The Global Centre for Information and Communication Technologies in Parliament is a joint initiative of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and a group of national and regional parliaments launched in November 2005 on the occasion of the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis.

The Global Centre pursues two main objectives:

•  to strengthen the role of parliaments in the promotion of the Information Society, through fostering ICT-related legislation, in light of the outcome of the World Summit on the Information Society;
• to promote the use of ICT as a means to modernize parliamentary processes, increase transparency, accountability and participation, and improve inter-parliamentary cooperation.

The Global Centre for ICT in Parliament intends to achieve these objectives by providing a framework for sharing knowledge, coordinating actions, providing technical assistance and pooling information and resources across legislatures around the world, regardless of their country’s economic development level.

The aim of the Centre is not to substitute and overlap with autonomous activities or organizations but rather to enhance their visibility, expand the space for dialogue and knowledge development, and create the conditions to support legislatures that intend to promote policies and the use of new technologies to achieve their highest democratic goals.

In this spirit, the Centre works toward enhancing dialogue among key stakeholders and promotes collaborative approaches, including by bridging, at the global level, the existing work of regional parliametnary networks. The Centre’s activities include, among others, the convening of capacity-building workshops and training seminars - involving parliamentary leaders, members and officials as well as international experts -, the organization of study tours in cooperation with national and regional parliaments, the dissemination of information and the provision of technical assistance to parliaments in developing countries and in emerging democracies in different formats.

Furthermore, the Centre organizes with partners the annual World e-Parliament Conference as a forum for best practices exchange among legislatures and releases the biannual World e-Parliament Report, a unique document based on a worldwide survey which is used as a baseline for measuring advances in ICT adoption by parliaments around the world.