Parliament: Vision for the legislative process

Below is the full text of a document setting out the UK Parliament's vision for the legislative process.

You might also be interested in the full text of the vision for the procedural data programme, and the post I wrote to accompany these two documents.

Introduction

1. Making legislation is one of the core tasks for Parliament. Our principal aim is to facilitate the smooth running of the legislative process for those directly involved in it. Subject to that, we envisage a range of improvements for a wide variety of users. We want to make the legislative process more transparent and more accessible, as well as easier to follow and easier to understand.

Practitioners

1. The legislative process is bicameral. We will cooperate fully at an operational level. We envisage an integrated IT system for the whole lifecycle of primary legislation, from before introduction to Royal Assent, and so far as possible from the drafting of Bills through pre-legislative scrutiny to publication of Acts of Parliament and on to post-legislative scrutiny. We will work towards a system which is not only integrated but which also takes full account of the needs of different users in the legislative process (e.g. drafter, amender, indexer, commentator, publisher, web centre, interested member of the public, etc).
2. We require swift and accurate incorporation of changes as a Bill progresses and seamless transmission of texts between the two Houses. We will ensure efficient business processes and value for money. We look forward to the prospect of shared legislative process staff. The "look" of papers in each House may continue to be different, but they will be based on common data standards, and we will actively promote convergence of stylistic conventions.
3. We envisage that practitioners both in Parliament and outside will increasingly use electronic texts for their work. But there will continue to be a need for hard copy for much use within Parliament. We envisage no difference in substance between electronic and printed texts, but potentially a wide variation of forms
4. 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.

Accessibility

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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).
5. 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.
6. 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.