Parliamentary Internship Programs:   IAG’s sees potential in strengthening the link between academic research and expertise and policy formation and implementation. To this end, the parliamentary internship program which allows graduate students in Addis Ababa University to take part in a 12 month internship program at the Federal House of People’s Representatives (HRP), has been one of IAG’s highly successful programs that now is being duplicated at 3 regional universities and councils. Bridging these two institutions has helped bolster the technical capacity of the government bodies while giving promising students the ability to gain relevant work experience. In 2009, 31 students recruited from different graduate programs at AAU worked with the Standing Committees and the Research, Documentation and Publication Center of the HPR. At the regional level, 16 students from Bahar Dar University in the Amhara Region, 10 students from Mekele University in Tigray and 14 students from Hawassa University in SNNP worked with various standing committees in the regional councils, providing input on draft policies, reviewing documents and in some cases conducting groundbreaking primary research leading to critical examinations of existing policies.