Can technology tackle democracy’s shortcomings? The promises of ParliMeter - a new digital tool to strengthen parliamentary accountability

Published: 30 May 2025

Authors: Dr. Meshay Moses, Nheo Fumba and Babongile Bidla

 

In early 2024, South Africa celebrated 30 years of democracy, a system foundational to South African society and enshrined in the 1996 Constitution. Like any other political system, democracies around the world face multiple challenges such as corruption, poor service delivery, citizen apathy in government processes, and lack of responsiveness from elected officials, just to mention a few. Accountability has become a crucial element in ensuring that the ideals of democracy are fully realised. However, democracies cannot achieve accountability without active citizen participation. Accountability is an ongoing process of engagement between citizens and institutions. Without the active involvement of people in decision-making and governance the accountability mechanisms in place are undermined, which can lead to abuse of power and a disconnect between the government and the people they serve. In South Africa’s democracy, Parliament is an important accountability mechanism. It represents the people and conducts oversight of all organs of state, making it crucial for it to perform well. All South Africans hold the responsibility to ensure Parliament fulfils its constitutional mandate by actively monitoring its performance. 

This can seem like a daunting task. We often view active participation through the lens of protesting and activism. While these remain significant forms of active participation in South Africa, they exist within a broader spectrum of civic engagement. The rise of civic technologies in the last few years has broadened the opportunities available to people to participate, beyond voting and elections, public meetings and forums, volunteering, and collaborative decision-making. Digital tools have been developed to enable citizens to engage with governance processes online, facilitating broad participation. 

Civic technologies are now essential digital tools for promoting participatory democracy. These technologies are designed to strengthen engagement between citizens and government. For example,  digital tools such as GovChat enable real-time interactive communication between communities and public officials. According to GovChat, they have roughly 9 million active users who engage with critical government services such as social grant applications. The tool also has a feature allowing users to search for ward councillors across South Africa. Digital tools have the potential to improve government accountability, bring citizens closer to those in power, and create opportunities for inclusive decision-making practices.

 

Image of Students at the University of the Western Cape during ParliMeter Workshop

 

In March 2025, a new civic technology called ParliMeter was launched. ParliMeter is an innovative online platform developed collaboratively by the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA), Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) and OpenUp with co-funding from the European Union’s Enhancing Accountability and Transparency programme. The primary objective of ParliMeter is to improve parliamentary oversight and enable citizen engagement with parliamentary processes. It serves as a user-friendly, open-source dashboard designed to monitor and track the performance of members of parliaments (MP’s) and the progression of legislation such as the recent Expropriation Bill that was passed in January 2025. ParliMeter also provides parliamentary committee meeting insights, such as the number of meetings held per committee, MP attendance rates across committees, and activities undertaken by MPs and ministers that show how they are engaging with parliamentary processes and procedures.

PUG Engagement with ParliMeter

The Politics and Urban Governance Research Group (PUG) at UWC, researches participatory democratic innovations. On 20 February 2025, PUG in collaboration with OUTA, PMG and OpenUp, hosted a ParliMeter workshop targeting postgraduate university students. The workshop was one of the first events for 2025 under the UWC’s EMS Faculty Citizenship and Democracy niche area. Workshop participants were provided with a hands-on dashboard run-through to help them use this digital platform as a research and teaching resource. The workshop’s objective was to foster awareness around the platform and demonstrate to staff and postgraduate students how real-time ParliMeter data could be used to supplement existing research on legislative processes.

 

Screenshot of ParliMeter Dashboard – 14 April 2025

 

Without easy access to parliamentary proceedings or clear insights into how policies are made, engagement can feel out of reach for citizens. Workshops like the one PUG co-hosted, as well as participatory initiatives like community partnerships, could deepen citizen involvement in decision-making processes.

Role of Civic Technology in Accountability

The ParliMeter platform is one of those civic technologies designed to provide citizens with accessible, real-time data to monitor and understand the performance of their elected representatives. This is great for citizens, researchers and civil society organisations to hold Parliament accountable. This transparency fosters accountability by allowing citizens to track the performance and decision-making processes of MPs. The success of this platform is dependent on:

1. Individual motivations for using the platform and acting on the insights gained from it.
2. Integration with existing systems, data reliability and real-time data collection. ParliMeter relies on data from PMG so if reports are incomplete, delayed or inaccurate, the quality of information presented may be undermined. 
3. Regular upkeep of the platform.
4. Funding to support the long-term implementation of the platform.

While civic technologies like the ParliMeter can spark interest in parliamentary monitoring among citizens, they primarily enhance participation among those already engaged in governance matters. It caters to those with digital literacy and access to online resources, and supports data-driven research and advocacy. 

Lessons and future for ParliMeter

The ParliMeter is an exciting platform, but we must not forget that South Africa still faces a great digital divide, especially in townships and rural areas. Limited internet access and low digital literacy levels could undermine the potential of ParliMeter. The digital divide between the rich and the poor, those residing in urban and rural settings is still evident and cannot be avoided when such tools are formulated, tested and rolled out. The effectiveness of such tools is contingent upon widespread digital literacy and equitable access to digital resources. This highlights the need for strategies that address the digital divide, particularly in rural and marginalised communities where internet access may be limited. 

One can only hope that people from all segments of society will have the necessary training and knowledge of the tools to participate in this important process of accountability. It would be a pity if such a tool were only utilised by certain groups with access to digital resources and the necessary knowledge to use the platform effectively. Moving forward we need to think about how civic technologies are designed and implemented to reach and facilitate engagement by those with low digital literacy and limited access to digital technologies. 

Visit www.parlimeter.org.za to learn more about ParliMeter and use the dashboard.