Assessment of Parliament as an institution and Members of Parliament (MPs) is based on verifiable data that is derived from key public documents generated by the House. Among others, these documents include the Plenary Hansards, Committee Reports, Rules of Procedure and or letters of communication as documents of instruction to and from different officers or individuals in Parliament.

The Parliamentary Performance Scorecard (which is referred to in the document as “the Scorecard”) is therefore a public audit tool that is based on evidence-driven data and an independently generated research.

The design and focus of the Scorecard are premised on the fact that citizens as voters of MPs have a right to know if their representatives are debating, passing laws, overseeing the executive and appropriating resources in their favour or in the public interest. It is a tool that offers information for civic engagement, acts as a power platform to generate dialogue between MPs and the citizenry, a yardstick for tracking progress of a given five-year period of Parliament and an opportunity for a public record of findings and recommendations in the operations of Parliament. Such historical records can be used for policy analysis, academic teaching and research, knowledge accumulation and lessons for citizens and future leaders. Therefore, the value of the Scorecard exceeds its immediate benefit of just scoring Parliament as a governance institution or individual MPs.

OBJECTIVE OF PARLIAMENTARY SCORECARD

The Scorecard is a tool used to provide Ugandans with critical information about the performance of the institution of the Parliament of Uganda and their respective MPs on an annual basis. By placing in the hands of citizens evidenced based information, the Scorecard empowers citizens to monitor performance of their elected representatives on a regular basis. It enables citizens to remain active in holding their elected leaders publicly accountable as well as empower them to make informed choices at election time. It is based on the idea that it is possible for a people to work within the framework representative form of democracy and retain an active participation with authority to exercise demands for accountable and responsive leadership in between the electoral cycles. Specifically:

• The Scorecard offers objective, reliable, and transparent measures of how MPs perform in plenary sessions, the different Standing and Sessional Parliamentary Committees, and in their respective constituencies.
• When published, the Scorecard becomes a point of reference for disseminating accurate, objective and comprehensive information on MPs’ roles in Parliament.
• It is a platform that pivots the debate in society and stimulates understanding of the forms of governance in the two arms of Government that is the Executive and Legislature.