From E-Parliament Wiki
Introduction
The Working Group on XML in Parliament intends to develop a set of Guidelines for Implementing XML-based Parliamentary Document Recording and Management Systems based on best practices and experiences from Parliaments that have managed to develop and implement XML based systems to record and manage parliamentary documentation such as bills, proceedings, amendments and produce Hansards and other documents.
The Guidelines will address the critical pre-conditions that should exist in a parliament before embarking on the endeavor to implement XML-based systems. It will elaborate which minimum capabilities and capacities should exist and it will discuss the relevance of political support in this process. The latter is especially important since XML based implementations are often characterized by their complexity and their tendency to grow into multi-year implementations beyond the initial planning and expectations.
The Guidelines will try to explain the factors behind the complexity and will try to suggest how to manage these implementations of this kind by a more modular approach, ideally yielding immediate visible benefits at the end of each stage.
Adding to this the Guidelines will discuss how to approach the planning process and implementation of XML based systems in terms of what roadmap(s) could be available, for both parliaments with legacy skills, processes and systems, and parliaments that start from scratch.
Building on this the Guidelines will address the issue of bringing the new technologies, processes and systems successfully to the user communities, and how change can be managed through the appropriate roll-out strategies that enable a smooth adoption of new skills and technology, and put into place the necessary user support and organizational learning systems.
Outline
In summary the proposed (!) outline of the Guidelines could be as follows:
Legal XML: rationale, goals, features
Pre-conditions
- A clear vision for XML in parliament
- Political support
- Minimum threshold capabilities & capacities (Are you fit for XML?)
Planning and Implementation
- For parliaments with legacy skills and system'
- For developing parliaments
- Modular approaches and visible benefits
- Building blocks of XML in parliament
- Editors
- Schemas
Adoption of Technology and Change Management
- User communities
- Technology adoption
- Support systems
- Organizational learning
- Chamber of Deputies of Brazil
- United States Senate
- <chamber name>
(!)After the outline is finalized by the working group, the wiki pages to the chapters will be created.
Audience
The primary audience of the Guidelines are key decision makers in parliament on ICT systems and solutions on both the political and administrative level, as well as senior members of the ICT department who are charged with leading XML implementation projects. The Guidelines are intended to be very practical and are therefore (mostly) authored by fellow key decision makers and senior ICT project leads.
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