AGORA Relaunch
On 30 November 2020 the AGORA Portal for Parliamentary Development renewed its activities as part of the INTER PARES project, in close cooperation with UNDP and WFD. AGORA was originally established in March 2010 and developed as the leading online knowledge hub for parliamentary development. The relaunch marks a reconceptualization of the portal’s website (agora-parl.org) and the hosting of various projects and thematic corners.
The new AGORA website has been redesigned to better serve the wider community of parliamentary practitioners. This includes parliamentary staff and MPs, and scholars and students of parliamentary development. Website navigation is more intuitively organized, offering easy access to a wider array of knowledge products.
December saw a further expansion of the content available on the platform. On 11 December 2020 it began hosting the new project website of Pro PALOP-TL SAI (agora-parl.org/pro-palop-tl-sai). This is a leading project which promotes democratic economic governance in the Portuguese Speaking Countries of Africa and the Pacific.
The catalogue of e-courses being hosted on its e-learning platform (learn.agora-parl.org) was expanded to include new courses on Oversight, Legislative Drafting and Climate change, These courses were developed as part of the INTER PARES project and will be of great benefit to both EU partner parliaments participating in INTER PARES, and ultimately parliaments and their interlocutors worldwide.
Looking forward to 2021, AGORA is planning to launch different language versions including: Arabic; French; Portuguese; and Spanish; building upon its past success as a platform with a global reach. The launch of each language version of AGORA is to be accompanied by webinars, inviting engagement of stakeholders of each respective language group operating in the field of parliamentary development. Further plans for 2021 include the expansion of the thematic corners on the portal, focusing on specific aspects of parliamentary development which will add to the rich variety of content available.