Parliamentary Administration Engeljehringer - SchefbeckⒸ

THE E-LAW PROJECT IN AUSTRIA

Electronic suppor t o f law-making Vienna, 15. Februar 2006

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Cover: Monumental fountain in front of the ramp of the Parliament Building with a marble statue of the goddess Pallas Athene. Foto: AnnA BlaU

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

1. Abstact (Management Summary) 5

2. The Idea 6

3. Solution 8

4. Features making it a candidate for good practice 21

1

2

2

2

5. Results 6

6. Conclusions 4

7. Links 6

8. References 26

9. Contacts 7

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Authentic electronic Federal Law Gazette on the Internet

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Wolfgang Engeljehringer – Günther Schefbeck

The E-LAW Project in Austria Electronic support of law-making 1. Abstact (Management Summary)

The E-LAW PROJECT aims at a reform of legal text production, creating one

continuous electronic production channel with a uniform layout prepared on the

same electronic text basis from draft to publication (promulgation) on the

Internet. The workflow system includes government bills, committee reports,

legal enactments of the Nationalrat and decisions of the Bundesrat.

The E-LAW workflow system supports the electronic production of all committee

reports, of legal enactments of the Nationalrat and decisions of the Bundesrat.

Parliament returns consolidated electronic texts of legal enctments to the

Federal Chancellery, ready for publication. The authentic electronic publication

on the Internet (since 01 01 2004) is available for everybody free of charge.

The public and the MPs will can obtain the parliamentary business including the

explanatory remarks within 24 to 72 hours on the Internet. Savings potential in

the Parliamentary Administration per year is more than € 1.000.000.- (60 tons of

paper).

Web addresses

www.parlament.gv.at www.ris.bka.gv.at (authentic electronic Federal Law Gazette)

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2. The Idea 2.1 Specific problem The E-RECHT ("Electronic Law") project aims at creating one continuous electronic production channel from the invitation to comment on draft legislation to promulgation (on the Internet). As a result, it is only required to enter amendments to the text during the legislative stages (for example by a committee, or in the plenary of the Nationalrat). As the first result of the project, texts of laws on paper are to be replaced by electronic texts, that is to say, printed government bills, committee reports and other parliamentary printed matter will cease to exist. Technology will make it possible to draw up texts which can be queried electronically while all stages can be tracked in a fully transparent process. Primarily for the purpose of cost-cutting, the texts of legislation were to be given a uniform layout and were to be prepared on the same electronic text basis from draft to publication in the Federal Law Gazette on the Internet. As a result, the Federal Chancellery sends government bills to Parliament, Parliament returns the consolidated electronic version of the legal enactment adopted by the Nationalrat once parliamentary procedures have been completed. The State Printing Office (Wiener Zeitung) is no longer necessary.

A legal enactment ... traditional style 1920

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E-Law: A legal enactment ... digital style 2003

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2.2 General background To translate E-LAW into reality, two projects were launched by the Administration of Parliament in view of the complex task on hand and the brief period available by decision of the federal government (trial operations were to start as early as on 1 September 2001):

• the "Implementing E-Law" project (in April 2001) to ensure one continuous electronic channel for the legislative procedure in the Nationalrat and the Bundesrat, as well as

• the "Roll-out Plan for laptops to be used by Members of Parliament" (in

December 2002). 2.3 Policy context and strategy The re-design of the legislative procedure for the ministries was formally adopted by resolution of the Austrian Federal Government of 6 June 2001. The Conference of Presidents of the Nationalrat also advocated the implementation of the E-LAW project in 2001. However, at the same time the Presidents called for better IT equipment for the Members of Parliament. The objectives to be met in the reform of the legislative process were defined as follows:

1. building up on existing databases 2. ensuring that the high quality requirements for parliamentary business will

be fulfilled 3. taking into account the separation of powers between government and

parliament 4. considering the principle of true costs (no passing on of costs or tasks from

the government to parliament) 5. minimization of the total costs of parliamentary business 6. considering the special working conditions of parliament.

