The Legislative Assembly's official website is now back online with new features after it went offline in April this year to cut off a vital service for the public. 

The new website www.palemene.ws is content-rich and reader-friendly when compared to the old platform. Added features include "This week in Parliament", "How is the Parliament of Samoa structured", and "What are the main functions of the Parliament of Samoa". 

However, it is understood the main sections of the new-look website are still under construction with official records such as Bills, Acts, Committee Reports, Annual Reports, and the Hansard still offline. 

Attempts by the Samoa Observer to get a comment from the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly, Satama Uitime Tala on the work being done on the website were unsuccessful. In July this year, he confirmed the website had been offline due to problems with the server. 

Satama said at that time that the Legislative Assembly had to wait for funding from the recently passed 2023-2024 budget which was given a budgetary allocation to purchase a new server to power the website. The Parliament approved a budget of SAT$8.227 million for the Office of the Legislative Assembly 

“Our IT personnel are working on it and have been instructed to give priority to it,” said Satama. 

The Clerk also noted they had been contacted by many law firms and companies who use their website as a point of reference for their research references of legislation. 

Prior to the website going offline, it was updated regularly and had all official information on the Parliament proceedings, procedures and other related activities.