Language:
Search
 
IT-supported procedure for drafting legislation (ITDL)
Ministry of Public Administration of the Republic of Slovenia
Slovenia

The Problem

The project for IT-supported procedure for drafting legislation (ITDL) was launched with a view to regulating the procedure for drafting and adopting legislation in the Republic of Slovenia; it was primarily focused on the parts that lacked IT support and covered all stages from planning to submitting a piece of draft legislation to the government for consideration. Ministries and government offices used to draft and coordinate regulations with other ministries, the Office of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia for Legislation and the interested public in line with their internal organisation of work and document management. With a view to implementing the principle of public participation in the process of drafting regulations, the Access to Public Information Act stipulates that a draft piece of legislation must be published on a website, but in practice some of the ministries failed to strictly observe this provision. By introducing an IT-supported procedure for drafting regulations and by adopting minimum standards for public consultations, the aforementioned principle was fully implemented. Under previous arrangements, regulations had to be submitted for the publication in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia in written form. Draft regulations, adopted regulations and unofficial consolidated texts were published on different sites (websites of ministries, the Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, the website of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia, the website of the National Assembly, Register of Regulations, etc.). This scattered system lead to dissatisfaction among users and often caused undue prolongation of the drafting procedure; moreover, regulations were (too) frequently amended because of the lack of coordination with the interested public. The ITDL project delivered a system that addresses the essential steps of the procedure of adopting regulation as well as standardised the operations of all ministries involved in the process of drafting and adopting regulations, thereby facilitating easier and simpler exchange of documents and opinions. The system devotes considerable attention to integrating contributions by the interested public into the content of a regulation. The backend IT system for drafting regulations is linked to the e-democracy sub-portal, which offers a 'one-stop shop' enabling easy monitoring of the applicable regulations and regulations in drafting procedure, which is very important for users. Most importantly, this part is very useful for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as well as the professional and lay public, all of which can promptly make their comments and proposals, and thus contribute towards drafting better regulations. The ITDL system has ensured that all ministries follow a standardised procedure for drafting regulations in terms of substance and as regards technical features; it also introduced electronic services into the process of drafting legislation, which means that as of 1 April 2010, when the ITDL system was launched, paper is no longer used in drafting regulations.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
The IT-supported procedure for the drafting legislation project pursued the following objectives:
• to create standardised software support for users at the ministries, government offices and the government, which must be user-friendly, easy to use and must offer automated procedures whenever possible;
• to provide the public easy online access to regulations in the drafting procedure and, at the same time, encourage the public to actively participate in all phases of the procedure of adopting legislation.

Within the ITDL project, the e-democracy sub-portal of the e-government portal was updated (http://e-uprava.gov.si/e-uprava/edemokracija.euprava) to facilitate the active participation of the citizens in adopting legislation. Through e-democracy, citizens can voice their opinions or participate in the drafting procedure with their proposals.

The ITDL system running behind the e-democracy sub-portal facilitates the publication of proposed pieces of legislation in their various drafting stages and enables the interested public (citizens, non-governmental organisations etc.) to submit comments, opinions, suggestions, and commendations on individual drafts. From the first version of a draft regulation onward, the central module reminds the public through the e-democracy sub-portal that a piece of legislation is being drafted.

