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Parliament’s annual report for 2014/2015, tabled on Friday, provides a snapshot of key achievements of the national legislature.

One of these has been a review of the Rules and orders to reflect established practices in Parliament, which, although still underway, contributed to providing coherence in policy implementation.

Parliament also strengthened implementation of its model of oversight and accountability, resulting in improved oversight over the Executive and accountability of the Executive to Parliament. One of the ways in which this occurs is through questions. The President, Deputy president and Ministers responded to a total of 4 007 of the 4 822 questions put by Members of Parliament in the National Assembly (NA) and to 519 out of 549 questions in the National Council of Provinces (NCOP).

A total of 290 House resolutions adopted by the NA were communicated to the Executive and other relevant parties, while in the NCOP the number of resolutions was 41. Nine out of 12 bills introduced were debated and passed and a total of 12 bills were passed.

The work of the Houses and Committees was made accessible to the public through 267 feeds to the media and 4 611 broadcasted and non-broadcasted sittings. A total of 1 462 978 unique visitors to the Parliamentary website indicates that the public are interested in the work of Parliament and Parliament will continue and improve its efforts to extend its reach and access to the public, diversification of its platforms and the ability to provide feed of sittings in real time.

Parliament appointed a new Secretary to Parliament during the period reviewed, who has provided leadership to improve strategy formulation and execution, including use of resources to enhance Parliament’s performance in achieving its outcome-oriented goals.

The establishment of the fifth democratic Parliament during the 2014/2015 financial year provided the opportunity for the administration to outline the 2014-19 strategy of Parliament, flowing from the policy priorities determined by Parliament’s Executive Authority and the broader leadership of Parliament. In August Parliament tabled its annual performance plan for 2015/16 to 2017/18 and draft annual performance plan for 2016/17 to 2018/19. Parliament received a clean audit from the Auditor General for the 2014/2015 financial year - after receiving unqualified audits since 2006/2007.

To read the annual report on Parliament’s website click http://tinyurl.com/og6rugq

Issued by Parliament of RSA