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Federal

PresidentFederal

Minister Federal

Government Federal

Chancellor Parliament

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3. SOLUTION 3.1 Specific objectives The technical and organisational solution chosen is characterised by a high degree of user-friendliness as

• the Austrian parliament builds up on existing databases (that is to say, the new e-Legislation process was integrated into the database application "Parliamentary Business")

• an independent workflow has been established to account for the special features of parliamentary procedure and the separation of powers.

The exchange of documents with the federal administration, where a separate workflow is in place, is based on compatible formats and an independent interface, and detailed procedures have been developed for the exchange of data between parliament and government.

Electronic Workflow Parliament Federal Government

The system offers the people involved in the legislative process not only electronic information but also participation opportunities; in this context, it has to be mentioned that a special upload mask was created for Members of Parliament and their assistants to enter the electronic versions of motions into the system. In a competence center established in Parliament, which has meanwhile successfully completed know-how transfer from the State Printing Office and taken up co-operation with the Federal Chancellery, staff supports the rapporteurs of the committees and the committee secretaries of the Parliamentary Administration in preparing the committee reports as well as the staff members of the Parliamentary Administration responsible for executing the legal enactments of the Nationalrat, and is in charge of quality management and

Government bill

Committee- R NReport N

Enactment of the

ationalrat Committee-Report BR

Decision Bundesrat

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the layout of legislative documents as well as covering the need for additional labour in peak times. The electronic exchange of data between government and parliament takes concrete shape as follows: The Federal Chancellery sends government bills to Parliament, Parliament returns the consolidated electronic version of any legal enactment adopted by the Nationalrat once parliamentary procedures have been completed. 3.2 Implementation The most significant tasks to be fulfilled in the course of the "Implementing E-LAW" project can be summarized as follows:

• a comparison of previous paper-based business processes with electronic processes, identifying the changes (studying the impact of the electronic process)

• an analysis of the high quality status of legislative bills (quality criteria

also include the time factor, the possibility to track changes made, the complexity of changes to be put in, and quality management by dual control)

• an analysis of printing and layout costs (it turned out that the electronic

communication of government bills saves costs as the pre-printing stage is no longer required, and that foregoing the printing and reproduction of documents also comes with a potential for cost-cutting)

• technical quality management (this included issues such as: What kind of

technical quality management is up to current quality assurance requirements? How can undesired changes and damage to files be prevented? Is a higher level of technical security required when the electronic signature is introduced?)

• international comparisons (in this context, studying the model of

computer-supported legislative processes in place with the Swiss Federal Chancellery and the Swiss Federal Assembly showed that - the needs of parliament and government are so different that

different IT solutions are required and that there can be no workflow between government and parliament without any interface;

- in view of the large number of possible error sources in drafting and formatting texts, quality control instances must be introduced at various stages of the procedure

- it seems useful to convert Word documents into XML for several reasons (e.g., data security, long-term preservation, in the future automatic compilation of texts, creation of knowledge portals)

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• a detailed analysis of the impact which the entire development has on

procedures under the Standing Orders

• a concept for the IT solution

• proposals - for amendments to the Federal Constitution and the Standing

Orders of the Nationalrat and the Bundesrat required to implement the change-over,

- for the user-friendly implementation of the layout guidelines, as well as

- organizational supporting measures and training.

New Homepage of the Austrian Parliament www.parlament.gv.at

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4. FEATURES MAKING IT A CANDIDATE FOR GOOD PRACTICE 4.1 Impact

• Electronic transfer of the content of all bills

• Possible through intense co-operation between the executive (Chancellery) and legislature (Parliament) including all ministries

• Every modification on a bill is done with one single layout (~ 90 formats)

• Only laws that are published on the internet (ris.bka.gv.at) are legally

binding

• Saving format: XML, Working format: Word

• Enormous time savings (days or even hours instead of weeks) especially regarding the publication

• Bills can generally be passed quicker

• Net-savings of about 1,13 million Euro (no more state printery &

reduction in the number of copies)

• Download of laws, law proposals, etc. for citizens and all internet user at the same time and free of charge

• Full-text-search possible over all parliamentary materials

• Internal & external applications come together

• WLAN

• Laptops (incl. WLAN cards) for all MPs

4.2 Relevance of the case Functional view: Electronic workflow system,

• governmental section using the existing Legal Information System as archival system,

• parliamentary section based on the existing Parliamentary Documentation System

Organizational view: Separated government and Parliament systems with interfaces

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Practical experience: Formatting problems Danger: Digital mimicry of paper process Organizational challenge: Shift of paradigm towards digital authenticity Technical challenge: Production and storage media ensuring digital authenticity and integrity in long-time storage XML

• XML (Extended Markup Language) is used for ensuring correctly formatted and safely signable documents and their long-range retrievability.

