Legislative enhancement

Midterm evaluation covers the period 9/87-12/90. Implementation has been minimal, primarily due to contracting delays. Legislation creating the Center for Informatics and Legislative Studies (CIEL) was not passed until year later than planned. Further, the law was much weaker than the proposed law, which had been structured to isolate CIEL from politics. Nonetheless, passage of the CIEL legislation is the most important achievement of this component, and USAID should accept CIEL in its present form even though it is not a separate institution as planned. In 8/90, Georgetown University (the prime contractor) submitted a plan for equipping and staffing CIEL. The plan calls for a mainframe computer for CIEL; the evaluation team takes issue with this proposal and recommends instead a computer plan prepared by A.I.D./W's Information Resources Management (IRM) in 11/90. There appears to be within the Hnoduran Congress too much faith in computer hardware and too little appreciation of what it takes to build and use data systems. In 1989, GU submitted proposals for improving Congressional organization and functioning, including the functioning of committees, but no action had been taken by the Congress yet and none appears to be in the offing, as priority has been given almost exclusively to CIEL. Training activities to date have been minimal, but they should become very important during the rest of the project. Although Conditions Precedent and Covenants in the MOU have not been complied with, they have not been changed and the team found no official correspondence with the Congress regarding these. It is recommended that: (1) USAID/H take up the condition regarding an administrative career service with the Congress; (2) the condition regarding a career service for the National Registry of Persons (which actually is concerned with a separate project component) be changed to a covenant, and targeted for implementation in 1991. The project's potential impact on women has not been addressed. The evaluation recommends that USAID fund a study to determine the openness of the political system to women who wish to run for Congress.