Democrat lawmaker calls on parliament to enter digital age

The website of the Legislative Assembly (AL) is poorly designed and not user-friendly, lawmaker Sulu Sou told a press conference yesterday, as he called for more work to be done on the digital transformation of Macau’s legislature.
Earlier, the Legislative Assembly (AL) approved the e-Governance Bill, with the law due to come into force 180 days after its promulgation. The lawmaker expects that to take place in late September to early October this year.
According to the law, the president of the AL will initiate the implementation of e-governance in the legislature. Sou disclosed that he has submitted a number of preliminary comments on the matter.
Even with this recent law approved, the lawmaker thinks there is still a lot for the AL to do in order to cope with swiftly rising standards in global information technology.
“The progress of the AL’s e-governance is lagging behind,” the lawmaker pointed out. “It is inconvenient not only for the body’s daily operation, but also not conducive to the society’s participation in the AL.”
For example, he pointed out that most of the documents of the legislature at present – such as bills, opinions, and questions – are still in paper form. Indeed, documents accessible by the public on the body’s website are mainly, if not all, scanned copies of a physical document.
Given this state of affairs, the copy-and-paste function and searching by keywords within a document is impossible. In the lawmaker’s opinion, “it is very inconvenient for journalists, members of the public and even lawmakers’ staff.”
On the other hand, when journalists work at the bench behind lawmakers, they are handed with printed government replies to lawmakers’ interpellations.
The lawmaker has asked the legislature for an explanation, which came with the answer that the use of paper form is due to the fact all documents must be signed, which further highlights that despite the law on electronic documents and electronic signatures having been in effect for 15 years, the AL is still not accepting e-signature as valid proof of authorization.
After the policy address last month, Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng asked how many lawmakers were using e-signature at his first “question and answer session” as the government’s head. Only a handful of lawmakers replied in the affirmative. Ho said they should have worked harder to promote the service.
Meanwhile, Sou disclosed that he has written to the president of the AL, Kou Hoi In, to suggest that he consult all legislators before giving an order on e-governance and appoint a committee to prepare an opinion for the order.
All in all, the lawmaker hopes the legislature can invest more in beautifying its website, besides making it more user-friendly. There should be a search function for users to look for particular elements. The lawmaker used the websites of the Hong Kong Legislative Council and the Portuguese Parliament as examples to illustrate his point.
Furthermore, he referred to the local courts’ and the Printing Bureau’s websites to illustrate the advantages of electronic document formats which allow basic copy-and-paste and search functions.
Although the AL has already established an internal e-platform for lawmakers to submit questions to the government, Sou thinks the platform should be expanded so that it can serve members of the public as well.
Finally, the lawmaker urges the AL to give way to email and e-signature to facilitate smarter governance. After all, “we have been talking about the concept of a smart city for several years now,” the lawmaker said.