Building the Future of Parliaments, Together: Digital Parliaments Project 2026 Q2 Convening Progress Report
Every quarter, the Digital Parliaments Project (DPP) convenes clerks, Hansard secretaries, parliamentary staff, advisors, and partners from its global cohort for a virtual session covering progress updates, shared resources, and community exchange. The Q2 2026 quarterly convening was held on June 5, 2026.
Below is a full summary of what we covered.
DPP Q2 2026 Quarterly Convening — June 5, 2026
ParlLink Platform Updates
ParlLink, POPVOX Foundation’s AI-powered platform standardizing legislative data, keeps expanding in its functionality. POPVOX Foundation Executive Director, Marci Harris, walked the cohort through the latest platform developments, including a new bulk upload feature requested by partner parliaments in our last quarterly call. Bulk upload lets parliaments move significantly more of their paper-based document backlog into ParlLink in less time, accelerating the digitization work central to DPP’s mission.
The call also featured a live API Explorer demonstration showing partners how structured parliamentary data can surface through public-facing tools and websites. Once parliaments digitize and structure data in ParlLink, they can make it publicly accessible through their own websites.
Formalizing the Foundation: The ParlLink Data Agreement
POPVOX Foundation provided an overview of the ParlLink Data Agreement: its purpose, what it covers, and how partners can find and formally accept it within the platform once it is live.
Partner parliaments received materials ahead of the call; this session gave the cohort space to ask questions and discuss as a group. Formalizing this agreement advances DPP’s trust-based, co-created framework: one that treats data ownership as belonging to the parliament.
New Resources Built for Partners
Every resource the POPVOX Foundation team produces comes directly from conversations with partners. When a parliament surfaces a need, that need then becomes a publicly available resource.
The Q2 call highlighted several new resources built on exactly that principle:
The ORDER prompting guide and the ACT prompting guide offer practical frameworks for getting stronger results from AI tools. ORDER targets general-purpose LLMs like ChatGPT or Claude; ACT is built specifically for ParlLink’s AI Document Chat and is accessible on the ParlLink dashboard. Both give users a clear structure for asking questions and getting the most out of their AI queries.
DPPLink, the project’s bimonthly internal newsletter, is live and circulating across the full DPP community. Any partner parliament or organization with a milestone, update, or story to share can submit content to share across the DPP network.
Several AI 101 explainers are also available on the POPVOX Foundation website, offering short and accessible explanations of key AI concepts designed for staff and MPs.
What’s Ahead: A Very Full Summer
The second half of 2026 is packed for the DPP community. The call walked through what’s coming month by month:
June
In addition to the quarterly call, the POPVOX Foundation team is cohosting a webinar on parliamentary modernization focusing on African parliaments, in partnership with Westminster Foundation for Democracy and AFRIPAL.
POPVOX Foundation is also releasing a customized Squarespace manual this month. This resource walks parliaments through how to use ParlLink’s API Explorer to surface their data on a public-facing website. For parliaments building a new site from scratch, the manual provides step-by-step directions for creating a website. For parliaments that have a pre-existing website, the API Explorer works across platforms beyond Squarespace as well. The manual is available upon request.
July
DPP officially launches in the Balkans. This brings multilingual functionality to ParlLink. Core to the DPP ethos: when one parliament helps unlock a new capability, every parliament benefits.
August
DPP officially launches in Africa, through partnerships with AFRIPAL, PNAfrica, and partners across the continent.
September
DPP returns to where it started: Miami. POPVOX Foundation, in collaboration with House Democracy Partnership and ParlAmericas, will organize the Caribbean Parliamentary Modernization Summit. It marks two years since the original convening that launched this project. The Summit will focus on institutional AI in parliaments: skill-building, mapping AI use cases in legislatures, and a forward-looking conversation about what comes next for DPP in the Caribbean.
A Growing Community of Practice
The DPP is a project that began with a single question around legislative modernization; it now has active partners spanning the Caribbean, the Balkans, and Africa. That community of clerks, Hansard secretaries, partner organizations, and parliamentary staff forms the foundation of the Digital Parliaments Project. We’re grateful to everyone who showed up for Q2 and look forward to reconnecting in September.
To learn more about the Digital Parliaments Project or to inquire about future phases, reach out to Chloe at chloe@popvox.org.