Laws assume full meaning only when the conditions surrounding their creation are understood and when placed in the context of the broader legal framework that they modify. As the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament’s 2010 World e-Parliament Report notes, “To understand the status and meaning of a bill, members and citizens need the associated reports prepared by the committees, subject experts and others; descriptions of all the actions taken on the legislation; amendments proposed and their status; links to parliamentary debate and votes on the bill, and other related material” (p. 60). But the impact of a law depends on its role within the greater body of law. In the absence of context, a law is like a puzzle piece without a puzzle.
Assembling all of these materials sounds overwhelmingly difficult. And for most of human history, it has been. The barriers to understanding legal information - check out BillTrack50 for a fun look at the most basic barrier, bill length - have rendered lawyers and legal researchers necessary in most societies, even for conducting basic legal actions, along with high-powered, high-priced legal databases.
Providing parliamentary information in open and structured formats reduces the barriers to citizen use of legal information. How? Open and structured documents have properties underlying the visible information, such as metadata, that allow machines to recognize various characteristics about the document – including its title, whether it’s a bill or transcript, and even its contents in many instances. The presence of this structured information allows technologists to apply software that enable computers to identify and link these documents, or even their components or subcomponents. This enhances the power of all citizens – not just professionals or those who can afford it – to parse parliamentary information and use the law.
On its NosDeputes website, which displays the work of members of France’s National Assembly, Regards Citoyens has developed a tool (pictured above) that tries to create and exploit linked data from text publications in order to help “simplify the law.” The premise, as they explain it in French, is also simple. Here’s a translation:
The progress of adoption of a project or proposition of law by the two chambers is long. Each law is discussed, amended and voted, article by article, in committee, then in plenary; the debated texts are often difficult to understand.
To aid in their comprehension, “Let’s simplify the law 2.0” gives access to each article of a variety of texts, as well as amendments proposed by parliamentarians. When the text voids, modifies or references an existing law, a link to the latter permits us to comprehend the article or amendment proposed. The text discussed is supplemented by the explanations of its authors. It can also be understood and commented upon line-by-line by citizens, during and after the debates.
Its valuable to highlight that in addition to linking the critical information sources, the annotation tool developed for public commenting encourages concrete discussion and debate. In addition to commenting on the text, visitors may also critique the utility of other comments, which can help keep the website clean and focused.
While French legislation is available as formatted data, it is not open; the right of access and reuse must be purchased (see Declaration on Parliamentary Openness Provision 34). Regards Citoyens relies instead on unstructured parliamentary documents that are not confined by copyright. Through using text analysis and other tools, Regards Citoyens is still able to automate the linking of these various texts, although with less accuracy than could be achieved if France’s legislative data were fully open and freely accessible.
Although Regards Citoyens is not confined to the laborious revision process faced by Gregor Aisch in the previous volume of this series, opening legislative information would enhance Regards Citoyens’ ability to help provide citizens with the types of tools that would improve their ability to engage the law.
The Declaration on Parliamentary Openness calls on parliaments to make information available “in an open and structured format… that can be read and processed by computers, so that parliamentary information can be easily reused and analyzed…” (Provision 35). To illustrate the value of open parliamentary data and potential for sharing and reuse to inform our understanding of complex data and processes, OpeningParliament.org has created the series “What Opening Parliamentary Information Can Tell Us about Our Parliaments.” To contribute, please comment below or contact us.