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Digitizing parliaments: a case study of Serbia

The technological and following economic, political and social changes that have characterised the last decades have been accompanied with new forms of relationships between governments and citizens. Proliferation of transparent and accountable democratic practices and innovative tools aims to offer a response to a corrosion of democracy and its deformations into autocratic and illiberal regimes. New digital solutions may bring increased citizens participation at the local level, by upgrading the work processes of municipal institutions in a more transparent and inclusive manner. The focus of this paper is on the analysis of an innovative approach in digitalization of municipal, city and regional parliaments in Serbia, by developing e-parliament as a unique software solution for supporting management of parliamentary sessions. First, the benefits of the digitalization process are presented, both for parliaments and citizens. Then, scope of the system is described and high-level design principles are set. The scope was limited to legislative and oversight functions of the parliament. The most important principles were to develop a highly configurable and customizable solution, by using a modular design, open standards and platform-independent open-source components. Organizational and technical issues that have risen during the implementation process are also briefly described in the paper. The lessons learned are summed up as good practices that can hopefully guide parliament digitalization initiatives in other countries. Finally, the paper is concluded with plans to improve the software in the future.