Participants to the parallel session 'Open standards for parliamentary documentation: cooperative approaches' of the World e-Parliament Conference 2009 co-organized by the United Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the U.S. House of Representatives and the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament (3-5 Nov 2009) engaged in discussions on converging XML standards for parliamentary and legislative documents.
Participants to the parallel session "Open standards for parliamentary documentation: cooperative approaches" of the World e-Parliament Conference 2009 co-organized by the United Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the U.S. House of Representatives and the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament (3-5 Nov 2009) engaged in discussions on converging XML standards for parliamentary and legislative documents. This very animated session was indeed a sign that parliaments are maturing and considering the importance of XML standards in preserving and giving meaning to their documents.
A convergence of the two complementary regional standards the Akoma Ntoso (http://www.akomantoso.org) and Metalex (www.metalex.eu) as building blocks for a possible common standard will hopefully encourage others to work together toward a common standard.The two standards are the only ones that have been designed with a regional/global context. The Akoma Ntoso standard is a rich semantic standard for the markup of parliamentary and legal documents meant to be extendible to national traditions and Metalex CEN is an interchange format, a lowest common denominator for other standards, intended to support a standardised view on legal documents for the purpose of information exchange and interoperability in the context of software development.It would also be important to note that all the best practices and contributions from other local standards used by parliaments will also be considered for their contribution to the common standard.
For Akoma Ntoso, and Africa, moving toward a common standard for parliamentary and legal resources is good for many reasons. The most relevant one being that it will lead to better, more sustainable standards, tools and services for parliamentary and legal resources for all and also create the common ground that is necessary for the Working Group on XML in Parliament to really become relevant and useful to all.There is now a common realisation that a common standardisation process with the ability to converge all these good practices on a harmonised XML standard for supporting interoperability between institutions, promoting quality of legislation, supporting transparency, democracy, participation in the law making system and reuse of information will be beneficial to all. It will also provide the critical mass of experience and expertise that is able to deliver high quality services for all.
Other benefits of common standardisation process envisaged are as follows:
The proposed Governance group will not in any way change the mandate and role of the already existing Working Group on XML in Parliament. On the contrary, the Working Group on XML in Parliament would become a leading force in the setting up of Convergence Group on XML for Legal Resources meant to move toward a common standard for legal resources making the Working Group on XML in Parliament even more relevant to parliaments.
Akoma Ntoso has already proved its extendibility, it has been used as a base for the development of the Parliament of Brazil of its own schema. The European Parliament has begun to use Akoma Ntoso (and Metalex) as base for their own "standardised XML format for legislative work".
Appreciating that to a certain extent best practices are already being shared in the use and design of national standards, it has become apparent in the interest of all to move toward a more structured approach that could lead to better synergies. Both the Brazil and European Parliament will and have built/improved on some aspects of Akoma Ntoso and Metalex. But unless these "changes/improvements" are then fed back, for example, to Akoma Ntoso, then the virtuous mechanism that builds quality and sustainability will be missed.
This is then the rationale for establishing the Convergence Group on XML for Legal Resources with the mandate and objective of promoting and building capacity for the use and deployment of XML in Parliaments. The proposed standardisation process is expected to be demand driven, open to all the public administration and institutions allowing contributions from governments, academy and industry; and inclusive to all experiences and based on best practices and open source releases.
The first meeting of the Convergence Group on XML for Legal Resources is scheduled and likely to be hosted by the European Parliament in collaboration with Africa i-Parliament Action Plan in March 2010.
an initative of United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA)