2 days Orientation Workshop on United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) Gap analysis

The 2 days orientation workshop on UNCAC Gap analysis concluded today in Thimphu. The objective of the orientation workshop was to orient the core team consisting of members from various agencies to champion in the fight against corruption namely the Anti Corruption Commission, the Attorney General's Office, the Royal Monetary Authority, financial institutions like the Bank of Bhutan, the Bhutan National Bank, the Royal Bhutan Police and the National Environment Commission. The core team comprises mostly lawyers from these agencies and with some other participants for workshop. The core team will now in the next several weeks work at the Anti Corruption Commission premises on identifying and doing a gap analysis of our own anti corruption and related laws. This report would become the input for the ACA amendment bill which will then be submitted to the Good Governance Committee of the National Council. Using UNCAC as a reference our own laws could be amended keeping in mind our own needs and context.

The workshop was faciliated by Mr.Manzoor Hasan, Director at the Institute of Governance Studies, BRAC University, Dhaka from Bangladesh. Mr. Hasan was the founding Executive Director of Transparency International Bangladesh (1996 to 2003) and has also been the recipient of the award of the Officer of Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 for his work on transparency.

Civil Service Bill for debate in the 5th National Council session

The National Council will be deliberating in the House this summer session the Civil Service Bill passed by the National Assembly. In the winter session of the Parliament in 2009, the Houses could not come to concensus over the Bill and therefore, the Bill died. The new Bill comes to the National Council after being passed by the other House.

The Good Governance Committee will be leading the works leading up to the debate in the House. The Committee has already initiated early stages of consultation with stakeholders. Although, discussions from the 4th session of Parliament will become a baseline, final shape of the Bill will depend on the stakeholder consultations that the House had decided to incorporate in law-making process in all legislative works and debates in the House.

The  Royal Civil Service Commission has posted the Civil Service Bill on it's website (this link will take you to the document). Feedback and comments would be a welcome contribution.

House re-convenes again - February 10, 2010

The National Council reconvened in the Lhengzhuk khang of the House yesterday in Thimphu. There were discussions which would lead up to formalization og Agendas for the 5th session of Parliament.

The secretariat made presentations to the House on agency budget for observations before submission on February 15, 2010 to the ministry of finance.

Formalization of agendas would take place over 2 - 3 days starting tomorrow (February 12, 2010) in keeping with the Paro Declaration of 2009 by the 1st National Council.

Planning and Monitoring System (PlaMS)

After it's first workshop in 2009, PlaMS still remains very distant from a segment of users. The members of Parliament could benefit a deal from access to it and it would no doubt save time and effort in trying to provide information queries from individual members of Parliament. It is in my view only logical that these information be accessible so that it would help members do their home works better, have access to a comprehensive framework of data that is privy to only the executive at the moment. Giving accessibility to the members will also help clarify a lot of the questions that individual members may have for the Government. Good information accessibility will certainly help make decisions that may need to be made in the Parliament of higher quality and perhaps, more in snyc with the needs of time as members would be able to analyze for themselves indicators and parameters to get both macro and micro perspectives.

I plan on writing to our Thrizin and to others asking for members to be given access to this rich source of information that is not only critical but vital for an informed parliamentary discharge of duty.