March 5, 2011 By Edward Amartey-Tagoe
I took some time to compare two websites; the UK parliament website and the Ghana parliament one. I must admit I was somewhat impressed with the improvement made on the Ghana parliament website. I however fell for the UK parliament website for three main reasons.
Parliament.uk is more current
LONDON – LOOKING TOWARDS CHELSEA HARBOUR
The Ghana parliament website was not as current as the UK one. On parliament.gh, the most current news was about the finance minister’s budget reading. The budget was actually presented by the minister in November 2010, how could that be news then? The Hansard page was more current though. The website had published official parliament report up to 28th January 2011.
The UK parliament website was as current as the day I checked. It had a report on ‘’‘Alternative Vote’ Bill report stage: day three’’. I would suggest to whoever is the webmaster of parliament.gh to be more current, so that individuals interested in Ghanaian legislature would have more reasons to visit parliament.gh
Parliament.uk is more interactive
Parliament.uk presented me with some options to engage and keep me interested. There were options for e-mail alert sign-up, RSS feed, and a host of social media buttons such as Facebook, twitter, flickr etc. The Ghana version only had RSS feed options, all the other the social media features were conspicuously missing on the parliament.gh website and the Publications, Archives and Research pages was emptyL. In an age when the internet is all about going social, I am wondering what it will take the Ghana parliament to start considering such options.
Parliament.uk is more detailed
I thought I could find some more details about the parliament of Ghana. There wasn’t much for me to educate myself with. I tried digging into the institutions’ processes and background, on parliament.gh, I could only find the history of parliament from 1850 to 1993. As though Parliament of Ghana ceased operations after 1993.
Guess what I found on the UK parliament website!! How Parliament works, About MPs, Lords &officers, FAQs, Art in Parliament and even a section for Jobs.
Share your own thoughts below…