A period in which the public can submit opinions, comments and proposals can be set for every piece of legislation drafted. Pursuant to the Resolution on Regulatory Activities (Chapter 6, point 2), the normal period envisaged for public participation in drafting legislation is from 30 to 60 days. There are some exemptions concerning draft legislation of the nature that prevents such participation (for example: urgent procedures, the national budget etc.). The ITDL system facilitates the public participation in the draft phase when a piece of legislation is submitted to the inter-ministerial and inter-departmental coordination. Public comments and proposals are directly forwarded to the body responsible for drafting the piece of legislation concerned. All draft regulations published on the e-democracy website are available in .doc and .pdf formats.
Before the ITDL system was introduced, the draft regulations were circulated as paper copies to various bodies for the purpose of inter-ministerial coordination and the consumption of paper was estimated to be approximately five times higher, which means that the ITDL project has directly contributed to an eighty per cent decrease in paper consumption in this process. There were costs incurred in the lengthy procedure for registering a document and communication between bodies (postage etc.). According to conservative estimates, the ITDL application saves approximately ten per cent of the time previously spent in drafting legislation. Savings of 80 person-months are generated by the 800 daily users of the system. The main advantage of the ITDL system is the fact it both lessens the burdens of the employees who actively participate in the process of drafting regulations, while simultaneously creating room for them to assume other additional tasks. The postage savings have been estimated at € 2 200 per month (€ 26 400 per year) relative to the costs incurred in the transfer of documents under the previous system of drafting documents.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
The ITDL project is an upgrade of the IDC3 project, from 1999. The IDC3 project had a clearly defined objective of ensuring IT support to regulation drafting processes; at that time, the technical platform and the IT knowledge of users were not sufficiently developed to allow for the establishment of a production system. The initial project concerning IT support for the legislative procedure was renamed the IT-supported procedure for drafting legislation (ITDL) in 2004, when a remodelling of the outcomes of the IDC3 project began, including the upgrading of the functionalities and the transfer of the existing functionalities to more advanced technologies. In the first phase of the ITDL project, the system was linked to the Register of Regulations of the Republic of Slovenia. The central storage of regulations and statuses indicating their drafting phase was established in the project's second phase. In the third phase, the access and participation of the public were ensured through the e-democracy sub-portal. In the fourth phase, general services for accepting and transmitting information to other systems within the h-kom network were made available within the central system. In the last phase, digital signatures were incorporated in the system in the form of a signed .pdf file. In 2009 and in the beginning of 2010, the development of the ITDL application was brought to its final phase and was made ready for its full production operation, including its substantive modifications and technical improvements, in order to make it easier for the public employees to work with the computer application and for the public to participate in drafting legislation through the internet. The need to initiate the project for supporting the drafting of legislation was strongly influenced by legislative guidelines that required stronger public participation in drafting legislation. The ITDL project is a result of co-operation between the Ministry of Public Administration, which acted as a technical and content leader of the project, and the Office of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia for Legislation, which acted as a content leader. SRC d. o. o. is the project's external contractor. Ministries, government offices and the Secretariat-General of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia were invited to submit user proposals and comments during the planning phase of the project; on 19 November 2009, the government adopted a decision approving mandatory use of the ITDL system in the drafting of legislation, and setting 1 April 2010 as its production operation start.
The project stakeholders were as follows:
- the Ministry of Public Administration as the project sponsor and its technical and content leader;
- the Office of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia for Legislation as the project content leader;
- SRC d. o. o. as the main contractor;
- all Slovenian ministries, government offices and the Government of the Republic of Slovenia;
- the interested public;
- business entities that are significantly influenced by legislative amendments;
- the general public.

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
The main strategies in the implementation were the following:
- to attain the main objective, i.e. to provide full IT support to all key phases in drafting legislation;
- to complete the project phases within the stipulated time schedule;
- to take utmost account of the guidelines for public participation in drafting legislation;
- to apply modern organisational and technical methods and tools in the implementation of the project;
- to obtain the best possible ratio between the funds invested and the functionalities produced by the project;
- to successfully complete the first production phase of the project and to continue the project with a view to increasing the user-friendliness of the software and improving the accessibility of information to the general public;
- to make new tools, created on the basis of the complete technological solutions, available to the legislation drafting process stakeholders who did not participate in the first phase of the project (for example local self-government authorities);
- to create products that will increase the satisfaction of users in workplaces where active participation in drafting legislation is required, greater satisfaction of the general public with the transparency of the drafting procedure and the possibility of participating with opinions and proposals. and to provide an ecological solution that will contribute towards reducing paper and fuel consumption.

