UK.gov urged to adopt web-friendly legislation format

More to the point ...

All bills and indeed all legislation and official documents should be written in PRECISE and PLAIN ENGLISH LANGUAGE instead of ambiguous legal mumbo-jumbo whose sole purpose is to earn money for the of the so-called-legal profession advising people whether or not the law really says something or other.

If there really MUST be a mumbo-jumbo version (for reasons best known to the people who insist without the slightest merit that laws shouldn't be understandable), the rule should be that there is ALWAYS a plain language version too, that any procedings must be based on the plain language version and that in any ambiguity the plain language version must always take precedence, such that the mumbo jumbo version needn't have existed in the first place.

Oh, and now we have intelligible documents, insist that every bill has to be ratified by a majority public vote instead of this nonsense of having to sign our rights away to untrustworthy MPs who 9 time out of 10 don't behave the way they promised when they were asking for votes.

You can have it Fast, Perfect and Cheap

Pick any 2.

They are obviously aiming towards cheap and fast so quality is out the window. Should make a really good government project (well, maybe not too fast).

Paris because she knows about cheap and fast.

RE - If it's ever implemented...

"When the text of a bill is completed, it would be copied to a server outside the parliamentary network. A script on the server would parse the text into the basic XML structure Mysociety has designed."

The <ahem>basic</ahem> structure that Mysociety designed? What about the accurate, detailed and very effective xml structure that legislation currently resides in. The same one that is used to create the current web content and PDF versions of legislation etc.

"Simon's point is excellent too - why not create it in XML then export it how and as needed...?"

See above.

It seems that Mysociety aren't too sure of how legislation is currently processed. They are looking at parliament to generate the structured content whereas it is the Queen's printers who provide that service (via TSO the new face of HMSO). They are looking for a solution (their own schema) to a problem that was noted quite some time ago and solved.

OPSI has current legislation as it is published in valid XHTML format. Everything from 1988 onwards was published electronically and is available online. Prior to that PDF versions are available where possible.

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts.htm

The UK statute Law database has current content dating back to 1337 showing changes, proposed changes and concurrent versions of subsections within individual items of legislation

http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/Home.aspx

Great news!

If this heralds the advance of legislation to a level somewhere near that of properly-designed software, great news! Laws will be based on clear and accurate specifications, meet well-defined needs, be well designed, automatically tested for consistency and clarity, and retired when their lifecycle comes to an end. Oh, and regression tested to make sure they don't clash with other laws already on the statute book.

Re: RE - If it's ever implemented...

"The UK statute Law database has current content dating back to 1337..."

They're publishing it in leetspeak too? To appease the geeks. Pfff. Political correctness gone mad.

Naivety

£10k does seem hopelessly naive. Possibly if done by actual human people who actually know what they're doing, but this is the *government* we're talking about.

More likely they'd outsource it to IBM or similar, who would stick a couple of zeroes onto the budget, then do exactly the same thing but with an army of salesmen and middle-managers cluttering up the place.

The fact that it's already published in XML is, of course, irrelevant. After all, solving a problem that's already been solved is (marginally) less likely to go tits-up.

Mine's the one reeking of cynicism...

XML does not equal structured data

@ Anonymous Coward - Two things. Firstly, XML does not structured data make. You can put unstructured stuff in XML. Specifically, Bills and Amendments are not currently published with the way they amend each other encoded in a structured way. Any internal XML that they come from is document publishing XML i.e. Basically visual markup. It isn't structured storage of the proposed law XML. If I'm wrong, post up one of the internal XML files somewhere to show me that I am! It would be fab if I am!

Secondly, that OPSI and the SLD publish Acts is irrelevant to the campaign. We're talking about Bills and Amendments - proposed laws. This is so that people can scrutinise them before they are passed. Really important stuff. We want to make sure that new laws are good quality.

Thirdly, you may note that the campaign page http://www.theyworkforyou.com/freeourbills/ itself doesn't mention XML. We only mention it briefly on the technical details page http://www.theyworkforyou.com/freeourbills/techy . XML has nothing to do with this campaign - XML is just a light layer. Doesn't mean much - it is no more interesting to say structured data is in XML than to say it is encoded with 8 bits per byte. What matters is consistency of format, reliable unique identifiers, encoding of all required structural information.

Finally - just to say that I think the recent improvements to the bill pages on parliament.uk are fantastic, and that the release of the Statute Law Database is fantastic. Well done to everyone in Government who is working on those things, and every power to them to do more similar things in the future.

(I work for mySociety)