The delegation of the Parliamentary Division of the Kingdom of Bahrain participated in a virtual event organized by the Inter-Parliamentary Union on Wednesday as part of the Empowerment Series for Young Parliamentarians, on the uses of artificial intelligence in the areas of parliamentary work, and how to harness its tools to help young parliamentarians save time and work more efficiently and preparedly, which is reflected in the quality of legislative outputs.
Lawyer Dalal Jassim Al-Zayed, Chairman of the Legislative and Legal Affairs Committee of the Shura Council and member of the Committee on Respect for International Humanitarian Law of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, gave a presentation in which she reviewed the achievements and efforts of the Shura and Representatives Councils in the field of employing artificial intelligence in parliamentary work, explaining that the Kingdom of Bahrain views artificial intelligence as a developmental path to reformulate the mechanisms and tools of parliamentary work, which contributes to enhancing the efficiency of legislative, oversight and diplomatic performance, and building an integrated knowledge environment that supports research and analysis. Preparing specialized parliamentary studies and memos, in addition to qualifying national competencies capable of employing these techniques to serve parliamentary work.
Al-Zayed indicated in her presentation that the legislative authority has implemented a set of qualitative initiatives in this field, including the development of the legislative knowledge environment, explaining that artificial intelligence has become a supportive tool for parliamentarians in various legislative tasks, by facilitating access to comparative legislation and international parliamentary experiences, rapid access to information from parliaments and international organizations, and extracting the most important results and recommendations from lengthy reports and documents, as well as contributing to the preparation of parliamentary speeches, questions, and statements. Pointing to the important role of artificial intelligence in supporting parliamentary diplomacy by preparing profile files for countries and organizations, preparing international participation files, and providing simultaneous translation services to enhance communication with foreign delegations and international bodies.
Al-Zayed reviewed the most prominent achievements of the legislative authority in the field of artificial intelligence, which included the use of cybersecurity protection and monitoring systems supported by artificial intelligence, completing the comprehensive digitization of administrative procedures in the general secretariats of the Shura and Representatives Councils, adopting a strategy for digital transformation and artificial intelligence and a five-year roadmap, in addition to providing full readiness to hold sessions of the two councils and committee meetings in person or remotely, and benefiting from smart services provided via cloud servers in the areas of business continuity, recovery from crises, research and analysis, and the establishment of platforms. Specialized digital platform for managing knowledge sources and legislative documents.
Al-Zayed pointed to the advanced results achieved by the legislative authority in digital maturity indicators, as the Shura Council ranked first in the Arab world and thirteenth in the world in the digital maturity index issued by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, while the House of Representatives obtained the ISO 42001:2023 certificate in the management of artificial intelligence, which reflects the level of institutional and digital progress achieved by the legislative authority in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
Al-Zayed stressed that building human capabilities represents one of the basic foundations of this journey, through implementing specialized training programs and workshops to raise the efficiency of employees in using artificial intelligence applications to support parliamentarians, enhancing their readiness to benefit from these tools in legislative work, and spreading the culture of innovation, digital transformation, and integration between human expertise and modern technologies.
She indicated that the Kingdom of Bahrain is moving towards issuing a special law to regulate artificial intelligence, guided by the European project and the Arab guiding law, to ensure the responsible, safe and transparent use of these technologies, and to enhance confidence in democratic institutions, stressing that artificial intelligence will remain a supportive tool for parliamentarians, while political, legislative and moral responsibility remains primarily a human responsibility, and that the exchange of experiences between parliaments constitutes an important foundation for developing more modern and effective legislative practices.
