Legislation goes through many stages before it becomes law. A range of tools are used to prepare and draft it, amend it during its passage through parliament, publish it on legislation.gov.uk, and archive it. In 2013, a legislative drafting, amending and publishing programme was set up to test the feasibility of a browser-based drafting tool for UK and Scottish legislation that could more effectively support the drafting, amending and publication of legislation from the start to the end of the legislative process.
The programme involves the two Houses of the UK Parliament, the Scottish Parliament; the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel; the Scottish Government’s Parliamentary Counsel Office; and The National Archives. There is a memorandum of understanding between the partners. The partners, either individually or collectively, are responsible for managing all stages of the legislative lifecycle.
The project is now in its 'beta' phase, developing a tool that delivers the core functionality for drafting and amending legislation. By the end of the beta phase our aim is to have a product that is viable and ready for drafters and clerks to use.
The project is developing the tool using an Agile method, which supports flexible, iterative and incremental product development, and involves users at every stage.
The work will not stop once the beta product is live. The tool will be developed iteratively, reflecting new needs and user feedback.
The Discovery phase of the project successfully demonstrated that a browser-based tool was feasible and that suppliers had both the interest and capability to get involved. In the alpha phase we gathered requirements from a range of users, analysed and aligned them and agreed priorities for a minimum viable product. To support this activity, we built wireframes that visualise some of the key requirements, and tested these with users. You can view them on You Tube:
Applying Amendments to the Bill Scotland.
Applying Amendments to the Bill UK.
Drafting Legislation in Scotland.
Drafting Legislation in UK.
Drafting and Managing Scottish Amendments.
Drafting and Managing UK Amendments.
Drafting SIs and SSIs.
Reviewing Amendments – Creating Lists – Recording Outcomes in Scotland.
Reviewing Amendments – Creating Lists – Recording Outcomes in UK.
The wireframes do not show what the final drafting and amending tool will look like, but they give a clear sense of its potential and flexibility.
As a consequence of our discovery work, including extensive consultation and research with experts, we have made some technology choices. We are looking to build a drafting tool that is predominantly based on leading open source technologies and open standards – the Akoma Ntoso XML markup language, the eXist XML database, the MEAN stack of JavaScript frameworks (Mongo, Express, Angular, Node) and a customised XML/HTML editor. We believe this mixture of technologies provides the best chances of success, to tackle the unique challenges of drafting and amending legislation documents.
We have extended the legislation.gov.uk API to support Akoma Ntoso. You can access any piece of legislation in this format, by adding /data.akn to the URL. For example, Budget (Scotland) Act 2015 can be viewed in this format at: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2015/2/enacted/data.akn .
We have also serialised this Akoma Ntoso XML as HTML5 for online presentation. You can access this by adding /data.html to the URL. For example: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2015/2/enacted/data.html
If you would like more information on the technology choices we have made, you can read our Technology Choices Factsheet.
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