The Max Planck Foundation organised a three-day workshop for officials of the Department of Legislative Services.
In close consultation with the Parliament of Sri Lanka, with the guidance and approval of the Honourable (Dr) Jagath Wickramaratne, Speaker of Parliament and support of the Secretary-General, the Foundation successfully delivered a capacity-building workshop for officials and staff of the Department of Legislative Services on ‘Best Practices for Parliamentary Research and Legislative Scrutiny’.
The workshop, which took place between 29 September and 1 October 2025, marked the Foundation’s second engagement with the Parliament of Sri Lanka. It complemented the discussion series for Members of the reconstituted Sectoral Oversight Committees held in May 2025.
Building on Parliament’s efforts to enhance institutional capacities for mobilising high-quality research assistance to support and inform parliamentary business, the workshop brought together more than 30 officials from the Department of Legislative Services serving in the Research Division (Library) and Committee Office including the Committee on Public Accounts, Committee on Public Petitions, Committee on Public Enterprises, Sectoral Oversight Committee and Ministerial Consultative Committees.
The workshop discussed how research feeds into parliament, the forms of research support considered most useful for parliamentary work, and the role of committee and research staff as key knowledge brokers for providing non-partisan, credible and evidence-based research. Participants were first introduced to foundational principles for parliamentary research and effective methodologies for research planning, data collection, and analysis.
Subsequent sessions addressed the practical ways by which committee and research staff can routinely support legislative work. In particular, it discussed the guiding principles, comparative standards and techniques for assessing legislation and the potential impact of Bills, including their compliance with core rule of law indicators.
Exercises and group work encouraged participants to apply the tools, standards and best practices to case studies which were drawn from comparative parliamentary contexts. Sessions also discussed ethical standards in parliamentary research and comparative practice for quality control in the production of knowledge products tailored to parliamentary needs and purposes.
The officials, representing different divisions within the Department of Legislative Services, engaged actively in the programme, reflecting on the comparative examples and demonstrating a deeper understanding of parliamentary research and technical support for scrutiny work. The interactive format further encouraged peer learning, synergies and knowledge exchange across the different divisions.
The Foundation’s technical assistance to the Parliament of Sri Lanka is tailored to support Parliament’s own efforts to strengthen institutional capacities for effective legislative scrutiny and oversight through technical consultations, tailored capacity-building initiatives and technical legal advice on parliamentary procedure. This cooperation is made possible through the German Federal Foreign Office-funded project, Consolidating the Rule of Law in Sri Lanka: Strengthening the Resilience of Democratic Institutions to Promote Stability in the Face of Crises.