Why Parliament Should

❤️

Open Standards

Pranesh Prakash

Fellow
Centre for Internet and Society

Affiliated Fellow
Information Society Project, Yale Law School

2019 Public Interest Technology Fellow

New America

 

CC-BY-SA 4.0: (copy, share, adapt: sharing is caring)

no proprietary standards or software were used in the making of this slide deck

Parliamentary Data

Much better availability than other parts of the government.

Not open data, not open standards.

Architecture, Search, Formats

Parliamentary Data

Kinds of Records

  • Debate Records (with speaker’s and members’ names and timings)
  • Voting records, vote counts, and quorum counts
  • Questions and answers, including corrections
  • Bills and acts + amendments
  • Subordinate legislation + amendments

Parliamentary Data

Kinds of Records

  • Committee meeting records
  • Committee reports, including dissents
  • Resolutions, references, announcements, statements, and special addresses
  • Secretariat's reports (e.g., summary of work reports)

Parliamentary Data

Kinds of Records

  • Reports of elections, inductions, and resignations, and deaths of members
  • Rules of procedure and conduct of business
  • Stand-alone books, pamphlets, and reports

Technology Use Within Parliament

Lok Sabha

2016:

“Presently, a digitization project is under progress for creation of PDF files of the proceedings of Lok Sabha, including Questions and Debates. . .”

Technology Use Within Parliament

Rajya Sabha

2017:

  1. “Using the Internet for research”

  2. Communications being “sent through email”

  3. “Soft copies” being emailed

  4. “All typing work” being “done on computers”

Technology Use Within Parliament

NIC: "Parliamentary Information Division"

 

 

Data.gov.in: Even information already digitized isn't available.

Open Standards

I ❤️ Akoma Ntoso

(and so should you)

Open Standards

Who uses Akoma Ntoso?

UN, EU, South Africa, UK, etc.

Open Standards

Cui bono?

 

  • Parliamentarians (!)

  • Bureaucrats (!!)

  • Researchers

Open Standards

How does it help?

Authenticated electronic life cycle
(the "official version" problem)

Open Standards

How does it help?

Producing revisions
(Creating amendments are hard!)

Tracking changes

(Redlining + Across laws)

Open Standards

How does it help?

Dated versioning

(What was the law on October 14th 1985?)

Open Standards

How does it help?

Complex research

(Structured data)

Open Standards

What does it look like?

Open Standards

What does it look like?

Laws, Policies, Judicial Orders

Copyright

ss.52(1)(q) & (r)

Bangladesh (ss.16, 17) vs. Pakistan (s.57(1)(q))

Laws, Policies, Judicial Orders

Copyright

EBC v. Modak
(judgments = "public domain")

Laws, Policies, Judicial Orders

Standards

Vansh Sharad Gupta v. Union of India

Laws, Policies, Judicial Orders

Standards

(Central vs. State)

National Policy on Open Standards

National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy

Interoperability Framework for e-Governance
(Open Fonts Format + Unicode)

 

How Much Will This Cost?

Parliament budget:
0.049% of budget
(10% of global average)

Costs involved:
Proof-reading, digitization, software.

 

Cost:

USD 2-5 million

(<5% of single year's budget)

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