It was apparent during the planning of the project that the number of concurrent users expected in production would be large; this expectation proved to be correct: the application has approximately 800 active daily users.
One of the project's performance criteria was to ensure the overall stability of the system, which provides support in drafting legislation and is hence of extreme importance. The ITDL system is a linking element that connects a large number of registers, backend systems and central services. Not a single serious case of inaccessibility of the system was detected during the first year of its production use.
The main reasons underlying the need for IT support offered by the ITDL system were defined and grouped in three basic sets. The first set covered the creation of standardised software support for all users at all ministries, government offices and the government. The software had to be user-friendly and easy to use, and the procedures had to be automated and standardised as far as possible. The second set included the provision of simple online public access to regulations under preparation; in addition, the public was to be further encouraged to communicate and actively participate in all phases of the procedure of adopting regulations. The third set addressed the streamlining of the process, i.e. enabling faster exchange of documents and materials between users, while simultaneously eliminating multiple entries of the same data, as far as possible.
All the abovementioned objectives were attained by the establishment of the system production environment; nevertheless, technological updates are made regularly to the whole system.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
1999 — the basic project, IDC3, was launched (the provision of information support to the process of drafting regulations).
2004 — outcomes of the IDC3 project were remodelled, extended functionalities developed and the existing functionalities transferred to new technologies.
2005 and 2006 — in the first phase of the ITDL project, the system was linked with the Register of Regulations of the Republic of Slovenia; in the second phase, the central storage of regulations and statuses indicating their drafting phase was established.
2007 and 2008 — in the third phase, access and the participation of the public were ensured through the e-democracy sub-portal. In the fourth phase, the central system provided general services for accepting and transmitting information to other systems within the h-kom network; in the fifth phase, digital signatures were incorporated in the system, in the form of signed .pdf files.
2009 and beginning of 2010 — the final preparations were made to release the ITDL application into its full production operation, including substantive modifications and technical improvements.
1 April 2010 — start of the production operation of the system.

From 1 April 2010 to 1 December 2012, there were 2 097 regulations entered into the ITDL system: 1 100 rules, 706 decrees and 291 acts. In the same period, the e-democracy sub-portal published 1 045 regulations: 626 rules, 275 decrees and 144 acts.

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
Before the ITDL system was introduced, some parts of the legislation drafting procedure had been supported by previously developed software tools. Therefore, the ITDL project had to cover different processes, ensure its operation on different software bases and use a wide variety of linked software products.
The beginning of regular production operation of a system can be a significant turning point or a potential obstacle. It represents a psychological tipping point when all participants experience some level of fear and when questions arise whether the system is ready, technologically stable, well-tested and, in general, ready to be released to its users and the public etc. The complexity of the system, its dependence on the large number of databases, backend systems, registers, portals etc., make the switch from system test to production operation a very important step. Needs, proposals and ideas concerning the regular use of the system can only become apparent through regular use by hundreds of users. These ideas and proposals generate solutions to upgrade basic processes, which the system must support, and also play a very important role in how an average user perceives the system. We have been collecting user comments at all levels from the beginning of the production use of the system; we have also introduced the good practice of regular modular upgrades, which are scheduled in intervals that enable users to access proposed upgrades in a reasonable time, while not forcing them to work in a system undergoing continuous and unexpected upgrading and changes.
Another important obstacle that we had overcome was the application users' fear of working with the ITDL system. Here, regular training of those who use the system has been of vital importance. Information for use is essential but not sufficient for normal work. Users are better able to comprehend the meaning and work processes supported by applications if they can share experiences with other users and test the system in a test environment and in training sessions. Under-trained users give rise to two potential risks: the first is the 'innovativeness' of such users who use the application incorrectly and thus 'ensure' that data are entered inconsistently and processes conducted in a wrong way; the second and even greater risk is the aversion and fear of users towards a system not familiar to them, which could significantly diminish the added value of the entire project. Regular trainings have ensured that these risks are kept to the minimum or even eliminated.

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
There are three to four employees of the Ministry of Public Administration and three employees of the Office of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia for Legislation engaged on the ITDL project. The external contractor has six employees working on the project. In the 2005–2011 period, approximately € 1 150 000 were spent on the ITDL project.

