I've written before on this blog about how frustrating it is that governmental technology projects dominate while those that are related to our democratic infrastructure seem so often to lose out.
But I've been fascinated and delighted to hear over the last week or so about some changes that the authorities in Parliament are introducing, and which, to be fair, they have been working on for some time.
The proposals are outlined in two documents setting out the vision for the procedural data programme and for the legislative process.
The overall aim of the work being undertaken is summed up in this quote:
"We want to make the legislative process more transparent and more accessible, as well as easier to follow and easier to understand."
Parts of the change programme are already implemented, such as linking the names of peers on the Lords Order Paper to their profiles and relevant information from their Register of Interests.
Opening up the process
From an eDemocracy perspective, one of the most exciting individual proposals is to open up the procedure relating to amendments to legislation.
Amendments are tabled by MPs or peers, but in practice of course amendments are sometimes supplied to them by interested parties such as campaign groups and trade associations which have the knowledge of the legislative process needed to write such technical changes.
But the proposals to reform this process could bring about a significant improvement in openness and transparency:
"We will enable all users, including parliamentary staff, Members and their staff, and any outside body or individual to draft amendments in a publicly available template."
This is exactly the kind of technological development which could be used to make the proposed 'public reading stage' for legislation really effective.
Item 3.6.ii in the Cabinet Office business plan (December delivery deadline missed but details now due this month) commits the government to giving the public "an opportunity to comment on proposed legislation online for use in a dedicated 'public reading day' within a Bill's committee stage".
It seems to be rather lucky for ministers that Parliament is working to put in place the infrastructure which could be used to deliver on that, and I hope the two can be joined up so that amendments can be proposed online by the public and then considered by MPs at the committee stage.
I'm not sure that the Parliamentary system will go quite as far as the initial Conservative election proposals, though, which suggested that online comments about the drafting of legislation would be "open to review, comment and amendment from other registered participants, and participants will be encouraged to rate all submissions". However, that suggestion did seem to relate more to discussion of a Bill before it gets presented to Parliament.
Opening up the data
Another important step is to improve the way in which Parliament makes information about legislation available to those who want to make use of it*.
This has long been an ambition of My Society and its 'Free Our Bills' campaign, which has highlighted the importance of publishing legislation in ways which allow others to make use of it. This campaign was also supported by a report from the Lords information committee which said that parliamentary information "should be produced and made available online in an open standardised electronic format that enables people outside Parliament to analyse and re-use the data".
The parliamentary data programme aims to ensure that:
"Our procedural data systems will receive and provide data in a form that is sufficiently standardised (essentially, XML) to facilitate automated data re-purposing."
As well as making processes simpler inside Parliament, the data improvements will also help those outside Parliament who want to make use of it, as well as allowing Parliament to present better information to the public and media through its own website.
Here are more of the details on the accessibility of information, with some key ideas highlighted:
"We wish the legislative process to be genuinely accessible to observers and practitioners alike, through procedural and narrative text, linked where possible. We look forward to full links to associated information from parliamentary committees, Government departments and other sources.
"Some of the enhanced accessibility and transparency we envisage is for others to provide and for Parliament to enable. In other respects, we see a role for Parliament to provide improved explanation and commentary. We also see Parliament as having a duty to improve access to parliamentary proceedings for people with disabilities.
"We will produce legislative information in an open standardised digital format that enables use and reuse internally and externally. Users will be able to discover what has been and has not been debated and/or decided on specific propositions and also on specific issues. This will benefit all those following a particular piece of legislation and also those interested in particular subjects.
"We want to see the consistent provision of high quality commentary on legislative texts. We see value in reviewing the current diversity of texts that currently describe the content and progress of Bills (e.g. the Government’s explanatory notes and the texts produced within Parliament which provide background and a narrative of progress).
"We see the legislative process as needing more helpful subject tagging and indexing than at present in order to give greater prominence to the subjects within Bills and to facilitate search services.
"There will be an improvement in the service Parliament offers to the media on explaining the legislative process. We will work to extend that service so as to make it easier to follow the progress of individual bills and to follow the subjects contained within the legislation that the two Houses are debating."
Why data matters
From where Parliament has been over the last few years when it comes to open data, this is a huge step forward and could allow many more services which make it easier for members of the public to find out about legislation as it progresses through Parliament.
So although the changes might seem technical, I would expect them to lead to a big increase in public engagement with Parliament – even within current limitations, TheyWorkForYou had two million visitors in 2007.
Indeed, the importance of open data to parliaments around the world was also highlighted in a report by the European Parliament's Office for Promotion of Parliamentary Democracy. It said:
"Providing the authoritative history of actions taken on bills is one of the keys to fulfilling a parliament's obligations for documenting the legislative process and creating a permanent publicly accessible archive that enables citizens to judge the actions of parliament. Combining the full range of legislative information into a coherent system that serves as the authoritative knowledge base for the parliament enables members and the public to retrieve the information they seek in an accurate and timely way.
"By using IT to manage legislative documents and other internal information resources, parliaments are able to build a knowledge resource that makes them operate more efficiently, legislate more effectively and provide the public with information they need to hold their elected officials accountable.
"Using open standards for legislative documents greatly facilitates these capabilities by easing the exchange and re-use of documents, linking various related resources, ensuring long-term preservation and improving citizen access.
"For this reason, it is critical to adopt open standards in the design of legislative information systems to ensure that they can achieve the goals parliaments have articulated for transparency and knowledge management."
The report lists a range of benefits from the use of such open standards:
- Open standards make it easier to exchange documents between individuals and organisations.
- Search engines can provide more accurate results and users can formulate more precise queries if data is tagged for its specific content.
- Open standards allow links among legislative documents to be created automatically and even have the potential, depending on the depth of tagging, to support linking between elements within documents.
- A source document tagged with an open standard could be used to produce different appearances of a bill such as for an online website, a paper copy, or a version modified to be incorporated into another document.
- Tagging standards can be used to encourage or even enforce proper formatting so that members and others who prepare texts do not have to know the exact conventions used when they draft bills or amendments.
- Open standards can be demanding to use but once understood they can ease the effort required to prepare a bill or amendment by guiding the drafter through the required formatting steps.
- One of the most important uses of open standards is to ensure the long-term preservation of documents.
Moving forward
So Parliament is moving in a direction where it can realise benefits such as these.
But more than that, it should be able to provide better services to the public, make more effective use of the vast amount of information it has by joining it up better, allow third parties to use that data more effectively to innovate with new services, and increase opportunities for public participation in the core work of Parliament.
No projects such as this are ever easy or without their problems, but overall I think this could be a very big step forward for UK eDemocracy.
*Declaration of interest: My employers also have an interest in the quality of XML feeds that Parliament produces.
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