The Interlegis Program

The Interlegis Program  was the result of a desire to bring together in a single community all of Brazil’s federal, state and local legislative bodies, aiming at their modernization, to enable them to improve their administrative and legislative procedures.

The kickoff, in the nineteen nineties, was a pilot project set up by Prodasen, the Data Processing Center of Brazil’s Federal Senate. Through this project 100 city councils were provided with access to the Internet.

This first stage, wholly financed by the Senate, was very successful and caught the attention of the Inter-American Development Bank, IADB. As a result, a loan agreement was signed in 1999 between the IADB and the Brazilian Government, whereby the Bank would finance half of an expanded digital inclusion program for city councils, thus giving birth to the Interlegis Program.

A modern building was erected to house the program and offer adequate space and infrastructure for the planned endeavor.

The first effort was to provide legislative houses with computers and ancillary equipment, as well as training in software to help tackle basic office tasks and to browse the Internet. To this end, the city councils that joined the Program were  supplied with a computer and a printer.

The 26 state legislatures (all Brazilian states have unicameral legislatures) were provided with videoconferencing equipment and a multifunction room with a network of 20 computers and a printer.

An Interlegis Internet portal was set up, with basic information about all city councils like address, phones, names of councilmen, as well as other interesting data bases and links.

In time, several specific software tools were developed and offered to the legislative houses at no cost. Among them:

SAPL – The Legislative Process Support System, to help register and organize bills and to monitor their progress.

SAAP – Councilman Activity Support System, a package designed to help councilmen organize and manage their multiple parliamentary activities

Model Portal – this portal can be downloaded and customized with local data and information by city councils without the means to design their own portal from scratch.

In addition to making specific softwares available at no cost, Interlegis offered courses, both in distance education and on-site format, to improve the human resources of city councils, addressing subjects like public administration, legislative process, budgeting, public speaking.

In 2004 and 2005 Interlegis  effected the First Legislative Census, a trendsetting  endeavor to learn about the situation of the country’s legislative houses. This fact-finding effort will be resumed through the II Legislative Census and the I Legislator Census.

This was followed up by on-site visits to 100 city councils to further the knowledge about their procedures and needs.

More recently, a new line of credit was set up with the IABD, called Interlegis II. This new phase will follow up on and expand the efforts of Interlegis I, and in additon will also focus on improvements at the federal legislative level, as well as on the establishment of technical cooperation with foreign legislative houses, namely those of Portuguese-speaking countries, and Mercosur neighbors. To this end, since 2006 Interlegis has been working with the national legislative body of Guiné-Bissau.