Starting from 23 February 2013, all the bills published on the Italian Senate website are available, other than in the usual HTML, PDF, and ePub formats, also in XML, using an Akoma Ntoso compliant scheme.

The Italian Senate, in the wake of the European Parliament, has also joined the growing number of parliaments supporting Akoma Ntoso as common to  support more effective management of information and long-term preservation of formal documentation.

Akoma Ntoso is the result of the efforts of the Africa i-Parliaments Action Plan to realize a common standard for the interchange of legal documents among institutions and countries. Building on the opportunities offered by open standards, it aims at supporting the development of high-value parliamentary and legislative information services.

This news is welcomed as a further acknowledgement of the widespread consensus that Akoma Ntoso is currently gathering. Such a result paves the way for the worldwide recognition of this XML open standard (presently an OASIS standard candidate) as the common standard for parliamentary, legislative and judiciary documents.