Open Standards, XML

Working group on Technological Options for Capturing and Reporting Parliamentary Proceedings

Parliamentary documents such as committee reports and texts of debates and hearings are fundamental records of the legislature. These documents must be prepared quickly, efficiently and accurately. They must be distributed easily and then amended, revised and redistributed just as easily. And they must be archived effectively to ensure availability and long-term preservation. The findings of the 2010 edition of the World e-Parliament Report indicate that timely public availability of such legislative records is a key ingredient for a more open, transparent and accountable legislature, and therefore a cornerstone of healthy parliamentary democracies.

Working Group on XML in Parliament

The World e-Parliament Report 2008 underlines the fact that there is an emerging effort among legislatures to use open standards such as XML for documents. There is also an increasing recognition that the use of open standards is valuable because it extends the accessibility of legislative documents, not only within the parliament, but between the legislature and the government, between parliaments and civil society, and among parliaments internationally. The World e-Parliament Report 2008 also recognizes, however, that there are significant challenges that must be addressed when implementing XML.

XML and Open Standards in Parliament

The World e-Parliament Report 2008 underlines the fact that there is an emerging effort among legislatures to use open standards such as XML for documents. There is also an increasing recognition that the use of open standards is valuable because it extends the accessibility of legislative documents, not only within the parliament, but between the legislature and the government, between parliaments and civil society, and among parliaments internationally. The World e-Parliament Report 2008 also recognizes, however, that there are significant challenges that must be addressed when implementing XML. The discussions at the Conference confirmed that there is a common appreciation of the need to work towards an increased sharing of experiences and lessons learned on the design and construction of XML schemas, as well as their deployment in support of document management practices and legislative processes. In light of the above on this section an overview is provided to selected papers, presentations and XML schemas that have been developed for deployment in Parliaments.

Presentations

09:00 - 09:30

Welcoming of participants
Venue: Reception of the József Antall building (JAN)

09:30 - 10:15

Opening Session

Speakers of EU Parliaments acknowledged the importance of open document standards for transparency

The Presidency Conclusions of the Conference of Speakers of the European Union Parliaments, held in Warsaw on 20-21 April 2012, recognized the role of open standards in providing better access to parliamentary information and activities, and at the same time called for the adoption of internationally agreed standards to favour the re-use of published data.

International Meeting: Achieving Greater Transparency in Legislatures through the Use of Open Document Standards

Date: 
Mon, 27/02/2012 - Wed, 29/02/2012

Read the Summary of the Meeting

Improvements in technology over the last decade offer parliaments new opportunities to foster the democratic values of transparency, openness and accountability. Making information available on a timely basis in machine readable and re-usable format has become a vital means for enhancing the transparency of legislative bodies and for improving public access to parliamentary documents. The use of open document standards is one of the essential and effective ways of achieving these goals through technology.
To address these challenges in an international context, the United Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the U.S. House of Representatives organized the event Achieving Greater Transparency in Legislatures through the Use of Open Document Standards. The International Meeting was held at the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. on 27, 28 and 29 February 2012.

U.S. House Administration Adopts New Posting Standards for House Documents

As part of the initiative to increase House transparency and improve access to legislative data, the Committee on House Administration adopted new standards that require all House legislative documents be published electronically in an open, searchable format on one centralized website.

Workshop "Standardisation for Normative Systems"

Date: 
Tue, 13/12/2011

Developing standard solutions is a very typical feature for the institutionalisation phase in the life‐cycle of new technologies, starting from applications for everyday business of larger groups of customers, but ending up with solutions even for specialized and complex business processes like the normative process. At the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, the time is ripe for standardisation even in the field of electronically supporting the normative system, or more specifically the normative process.

Workshop "Standardisation for Normative Systems"

Developing standard solutions is a very typical feature for the institutionalisation phase in the life‐cycle of new technologies, starting from applications for everyday business of larger
groups of customers, but ending up with solutions even for specialized and complex business processes like the normative process. At the beginning of the second decade of the 21st
century, the time is ripe for standardisation even in the field of electronically supporting the normative system, or more specifically the normative process.

White House releases IT Dashboard as open source code

Source: 
O'Reilly Radar
The White House has released the software code for its IT Dashboard and TechStat toolkit. The initiative was coordinated through Civic Commons, a code-sharing project incubated within Code for America that helps governments share technology for the public good, with support from OpenPlans.

Legislative XML Summer School LEX11 - Managing Legal Resources in the Semantic Web

Date: 
Tue, 06/09/2011 - Sat, 10/09/2011

The Summer School Lex programme of the 2011 Edition will take place on 5-10 September 2011 Ravenna, Italy, Faculty of Law. Also this year the Summer School LEX is hosted by the Universty of Bologna, Ravenna location with the scientific partnership of EUI, IDT, ITTIG, CIRSFID, CS and Leibniz Center for Law and with the support of LegalXML-OASIS.
Deadline for the early-bird registration: June 30th.

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor Call for New Data Standards to Make Congress More Open & Accountable

Source: 
U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor sent a letter to the Clerk of the House calling for the development and adoption of new electronic data standards to help make legislative information more open and Congress more accountable to the American people. A PDF of the letter can be found here.

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