Morocco’s Parliament Goes “On the Record”

	USAID provided equipment to record and transcribe parliamentary sessions in real time. Moroccan citizens can now expect access to the public record created by their elected legislative representative

Publishing the record of legislative debates in a timely fashion has been one of the major challenges faced by Morocco’s Parliament.   The details of discussions in Parliament are critical to the ability of journalists, civil society, citizens, and the parliamentarians themselves to engage in policy debates and policy making.

The legislature had fallen three years behind schedule in producing and publishing transcriptions because of its reliance on a labor-intensive, asynchronous process of taping sessions and transcribing them by hand before typing and publishing them.  Internal regulations required that sessions be transcribed and published in chronological order. USAID’s Parliament Support Project solved the problem by engaging a local firm to transcribe the backlog of audio tapes.  Working in shifts, more than 30 typists and editors transcribed and proofread 25,000 pages of recorded parliamentary sessions in two months. 

By bringing the historical record up to date, the stage was set for Parliament to use new electronic transcription equipment provided by USAID to record and transcribe sessions in real time, beginning with the speech of King Mohammed VI that formally started the new Parliamentary Session on October 13th, 2006. 

Moroccan citizens can now expect access to the public record created by their elected legislative representative to be fully available in a timely fashion.  This milestone supports the development of Morocco’s democratic culture and the role of Parliament in fostering citizen participation in national political life.