[LINK] [UK] Parliament Begins to Digitise Lawmaking
Bernard Robertson-Dunn
brd at iimetro.com.au
Tue Jan 25 12:52:14 AEDT 2011
Parliament Begins to Digitise Lawmaking
Dan Jellinek
e-government bulletin
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=732
House of Commons administration officials have confirmed they are to
standardise digital data relating to the passing of new laws, in a move
that could “engage millions of people with what goes on inside
Parliament”, one analyst has told E-Government Bulletin.
The details come in documents published by analyst Richard Parsons on
his website, eDemocracyBlog.com . They originate from officials at the
‘Procedural data programme’, a project run by Parliamentary IT and
administration staff and managed by the House of Commons Commission (
http://bit.ly/gufhjF ), a group of six MPs including the Speaker John
Bercow and Leader of the House Sir George Young.
One document, ‘Vision for the legislative process’ (
http://bit.ly/hwTghp ), says Parliament will work towards use of a
common ‘open standardised digital format’ for presentation and
publication of all bills and legislation of both Houses, to help with
tagging and indexing of legislation and with access by search tools.
It also proposes the creation of an electronic template to create
potential draft amendments to legislation, by providing an accessible
interface to convert ideas for action such as the removal of a clause
from a Bill into the necessary official language.
“Only MPs can table amendments, and the template is not proposing to
change that, but it would allow other people to submit ideas for
amendments,” Parsons told EGB.
Parsons said the move links well with the government’s earlier proposal,
from summer 2010, to create a “Public Reading Stage” for Bills: a day
during a Bill’s committee stage when MPs would debate comments submitted
online by members of the public.
“I think they are a natural fit together – if you want to engage the
public with the process of bills, you have to have some kind of online
mechanism. What would be the alternative – to ask people to fax in
amendments?”
A second paper released by Parliamentary officials, headed ‘Procedural
data programme’ ( http://bit.ly/hKb7iv ), details plans to improve the
quality of the ‘XML’ document mark-up language in which Parliamentary
papers are released.
“The XML coming out of Parliament is a real pain to work with at the
moment,” Parsons said. “The mark-up they use is different between
houses, and makes it difficult to track clauses, amendments to clauses
and the outcome of votes.”
In future, XML will become the default format for all Parliamentary
information, he said. “Their data is now initially going to be stored as
XML, so the XML will become the original source, and the printed output
will be just one output.
“One of the things people in Parliament nearly always get criticised for
is being too slow with technology. With this project, they have got a
good chance of keeping ahead of quite a lot of organisations and keeping
step with government, which is embracing open data. It’s good for our
democratic infrastructure, with scope to really engage millions of
people with what goes on inside Parliament.”
The digital democracy charity MySociety has been running a ‘Free our
Bills’ campaign since March 2008, “to Gently Encourage Parliament to
Publish Bills in a 21st Century Way, Please. Now” (
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/freeourbills/ ).
House of Commons Commission member John Thurso MP also told MPs this
month that Commons officials have launched a pilot project on electronic
delivery of answers to Parliamentary questions ( http://bit.ly/emFgeN ).
The announcement came in response to a question from Liberal Democrat MP
Jo Swinson, who said she was “astonished to learn of the inefficient
process by which-in the 21st century-written answers are published in
Hansard.”
NOTE: Article originally published in E-Government Bulletin issue 327.
--
Regards
brd
Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
email: brd at iimetro.com.au
website: www.drbrd.com
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