Human resources:
• Ministry of Public Administration (project sponsor and its technical and content leader) — up to four employees;
• Office of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia for Legislation (project content leader) — up to three employees;
• SRC, d. o. o. (technical implementation) — up to six employees.

Costs:
• Sponsor and content leader of the project (gross salaries of the employees) — approximately € 450 000;
• technical provider — approximately € 650 000;
• licence and hardware costs — approximately € 50 000.

The project was financed from the budget of the Republic of Slovenia.

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
The ITDL system is the only system approved for the use in drafting legislation at the level of ministries and government offices in the Republic of Slovenia; therefore, its long-term application is ensured. The basic concept of the system will not be changed, because it has been proven to operate well; only concurrent updating and amending in terms of technical and content improvements will be made. Undoubtedly, the ITDL system concept, which is currently accommodating the needs of the state administration, can be replicated and used to support the drafting of regulation at the local level where a large number of regulations are being prepared, but their storage and accessibility are not organised through the ITDL system. A replica of the ITDL system can be created at the local self-government level; it would also be possible to connect this level to the existing system and thus additionally expand its scope. In the same way as described above, the procedure for drafting and adopting legislation can be applied in the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia; currently, the National Assembly uses its own legislation drafting system, which is not directly connected to the ITDL system. The linking of the system used in the National Assembly with the ITDL system would result not only in work processes standardisation in terms of their technical features and content, but would also represent great added value to the interested public that would be able to monitor the procedure of drafting regulation in the National Assembly through the e-democracy sub-portal.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
The IT-supported procedure for drafting legislation is a project that represents an important technological and organisational step forward in the functioning of the state administration, because it brings about a simplification and standardisation of work of every user. In addition, the central storage of documents ensures greater transparency and allows for an analytical review of the drafting procedure, which provides an excellent basis for potential further improvements of the procedure. From the viewpoint of the citizens, the observance of the public opinion is the essential element and their actual participation in the regulation drafting procedures can influence the content of legislation.
After a year and a half of the ITDL project's operation, approximately half of all regulations being drafted or already adopted are accessible on the e-democracy sub-portal. The percentage of accessible documents is quite satisfactory, but the aim of the Resolution on Regulatory Activities and the ITDL project is to ensure the accessibility of the highest possible number of regulations, which enables the more active participation of professional and lay public in their drafting. Furthermore, one of the aims is to establish the e-democracy sub-portal as a 'one-stop shop' providing all information of a public nature on regulatory activities to the public. The ITDL system is the only permitted application on which the procedure for drafting legislation can run and which also enables online publication of regulations in drafting procedure; consequently, the publication of regulations on the e-democracy sub-portal prevents unnecessary duplication of regulation publication on other websites. As already mentioned, there were 2 097 regulations entered into the ITDL system between 1 April 2010 and 1 December 2012: 1 100 rules, 706 decrees and 291 acts. In the same period, the e-democracy sub-portal published 1 045 regulations: 626 rules, 275 decrees and 144 acts.

On the bases of comments and proposals submitted by the ITDL system users at ministries and government offices and in line with experience gained in the system development process, the leader of the ITDL project prepares sets of application upgrades on a regular basis with a view to simplifying users' work, and also to achieving the common objective of providing the most user-friendly and efficient application. The ITDL system has been a success, because it standardised and technically supported the process of drafting legislation, while enabling online publication of regulations in the drafting procedure, thus making them accessible to the public. The success of the ITDL system can also be indicated by the fact that during its entire production use, the system did not encounter a single technical problem that would hinder users' work.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Ministry of Public Administration of the Republic of Slovenia
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Andraž Pernar
Title:   Advisor  
Telephone/ Fax:   +38614788761
Institution's / Project's Website:   http://e-uprava.gov.si (E-demokracija)
E-mail:   andraz.pernar@gov.si  
Address:   Tržaška cesta 21
Postal Code:   1000
City:   Ljubljana
State/Province:   Slovenia
Country:   Slovenia

          Go Back
Print friendly Page