed that the oversight function has recently received much attention, which has led to initial successes, e.g. in establishing independent and functional state audit institutions. However, capacity development in the area of other parliamentary functions in many SEE countries deserve further support.
How will you benefit?
The aim of this webinar was to enable a better understanding of the learning landscape for parliamentary staff in South East Europe (SEE) with respect to developing capacities essential for reinforcing the role of parliament in ensuring an effective and efficient budget process.
- Map out relevant in-country learning initiatives developed and implemented for SEE parliamentary administrations
- Identify core international and in-country knowledge providers of such learning initiatives
- Assess learning needs that remain unaddressed
- Identify how regional peer-to-peer learning could complement the given in-country learning initiatives
What did participants learn?
The Webinar covered the following parts:
- Introduction of participants & setting the stage
- Keynote speech on the importance of parliamentary functions for the budget process
- Current challenges experienced in SEE countries with respect to the efficiency of these functions (2-3 voices of staff of parliamentary administrations and committees, and short analysis of an international surveillance partner)
- 2-3 short presentations on given learning initiatives and knowledge providers
- Discussion on outstanding learning needs and opportunities for regional knowledge and experience sharing
- Wrap up and concluding points
Who attended?
Webinar participation was only be possible by invitation.
The target audience entailed relevant staff of parliamentary administrations (i.e. secretary general, committees’ administration, parliamentary research departments, and budget offices) in South East Europe (especially the CEF constituency); as well as selected representatives of in-country and international knowledge providers and partners supporting their capacity development.
The webinar was delivered in English, and highly participatory. Participants were encouraged to share their experiences and country practices, e.g. through a pre-event survey.
Partners
This learning initiative was supported by:
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