Shri Om Birla, the Lok Sabha Speaker, urged BRICS parliaments to promote ethical, responsible, and transparent technology during the ongoing 12th BRICS Parliamentary Forum. He highlighted several digital initiatives by the Indian parliament and discussed the importance of human oversight in technology.
Lok Sabha Speaker Shri Om Birla has urged BRICS Parliaments to champion ethical, responsible, and transparent technology with paramount human oversight. The call came during the Plenary Sessions of the ongoing 12th BRICS Parliamentary Forum. In his address, Shri Birla emphasized that BRICS nations, representing approximately half of the world's population, share a collective responsibility to use technology ethically while safeguarding parliamentary sovereignty and fostering mutual cooperation.
Earlier in the day, Shri Birla inaugurated the forum where he outlined several digital innovations introduced by the Parliament of India to improve legislative capacity, transparency, efficiency, and public access. These initiatives include secure digital platforms providing MPs with online access to questions, answers, and prompt government department responses; multilingual initiatives offering the daily List of Business in 10 languages – with ongoing work toward all 22 scheduled languages – and simultaneous interpretation in 22 languages.
Shri Birla also highlighted archival digitization of pre- and post-independence parliamentary debates equipped with metadata and video-search facilities; 24/7 online access to research papers alongside home delivery of books from the Parliament Library; and paperless governance initiatives utilizing the National e-Vidhan Application (NeVA) and the 'One Nation, One Legislative Platform' to connect legislatures and enable live streaming of proceedings, debates, budgets, and law-making information.
In his address, Shri Birla spoke about India's globally recognized Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), which empowers citizens, promotes financial inclusion, and ensures transparent benefit transfers directly to bank accounts to reduce corruption. Stressing that technology must be responsible, accountable, and human-centric, he noted that advanced technology must align with human sensitivities, ethical values, and dignity, keeping human oversight paramount.
Source:
Press Information Bureau
