Legislative Workbench Core Modules

Data Conversion

Legislative data takes many forms. These include acts, bills and resolutions which may run to thousands of pages; databases of consolidated statutes; notification of future business such as schedules, orders-of-business and calendars; records of floor action such as journals, debates and roll-calls; as well as video, audio and other media types. All of this information forms part of a larger picture; it is closely related and densely interlinked. A typical legislative application will draw upon data from many sources, making a deep understanding of data integration and conversation imperative for any systems implementer.

Propylon has that deep understanding, as well as a proven track-record in large-scale data integration projects. We believe that good systems begin with good data and that data forms the bedrock upon which all application development rests. Typically, data formats persist much longer than the applications with which they originally co-evolved, so it is imperative that data models are designed with long-term strategic goals in mind. The scope is wider than the support of new or existing applications — an insight into likely future utilization should also inform design choices. For this reason, at the heart of any Legislative Workbench implementation are light, extensible data models, based on open standards such as ODF, XHTML and RSS with a view to minimising complexity and allowing our customers to leverage the expertise and tools which cluster around these open formats.

Conversion of existing data to new, open formats is not a task to be undertaken lightly. The first step of any conversion should be to ensure that proposed new formats will support all existing business transactions. The subsequent process of converting and enriching the data must be approached in a systematic fashion with the appropriate expertise, methodology and toolkit.

At Propylon we have this expertise: we have many years of experience in industrial-scale data-migration projects, involving both document conversion and the development of messaging and service-orientated integration frameworks. We understand the important of risk minimisation, statistical verification processes and multi-stage validation checks. We work with our clients to ensure that the migration process is transparent and conducted according to a mutually-agreed schedule and methodology.

Integration & Workflow

Legislatures have complex and varying procedures for the initiation, ordering and disposal of business. Individual items may be routed and processed through a variety of channels, depending upon time and circumstance. Workflow must always be subservient to the business of the assembly; therefore, the ability to modify or break rules under special circumstances is built into the Workflow module.

As the business item is subsequently processed, it may appear in a number of publications in a variety of different formats. For example, details of the same motion may appear on a committee agenda, in the verbatim record and in the journal of proceedings. The Workflow module is designed to efficiently flow such items through the various stages of debate and consideration, eliminating re-keying and eliminating the need to manually reformat information. The module provides a full audit trail, allowing the progress of individual items to be tracked.

Search & Index

Legislative Workbench’s search capabilities have been designed to meet the demands of legal professionals, indexers and proofers. Free-text search, boolean logic, semantic searching, word-stemming, proximity searches and search by document category are supported. The different modes can be combined in order to support sophisticated queries.

Search is tightly integrated into other Workbench modules such as the Editor and the Proofer’s Workbench. Queries and result sets can be saved and associated with a package of research.

Publish

The Legislation Publisher provides multi-channel publishing capabilities, for rapid, synchronized delivery across a range of output platforms.

Documents can be published to a range of print outputs including PDF, Word and OpenDocument Format. Content can also be published in HTML for web access and CD-ROM or DVD output. Syndication outputs format such as RSS and Atom are also supported. Outputs for portable devices such as mobile phones and PDAs can be automatically created in a format optimized for the receiving device.

Status & Tracking

The Bill Tracker records all life-events in the history of a bill. These life-events are displayed in a chronological listing. In addition to viewing the audit trail of events, the user can view the bill as it was at any point-in-time during its life-cycle.