• Safe electronic signature for ensuring authenticity and long-range integrity of these documents

• Hardware and software neutrality.

Electronic authentic publication on the Internet: - The Federal Law Gazette was printed in 5000 to 6000 copies. A

publication on the Internet is available up to 4 million people in Austria. - The publication on the Internet has to be available for everybody free of

charge. - You also have the opportunity to buy a paper-copy of the Federal Law

Gazette (at the printing office of the Wiener Zeitung).These paper-copies are not authentic!

4.3 Competence Center As a result of the “Implementing project”, a "Competence Center" was established in Parliament. The centre has successfully taken up

- co-operation with the Federal Chancellery - know-how transfer from the State Printing Office (Wiener Zeitung) - support in the Parliament (especially for the secretaries of the

committees) and - controlling.

The competence center staff supports the rapporteurs of the committees and the committee secretaries of the Parliamentary Administration in preparing the committee reports as well as the staff members of the Parliamentary Administration responsible for executing the legal enactments of the Nationalrat, and is in charge of quality management and the layout of legislative documents as well as covering the need for additional labour in peak times.

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4.4 E-Law layouts The Parliamentary Administration has to use the E-Law layout for all modifications of the text of the bill (amendments at the committee as well as the plenary stage) There are 90 different E-Law layouts

You can use Buttens on the screen for each layout-format.

§-Number

Introduction

Title

Paragraph

Text of a Government Bill

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4.5 Info-mail of the Austrian Parliamantary Administration

Info-mail to all MPs with links: Next day 6:00 am

Info-Mail: What´s new in the NR or BR

Government Bills Links

Bundesrat Proposals

Reports to Plenary

Written Questions to the Government (Members)

and by two clicks to the Dokuments

1st Click: History of the Government Bill

2nd Click: Text of the documents

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1st Click: History of the Government Bill

Links to the text of the bill

Link to the pre-parliamentary

draft bill

History of the bill

2nd Click: Text of the document

Text of a Government Bill

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4.6 Federal Chancellery: Certificate about the safe electronic signature of a Federal Law Gazette on the Internet

You need a safe electronic signature for ensuring authenticity and long-range tegrity of these documents.

in

Authentic electronic Federal Law Gazette on the Internet

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5. RESULTS 5.1 The Right Environment: The E-LAW project focused on creating an appropriate technical as well as legal environment for the electronic support of law-making and the electronic promulgation of laws. Whereas on the government stage a new technical environment was established (viz. a workflow system based on a Fabasoft product), on the parliamentary stage the already existing Oracle database application "Parliamentary Business" until then primarily serving a documentalistic purpose was enriched with workflow tools to offer the people involved in the parliamentary process a supportive environment based on a detailed analysis of the legislative procedure and a clearly defined role concept. For the first project stage, the well-known text-processing format Word is used as production environment for legislative documents; templates were created that enable the document producers to draft well-formed documents in accordance with the uniform layout style. XML is used as storage and exchange format; in the future, it may also be used as production format. As regards the legal environment, the legal authenticity of electronic promulgation made an amendment of the Austrian Federal Constitution necessary, which required a two-third majority in the Nationalrat and the Bundesrat. In October 2003 the Nationalrat adopted this bill (amendment of article 49 of the Federal Constitutional Act and amendment of the Federal Act on the Federal Law Gazette, Federal Law Gazette I no. 100/2003) Article 49 Federal Constitution: (1) Federal laws shall be published by the Federal Chancellor in the Federal Law Gazette. Unless explicitly provided otherwise, their entry into force begins with expiry of the day on which their publication is issued, and it extends to the entire Federal territory. Section 7 Federal Law on the Federal Law Gazette: (1) Federal laws published in the Federal Law Gazette have to be available on the Internet at www.ris.bka.gv.at. 5.2 Government Readiness: Transformation of the administration and innovation in the back office • The reform of legal text production has progressed to the point where 100% of government bills are submitted to Parliament as “E-LAW" documents and in 100% of the cases Parliament returns consolidated electronic versions of the legal enactments adopted by the Nationalrat once parliamentary procedures have been completed. We can say that, all things considered, the E-LAW

