LEGIS-PALOP, building a CPLP Legal Database

Context

The LEGIS-PALOP is the legal database of the Portuguese Speaking African Countries, Project funded through the EDF and IPAD since 2008. The DB was designed to collect, classify and make widely available the legal production of this group of countrieswith a viewto strengthen the capacity of the judiciary institutions and enhance investment environment byimproving investors’ knowledge of the legal context and hence their risk perceptions. It compriseslegislation, jurisprudence and doctrine, including legislation prior to independence but in use.

Development Results

As the LEGIS-PALOP needs to be regularly updated, each country had to establish a national Technical, Operational and Management Unit (UTOG), which has received training on data classification, storage and insertion in the database, as well as users’ management and dissemination and marketing. The number of users of the LEGIS-PALOP is currently nearly 4.000 and the number of paid subscriptions about 140.

The consultancy company who designed the DBhas been training the UTOG teams. Some countries, including Angola and Cape Verde have been able to assume the cost of the training courses provided to their national UTOG teams and all assume the payrollto maintain the system updated (paid subscriptions do not as yet guarantee the financial sustainability of the system). These UTOG teams are fully operational to maintain the system updated.

A regional UTOG team to monitor the national cells is also being trained. Having in mind the risk of prevailing financial constraints, the Ministries of Justice of the five Lusophone African countries have decided that this regional team should be based at the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP).

Enhanced performance

The national Technical, Operational and Management teams that are expected to assume the tasks undertaken to date by the consulting company have been designated and formally approved by national authorities. The UTOG teams comprise technical experts from different national entities (i.e. Ministries of Justice, National Printing Offices, Lawyers Associations, others) but these will report to the Ministries of Justice which are the legal owners of the DB.

At least two countries, Angola and Cape Verde, have been able to acquire capacity to undertake some of the tasks previously performed by the consulting company, such as classification of legal documents and its insertion into the system and management of database users and subscription, as a result of the training courses provided by the company, which also provides technical support on demand. Mozambique has also been making progress in building the UTOG team’s capacity; Guinea-Bissau and São Tomee Príncipe need further assistance.

The LEGIS-PALOP database has now available more than 40 thousand entries, from legislation published after independence (36.849), legislation published prior to independence and still in use (4.725), jurisprudence (4.787), doctrine and legal documents (1.377) and thesaurus (3.652). It has been allowing: i) lawmakers to access and find solutions (to their own legal regimes) in comparative law; ii) academics to use the DB as a law and legal information source; iii) investors to conceive their investment plans in line with the different national requisites and therefore ensure greater transparency and risk reduction.

Support to the capacity development process

a)National investments

Countries were aware of the importance of LEGIS-PALOP information sharing system and are committed to the UTOG teams’ led autonomy. All promoted the legal existence of the UTOG teamsto perform updating, dissemination and marketing activities.

In addition, to ensure the undertaking of regional management tasks, including the supervision of the UTOG teams’ work, the management of international users and subscriptions, among others, the Ministers of Justice of the 5 countries so far involved in the Project have decided to establish a regional UTOG team at the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP).

b)Development partners’ support

The LEGIS-PALOP database came into being as part of the PIR PALOP (9th) EDF funded project “Support to the Consolidation of the Judiciary Systems in the Portuguese Speaking African Countries”. As the system was not yet fully operational by the end the EDF cycle, subsequent work has been supported by IPAD. With the exception of the coreusers – including judiciary institutions and prison services, justice officials, magistrates, national printing offices, lawyers associations and Universities, among others – and in order to ensure the sustainability of the LEGIS-PALOP, access to some legal information requires subscription fees.

The view was to build national capacity and foster financial responsibility to bring up country owned UTOG management cells, which has been successful in what national technical capacity is concerned but only to some extent on financial autonomy. Hopefully, bringing the Project into CPLP hosting might prove to be a suited decision on the ground of ownership fostering for a Projectwith multinational stakeholders, as the Organisation’s political activity might provide the leverage for scaling up advocacy to the Ministries of Justice.

1