Transcript Electronic Support of the Legislative Process: From

Process Modelling and
Knowledge Management
in the Legislative Process
Günther Schefbeck
ECPRD Seminar „Digitisation of
Parliamentary Information and Archives“
Part 1
Brussels, 30 May 2002
A legal enactment ... traditional style
Legislative Processes
• Complex and multi-layered
• Highly formalized legal procedure
(going back to 19th century)
vs.
• Informal political decision-making process
(semi-structured or negotiation process)
• Interaction of political and legal layers
The value of legislative processes
• “A business process is a collection of
activities that takes one or more kinds of
inputs and creates an output that is of value
to the customer” (Hammer & Champy)
• What is the value of a law?
The value of laws
• Individual law: quality of content
• Rule of law: quality of justice
(Aristotle: “Under the rule of law the
chances for justice are better than under the
rule of men”)
• Law produced in a democratic process:
quality of legitimation
(Luhmann: “legitimization by procedure”)
Rule of law in a democratic
system
• Knowledge of laws as a prerequisite for
acceptance of laws and law enforcement
• Transparency of the legislative process as a
prerequisite for the acceptance of this
process and its output
• Crucial function of publicity of laws and
legislative processes
Transparency and democracy
Means of parliamentary transparency
• public access to (plenary!) meetings
• media coverage
• print documentation
are as young as democracy (or even younger:
early 19th century) and
have been given a new quality through the
NICT in the 1990s
The IT impact
• 1970s: law documentation (mainframes)
• 1980s: documentation of legislative processes
(mainframes … PCs)
• 1990s: electronic availability of data
(metadata, full texts of documents, audio/video
streaming) to the general public (PCs …
Internet)
• Today: “electronification” of legislative
processes
• Tomorrow: ?
Legislative processes and Ebusiness/government functions
•
•
•
•
Information
Communication
Transaction
Communication and transaction functions
have been made large-scale available
through the Internet and Intranet
applications
Five steps of electronic support
of legislative processes
•
•
•
•
•
Knowledge management
Workflow management
Improving the procedural quality
Improving the output quality
Improving the participatory quality
Process modelling
• Knowledge management: descriptive
modelling (reduction of complexity)
• Workflow management:
descriptive/prescriptive modelling (complex
legal and administrative procedure)
• Future development: prescriptive
modelling/process re-engineering (changing
the legislative process, e.g. by introducing new
instruments/steps)?
Present situation –
functional variety
• Plain information systems
• Mixed systems combining information with
aspects of communication/transaction
• Fully electronic workflow systems
Present situation –
organizational variety
• Isolated systems of single parliamentary
chambers
• Overall systems of (bicameral) Parliaments
• Integrated systems of all organs involved in
the legislative process
Example: Switzerland (1)
• Workflow system
introduced in 1998
• Electronic production
of all legislative
documents
• System and format
breach: Parliament
• Authenticity: paper
document
Example: Switzerland (2)
• Functional view:
electronic workflow
system with derived
information function,
parliamentary information
and production systems
• Organizational view:
government system,
Parliament involved as a
“black box”
Example: Austria (1)
• Workflow system operational since 1
January 2002
• Electronic production and transfer of all
legislative documents
• System (but not format) breach: Parliament
• Authenticity: paper document/at least as to
publication from 1 January 2003 on
electronic document
Example: Austria (2)
• Functional view: electronic workflow
system, governmental section using the
existing Legal Information System as
archival system, parliamentary section
based on the existing Parliamentary
Documentation System
• Organizational view: separated government
and Parliament systems with interfaces
Example: Austria (3-5)
Way of federal legislation
(simplified organizational view)
Federal
Minister
Federal
Government
Parliament
Federal
President
Federal
Chancellor
Process steps
Government bill
Proposal to the
Council of Ministers
Legal enactment
Authentication
LIS
Consultation
Federal
Minister
Publication
Federal
Government
Parliament
Federal
President
Federal
Chancellor
Electronic workflow system
LIS
Federal
Minister
Federal
Government
Parliament
Federal
President
Federal
chancellor
Improving the procedural quality
• Process modelling makes aware of
capability of improvement
• Necessary amendment of rules of procedure
(shift of paradigm towards autheticity of
electronic documents) gives opportunity to
improve procedures
Improving the output quality
• Legimatic systems for improving the formal
quality of laws (checking the
implementation of or implementing
guidelines for legislation)
• Impact assessment and simulation systems
for improving the material quality of
legislation
Improving the participatory quality
• Already emerging standard solution:
introducing new communication tools into
the representative system
• Dichotomy indirect vs. direct democracy?
• Visionary concepts for intermediate
democracy models … the discussion is
opened