Aid Assisted Parliamentary Website Initiatives in Developing Countries
Parliaments are the central institutions in the democratic forms of governments. Many parliaments, particularly in the lower middle income and low-income countries, perform poorly and tend to be closed institutions. They do not exchange timely information with the citizens. Parliamentary websites can assist the parliaments in opening up and interacting with the citizens to represent the real will of the people. Parliaments can use the websites as the means for actualizing the values of openness, transparency, and accountability. I explore a case of implementation of aid assisted parliamentary websites development initiative for four provincial parliaments of Pakistan. International development organizations may face different challenges during aid assisted parliamentary website development initiatives. I propose, by employing Information Technology Alteration Framework, that many of these challenges can be linked to the intercultural differences of values, norms, and practices between the donor and the host. This chapter also presents the lessons learned in the form of proposed solutions to overcome the challenges during the conception and implementation stages of aid assisted parliamentary website development initiatives.