[LINK] [UK] Parliament Begins to Digitise Lawmaking

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

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.


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Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
email:	 brd at iimetro.com.au
website: www.drbrd.com