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project and the „Competence Center“ (E-Legislation) have developed positively so far. • Though private members' bills are still introduced on paper (due to the delay of the amendment of the Standing Orders being the prerequisite for electronically introducing them), all private members' bills that are about to be adopted by the competent committee (with the regular consequence of adoption by the plenary) are integrated into the electronic workflow by the Competence Center and henceforth electronically processed. • The legal authenticity of electronic promulgation made an amendment of the Austrian Federal Constitution necessary, which required a two-third majority in the Nationalrat and the Bundesrat. In October 2003 the Nationalrat adopted these bill (amendment of article 49 of the Federal Constitution and amendment of the Federal Law on the Federal Law Gazette). From 1 January 2004 on, the Federal Law Gazettes digitally published on the Internet have been the only authentic versions.

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5.3 Service Use: Transformation and innovation in external facing services putting citizens and businesses at the centre, driving use and participation Already since 1996, all parliamentary business have been electronically available to the public and thus enhanced transparency of the parliamentary process as well as the opportunities for the public to get involved. Above that, since 1999 the documents of the pre-parliamentary appraisal procedure that draft government bills are undergoing have been electronically available on the parliamentary website as well; this was even more a contribution to legislative transparency, since until then these documents (draft bills as well as comments) had not been available to the public even on paper. Thus, the two main steps towards the "service use" of electronic legislative business were even made before introducing the E-LAW project, but this project made some further steps possible.

Pre-parliamentary steps of the legislative procedure are available on the Homepage of the Parliament

Links to the Comments

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By one click to the Dokuments (Pre-parliamentary steps) on the Internet

Text of a draft bill

Text of NGOs´ comments

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First of all, the electronic support of the law-making procedure was an appropriate opportunity for some preliminary "document re-engineering" that made government bills and committee reports easier to survey; the structure of the documents was made clear by dividing them into different files (e.g., legal text, explanatory remarks, comparison of texts). A more efficient use of XML will later on lead to even better structurized texts and a replacement of layout-oriented text formats by structure-oriented ones. Secondly, quick availability of parliamentary business is strongly supported by the e-legislation system. Whereas in former times often some weeks were necessary until more comprehensiv e items of business were available in print, now they are available within a few days or even hours. Thirdly, new types of documents are made available that make the results of the parliamentary process more easily conceivable. Whereas the legal enactments of the Nationalrat before introducing the e-legislation system just existed in a few internal paper copies that were not available to the public (that therefore either had to wait for promulgation of a law in the Federal Law Gazette or to reconstruct the amendments adopted on the committee as well as the plenary stages in order to obtain the text of the enactment as adopted), now the legal enctments are published electronically.

Legal Enactment (treaty) available on the Internet

All languages of a treatyare available on the Internet.

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Finally, the usual interval of time between completing the parliamentary procedure and promulgating a federal law in the Federal Law Gazette has been reduced as well. 5.4 Success in achieving and measuring the impact and benefits delivered to government, businesses and citizens The impact and benefits of the electronic support of law-making can be seen within the scope of fastness and transparency of the legislative process. Both goods may, of course, be contrasted: a quicker legislative process may reduce feedback opportunities, whereas more transparency will enhance them. The increase of transparency (and in particular immediate transparency) however seems to outweigh a possible reduction of feedback opportunities by "motorizing" the legislative process; never before the general public as well as NGOs or bodies representing interests had such immediate access to all documents of the pre-parliamentary and the parliamentary stages of the legislative process and at the same time quick feedback opportunities. One result statistically detectable is a prolongation of negotiations on important bills until the eve of the final plenary meeting of the Nationalrat; the portion of government bills amended even in the plenary has been significantly increasing in the course of the last years.

