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LINGERING ISSUES
Email responses (4.2.B):
Some members are concerned about the burden of responding to email; others feel that email from citizens demand responses. The guidelines call for tools to facilitate responding to email efficiently. There is disagreement about how this can and should be accomplished within our own Working Group and also within the larger technical community. This is a good example of a guideline that should evolve over time as more tools are developed that do help members manage their email in way that is useful to them and responsive to citizens. But at this moment, I do not think we can be more explicit.
[RC: I agree]
[GS: leave it as it is in your text]
Open document standards, need to define:
I did not define these further, but used XML, which is recommended by the W3C as an open standard, as the primary example throughout.
Organizing by responsibilities of the legislature:
There was not a consensus about whether to arrange the guidelines into the three major responsibilities of the legislature (legislation, oversight, and representation) in addition the three broad categories already in use (content, tools, and management).
I did add guidelines for including material that explained these three responsibilities. I think it would be possible to provide a tag for each guideline indicating what responsibility it related to primarily, but I do want to delay our work while I do this. It will be a “further enhancement to consider at a later time”.
[RC: I think that what we have now works well and does not need futher restructuring]
Publicity (6.5):
No additional ideas were put forth. I edited the language based on the comments received previously.
Technical methods not specified:
Several members suggested specific technical solutions for inclusion or as examples. Because these can change over time and may vary in their applicability to specific parliamentary technical environments, I appreciated the suggestions but chose not to include them.
Duplication:
There are some places of possible duplication. Please see the comments in the following sections of version 3 of the guidelines:
2.4.C-E
2.5.C-D
3.1.B
6.4.B
[GS: I think you can leave it as it is now.]