“Without Haste, but Without Pause”: How Uruguay’s Parliament Is Approaching AI
At the IPU Assembly, Rodrigo Goñi Reyes, Speaker of Uruguay’s Chamber of Deputies, outlines Uruguay’s AI strategy, emphasizing regulation as an “enabling condition” for adoption. The approach highlights sequencing, institutional trust, and global coordination, offering a model for balancing innovation, risk management, and parliamentary modernization in the AI era.
From Use Cases to Institutional Choices
At the Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly, parliamentary leaders examined how legislatures are moving from isolated AI use cases to coordinated institutional strategies. Insights from Germany and the UK highlight challenges in governance, capacity-building, and aligning AI adoption with long-term transformation and legislative effectiveness.
Staff Remote Work in Parliaments: Uneven Starting Points
Insights from the Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly reveal how parliaments approach remote staff work, from advanced frameworks in the UK and Canada to infrastructure constraints in developing legislatures. The debate highlights trade-offs in flexibility, cybersecurity, productivity, and institutional resilience across uneven global starting points.
Where the Pacing Problem Becomes Visible
New research on UK MPs’ offices reveals how capacity constraints, fragmented systems, and rising expectations strain day-to-day representation. The findings highlight a growing “pacing problem,” where institutional support lags behind technological and civic demands.
Who Shapes the First Interpretation? A Fork in the Logic of Legislative Work
As large language models enter legislative workflows, a critical question emerges: who shapes the first interpretation of policy issues? AI may either centralize agenda-setting power or expand committees’ in-house analytical capacity, reshaping deliberation, transparency, and the balance between lawmakers and external influence.
Modernization by Experiment
An informal cross-party network of Members of the European Parliament is experimenting with new ways to make parliamentary debate more interactive. Through small procedural pilots, these MEPs are testing how institutional culture can evolve.
Reimagining Parliament Through Foresight
How can parliaments think beyond short electoral cycles? This post examines policy foresight efforts such as the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System, Finland’s Committee for the Future, and Estonia’s Foresight Centre, showing how scenario planning and AI-supported analysis help legislatures prepare for long-term change.
From Citizen Ideas to Bills
Brazil’s Senate is advancing digital democracy with a new AI tool that links citizen ideas directly to bill drafting. Public suggestions can now inform legislation even without meeting endorsement thresholds, and the system has already contributed to a bill on protections for children of domestic violence victims.
When Law Becomes Data: What Brazil’s LexML Reveals About Akoma Ntoso
What Brazil’s LexML reveals about the future of structured law—and what Akoma Ntoso makes possible when legislation becomes interoperable data. A conversation with Monica Palmirani on digital standards, institutional silos, and why legal infrastructure matters in the age of AI.
From Slip-Up to Solution: How AI Can Help Fix Lawmaking in Estonia
A single missing word in Estonia’s gambling tax law nearly made online casinos tax-free, exposing how fragile legislative drafting can be. The error also sparked fast civic innovation: a former government CIO built an AI tool in a day to scan draft bills for mistakes, showing how artificial intelligence can strengthen lawmaking, improve oversight, and help catch costly errors before they become policy.
Why Legislative Modernizers Need to Pay Attention to this New Wave of AI
Claude Opus 4.5, Claude Code, Gemini 3 Pro, and agentic AI introduce stronger reasoning, automation, and multimodal capabilities with direct relevance to legislative research, drafting, analytics, and internal systems. For legislative modernizers, the shift signals a move from experimentation to real operational use inside parliaments.
Seasonal Greetings and a 2025 Recap
ModParl closes out 2025 with a practical example of AI in action, spotlighting Anguilla’s House of Assembly and its new AI-powered Hansard and legislative website. We also look back on a year of legislative modernization — from Europe to Africa and Asia.
AI in Parliaments is a Journey, Not a Switch
A conversation with Andy Williamson of the Inter-Parliamentary Union examines why adopting AI in parliaments is a gradual institutional journey. Centered on the new Maturity Framework for AI in Parliaments, the conversation explores how legislatures can assess readiness, build governance and capacity, and focus on democratic impact while learning from peer institutions.
Parliaments as Living Information Systems
A global shift is underway as AI pushes parliaments to evolve from paper-bound institutions into fully digital, adaptive information systems. This post explores why past tech waves fell short, what today’s “pacing problem” means for democracy, and how coordinated international action can drive genuine digital transformation.
On Day Three: The Final Recommendations Shaping the Future of AI in Parliaments
On the final day of the Artificial Intelligence Conference in Kuala Lumpur, delegates adopted twelve early recommendations to guide responsible AI adoption in legislatures — from readiness assessments and governance frameworks to capacity-building, oversight, and shared learning across parliaments.
On Day Two: Parliaments Take Stock and Plan Next Steps on AI
The second day of the Artificial Intelligence Conference in Kuala Lumpur spotlighted early-stage experimentation, widening capacity gaps, and new tools like the IPU’s AI Maturity Framework as parliaments assess their progress and chart next steps for trustworthy AI adoption.
On Day One: Are Parliaments Preparing for AI — or Being Pulled by It?
A firsthand look from Kuala Lumpur at how parliaments worldwide are grappling with the rise of AI — and whether they’re steering the technology or being swept along by it. Day one of the Artificial Intelligence Conference included global lawmakers debating future scenarios developed by the IPU and POPVOX Foundation, the urgent need to keep humans in the loop, and the promise of AI to free legislators for deeper public engagement.
The Academic Edition
From the UK and Japan to Italy and beyond, a new wave of academic research is revealing how artificial intelligence is reshaping parliaments worldwide. The latest ModParl explores what AI means for trust, representation, and the human side of lawmaking.
When Legislators Meet AI
Inside the Athens Democracy Forum’s two-day Parliamentary Caucus on technology, trust, and the future of representation
On Missing Imagination
Reflections from the Athens Democracy Forum on AI, democracy, and the courage to rethink political institutions