Parliamentary Monitoring

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Introduction

From the inception of the organisation, PILDAT built into its work both Legislative Development as well as Legislative Performance Assessment.

As a Parliamentary monitoring organisation and being signatory to and supporting organisation of Declaration on Parliamentary Openness, PILDAT firmly believes that parliamentary information belongs to the public and without facilitating public to understand and have access to parliamentary performance, citizens cannot hold their public representatives and elected institutions to account.

Based on the belief that parliamentary democracy can best flourish when citizens understand parliamentary performance and hold their elected representatives to account through the performance in Legislatures, PILDAT developed an in-house framework to assess the performance of Pakistan’s Legislatures. As a pioneer in this field, PILDAT used the framework to seek and use data on legislative performance to analyse and publish periodic and annual reports on performance of National Assembly, the Senate and 4 Provincial Assemblies. In addition, PILDAT has also carried out individual assessments of various Standing Committees. The PILDAT framework has been refined over the years learning from other assessment frameworks while PILDAT also began to use the Inter-Parliamentary Union toolkit for Evaluating Parliament as part of its assessment.

PILDAT assessments have also been guided by the belief that objective analyses of performance of legislatures in Pakistan must offer proposals for legislative reform that can positively contribute to legislative development and strengthening in Pakistan. This has meant that legislative performance assessments PILDAT have been designed in a way that theses include score by PILDAT Expert Evaluation Groups comprising current and former legislators, eminent lawyers, and media persons based on a series of Key Performance Indicators identified in the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) toolkit. Many reform proposals identified through PILDAT’s legislative assessments over the years, therefore, have resulted in strengthening of legislative processes in a number of Pakistan’s legislatures.

While assessing performance of legislatures, PILDAT has studied the performance and good practices adopted by many international Parliaments, thus providing comparative analyses for Pakistan’s Legislatures and Citizens. In addition to study and analyses of international legislative good practices, PILDAT has facilitated many Study Visits to various Parliaments to understand and learn from these practises. These have included studying and interactions with Parliaments including India, United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Turkey, Denmark, Indonesia, South Korea and South Africa, in addition to international forums on parliamentary openness and accountability.

PILDAT’s initiative of Parliamentary Accountability and Transparency does not only include assessment of performance of Pakistan’s Legislatures. Of late, PILDAT developed another framework, learning from international and regional good practices, to study and develop score cards on performance of individual legislators. As a result, PILDAT has compiled and published Score Cards assessing performance of honourable Members of the National Assembly and the Senate of Pakistan.

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Key Areas

Under our Parliamentary Accountability and Transparency initiative, following are the key areas of PILDAT work:

  1. Development and refining of an indigenous framework on assessment of performance of Parliament and Provincial Assemblies in Pakistan
  2. Analyses and publishing of periodic and annual performance reports and score cards of Parliament and Provincial Assemblies since 2002
  3. Using the IPU Toolkit on Evaluation of Parliaments to publish score cards using input and scorecards by expert groups comprising current and former legislators, eminent lawyers, and media persons
  4. Performance assessments of various Standing Committees
  5. Developing and proposing required reforms in Pakistan’s Legislatures that have, over the years, been adopted by many legislatures leading to improvements and strengthening of legislative processes in Pakistan
  6. Study and analyses of good practices in Parliaments in the region and the World through Study Visits and interactions in addition to joining and contribution to regional and international forums on parliamentary openness and accountability
  7. Development of a framework and developing score cards on performance of individual legislators including Members of the National Assembly and the Senate of Pakistan
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Approaches and Methodology of our Work

PILDAT is a dynamic organisation and continues to evaluate, calibrate and adapt its approaches and methodologies to reach the desired goals in our work. Following are some of the key approaches to our work:

  1. Objective, fact-based and non-partisan Research and Analysis focussed on reforms
  2. Working with ALL stakeholders including Governments, Parliament & Provincial Legislatures, Political Parties, Judiciary, Media and Citizens
  3. Audit of political engagement through surveys & needs-assessments
  4. Advocacy for reforms

Key Strengths

PILDAT is widely recognised for the following key strengths:

  1. Convening Power: Owing to our track-record as a serious, non-partisan organisation focused on quality of its work, PILDAT has developed a unique convening power that brings together diverse political spheres and voices from across the country on important national and global issues to affect policy reform.
  2. Relationships across the Political Spectrum: Because of PILDAT’s work over a decade in a non-partisan capacity, PILDAT enjoys relationship of respect with all key political parties. Not only political parties receive PILDAT’s reform proposals with an open mind, they often seek PILDAT’s support and advice on various policy issues relating to policy as well as internal governance. This also means that regardless of a party in opposition or in power, they are receptive to our analyses and proposals.
  3. Relationship with Media: Over the years, PILDAT has worked with the media to develop it as an ally. PILDAT’s work is sought and often quoted in the media. We take media as an important ally to further the work on reforms.

Our Services

Following key services are offered by PILDAT:

  1. Objective Performance Assessment of Legislatures
  2. Objective Performance Assessment of Committees
  3. Planning, facilitating and conducting Study Visits to regional and World Parliaments
  4. Performance Assessments and Score Cards of individual Legislators
  5. Development and advocacy on Parliamentary Reforms

Following major projects were conceptualised and delivered successfully by PILDAT in the area from 2002-2017:

  • Pakistan Legislative Capacity Building Project
  • Strengthening National & Provincial Legislative Governance in Pakistan
  • Roundtable Discussion between Canadian Legislators & Pakistani Legislators
  • Strengthening Legislative Structures & Procedures
  • Visit of Commonwealth Parliamentary Association UK Branch Delegation to Pakistan
  • Study Visit of Selected Young Pakistani MPs to India
  • Joint workshops on Pakistan & Afghan Parliamentarians in Pakistan
  • Supporting New Pakistan Parliament Project (Grass Roots Democracy)
  • Study Visit of Young Parliamentarians of Pakistan to India
  • Parliamentary & Political Parties Strengthening Programme in Pakistan
  • Punjab Assembly Score Card (Pakistan Legislative Strengthening Project-PLSP)
  • AF-Indo-Pak Parliamentary Dialogues
  • Performance Evaluation of the 3rd Year of the National Assembly, Senate and Provincial Assembly of the Punjab
  • Parliamentary & Political parties strengthening program in Pakistan-Phase II
  • Performance Evaluation of 5 years of the National Assembly
  • Democracy and Governance Programme
  • US-Pakistan Legislator-to-Legislator Forum
  • Pakistan-India Legislators and Public Officials Dialogue on Governance and Democracy
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Our Partners

Following are some of the key development partners who have supported PILDAT’s initiatives in the field of Parliamentary Accountability and Transparency:

  • British High Commission – BHC
  • Canadian High Commission – CHC
  • The Commonwealth
  • Danish International Development Agency – DANIDA
  • Department for International Development – DFID
  • Development Alternatives Inc. – DAI
  • Foundation for the Future – FFF
  • Friedrich Ebert Stiftung – FES
  • Parliamentary Centre – PC
  • United Nations Democratic Fund – UNDEF
  • United States Agency for International Development -USAID
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