Day 2 in Algeria: Engaging citizens in the political process

We've just wrapped up the second day of our international NCSL conference here at the Parliament building in Algiers, and it's now Sunday evening here in North Africa. We conducted an interesting workshop today that focused mainly on legislators (a) communicating effectively and (b) acting not only as lawmakers but as conveners. I've learned just as much from the Algerian members of Parliament as they've learned from us.

One thing we've learned is that regardless of the type of democratic government, we're all working towards common goals, and although All Politics is Local, there are some distinct differences that do make discussing specific similarities in governments difficult. For example, here in Algeria, legislators don't file the most important bills -- almost all legislation is introduced from the executive branch of government.

Our days have been packed with various sessions, and I'm now working on a workshop I'll lead tomorrow on legislative technology as a tool to communicate and connect with citizens. I'll use the blog as an example and intend to take a few pictures and post to the blog to show the immediacy of the Internet. I'll also project a couple of different tools many American legislators use to stay in contact, including Twitter, Facebook, mass e-mail services, and various cell phone applications (cell phone-based technologies are widely used here in Algeria, so I'll focus more on those and less on Internet-based ones). Technology willing, I'll also poll the members of Parliament here and allow them to partipate in my poll by answering via text messaging. I'll check in Monday night after the conclusion of the conference.

Here's a picture of me talking with an Algerian television station: