Submit items of business, such as orders, motions and resolutions, from any Internet-connected terminal
Step-by-step wizards guide contributors through submissions process, ensuring that business items are formally correct
Submitted items are automatically routed and queued for inclusion on Calendar
Bill Status and Tracking information automatically feeds Calendar
Bill title information, bill text and amendments can be automatically fed into Calendar and Journal according to the legislature’s preferences
As items flow from one publication to another, they are automatically transformed into the appropriate format
Clerk’s Minutes framework created automatically and can be used in real-time to record chamber decisions
Journal created automatically from Clerk’s Minutes, and can be linked to audio and video feeds of floor action

Legislative Workbench Chamber Business Management Modules

Chamber Business Management

At the heart of the legislative process is the House or Senate chamber. Here, daily business is transacted in a forum governed by strict protocols and based upon centuries of precedent. Complex debates and fast-moving exchanges give rise to decisions and action items which which must correspond to the rules of the chamber — and must be captured instantly and accurately.

Propylon’s Chamber Business Management module is designed to support the business of the chamber in a single application that fully supports a legislature’s unique workflows and procedures, but remains intuitive and easy to use.

Submissions

The Business Item Submissions module is a web application that allows users to submit new items of business (motions, questions, proclamations, etc.) for inclusion on the Legislative Calendar. Users can choose from a range of standard templates which provide guidance through the process and ensure that the item is formally and structurally valid.

Business items can also be created automatically in response to a particular trigger. For example, if a bill is recorded as successfully passing from one stage of consideration to the next, the items of business associated with the next consideration stage can be generated by the system and queued for processing.

Once the item has been submitted it is stored in the Legislative Workbench secure data repository, where it is queued for subsequent processing according to the rules of the legislature.

Calendar

A chamber’s calendar is used to organize business. Production of the calendar involves the collation and sequencing of items from the new business stack. The rules related to this process vary from assembly to assembly, and usually are both complex and arcane. The Calendar Management module provides a easy-to-use interface which allows an authorised individual to manage this process. Queued items of business may be added to the calendar and sequenced according to rules of the assembly. Like other Workbench modules, flexibility is built into the system, allowing rule-based decisions to be manually overriden if required.

Clerk’s Minutes

The Calendar can be used to automatically generate a framework, known as the Clerk’s Minutes, for the recording of decisions and the disposal of business items. This framework can be used as the basis of real-time event recording by the Clerk or can be used to produce a formal record post-session. The Clerk’s Minutes module can be integrated with electronic voting systems if required.

Verbatim

The chamber floor debate verbatim record can be fully integrated into the suite of legislative publications. The record can be hyperlinked to other publications — such as the text of bills and resolutions — and to audio and video streams.

Journal

The decision-information contained in the Clerk’s Minutes can be automatically combined with information from other Legislative Workbench modules in order to automate the production of the assembly’s Journal. The electronic version of the Journal can provide multiple views of the official record and can be hyperlinked to related resources such as bills, resolutions and video recordings of chamber procedings.