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6. CONCLUSIONS • The reform of legal text production has progressed to the point where 100% of government bills are submitted to Parliament as “E-LAW" documents and in 100% of the cases Parliament returns consolidated electronic versions of the legal enactments adopted by the Nationalrat once parliamentary procedures have been completed. We can say that, all things considered, the E-LAW project and the „Competence Center“ (E-Legislation) have developed positively so far. • The legal authenticity of electronic promulgation made an amendment of the Austrian Federal Constitution necessary, which required a two-third majority in the Nationalrat and the Bundesrat. In October 2003 the Nationalrat adopted this bill (amendment of article 49 of the Federal Constitution and amendment of the Federal Law on the Federal Law Gazette). From 1 January 2004 on, the Federal Law Gazettes digitally published on the Internet have been the only authentic versions. • However, we still have a long way to go until we have fully switched from paper to electronics so as to eventually arrive at "E-Parliament". • On the one hand, the secure transfer of data outside the internal workflow from one office to the other will in the future require electronic signatures. These in particular will be needed for authentically submitting motions and other items of business in an electronic way. • On the other hand, the legal basis has to be created to lend legal authenticity to the electronic transfer of government bills and legal enactments of the Nationalrat as well as the electronic reproduction and distribution of parliamentary business.

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• The E-LAW project was a core project with regard to a shift of paradigms in law-making. Law-making is a highly formalized process, traditionally embedded in a paper environment that in Austria has continuously developed since the early beginnings of constitutional government in 1861. Thus, replacing this "paper culture" by a contemporary "electronic culture" making use of the opportunities of the new information and communication technologies was a step requiring not only an appropriate technical solution but also accompanying psychological measures to convince the actors in the legislative process of the advantages of the new system. An important part of the project therefore was information and training offered to these actors. An own working group of the Parliamentary Administration, e.g., developed an e-learning programme based on the ECDL that in two different versions aimed at enabling the MPs and the staff members of the Administration to deal with the E-LAW system. Besides, courses were offered as well, but the e-learning programme proved particularly appropriate in a parliamentary environment where due to narrowness of schedules it is not so easily possible to attend courses.

e-learning programme based on the ECDL

with feedback!

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Information activities were however not only addressed to the actors in the legislative process but also to various dialogue groups and the general public to make them acquainted with the idea of electronic legislative documents and in particular of electronically authentic laws. Looking back, it can be stated that the PR strategy proved successful, since the electronic Federal Law Gazette found a high degree of public acceptance. 7. LINKS www.parlament.gv.at www.bka.ris.gv.at 8. References

[1] Bachmann Susanne, Elektronische Gesetzgebung in Österreich?, in: Zeitschrift für Gesetzgebung, C.F.Müller, Heidelberg, 1/2006, S. 61-72

[2] Engeljehringer Wolfgang, Das Projekt e-Recht – eine Erfolgsstory, in: Forum Parlament, Springer, Wien New York, 2/2004, S. 52-57

[3] Saurugger Erich, Die Genese des elektronischen Gesetgebungsverfahrens im Parlament, in: Forum Parlament, Springer, Wien New York, 2/2004, S. 48-52

[4] Schefbeck Günther,Legislative XML – ein Überblick, in: Bildungsprotokolle Band 10, Klagenfurter Legistikgespräche 2004, K-Verlag, Klagenfurt, S. 17-28

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9.

Interested? Please contact

Parliamentary Administration Vienna www.parlament.gv.at

Wolfgang Engeljehringer Head of Division „Competence Center“ (E-Legislation)

wolfgang.engeljehringer@parlament.gv.at

Günther Schefbeck Head of Division “Parliamentary Documentation, Archives, and Statistics“

guenther.schefbeck@parlament.gv.at

Tatjana Walter Debuty Head of Division „Competence Center“ (E-Legislation)

tatjana.walter@parlament.gv.at

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eEurope Awards for eGovernment 2005 Finalist at the Ministerial eGovernment Conference 2005 in Manchester

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