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Microsoft Vision for
Parliaments 
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A White Paper,
Version 1.1 BASELINE CANDIDATE 3.11.04
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Table of Contents
Microsoft Vision for Parliaments
A White Paper
Purpose
With increasing public and media expectations being placed on
Parliaments, ensuring the best use of Information Technology (IT) to
help tackle such demands is more important than ever before. Properly
managed and implemented, IT can assist not only with existing business
processes but also help provide new ways for Parliaments to function and
operate – better serving both internal and external audiences. Members,
for example, can exploit new ways of keeping their constituents updated
on key matters and for learning more quickly of issues and concerns
within their constituency. This improved two-way communication, built on
the enabling foundations of recent and emergent technologies, provides a
potentially smarter and closer level of partnership between Members and
those they represent.
This White Paper outlines a vision of how technology can be harnessed
to address the diverse business requirements of Parliamentary Members
and Officials and in particular Members’ key function of overseeing and
scrutinising government. This paper is primarily intended for Members
and their staff involved or interested in the direction and oversight of
their Parliament’s IT and Information System (IS) strategies, together
with those Officials and staff who have responsibility for delivering
the Parliamentary IT and IS environment. It will also be of interest to
Parliamentary interest groups involved with looking at IT and IS related
issues. Where political parties are involved in the provision of
equipment to their own Members, this paper will also have relevance in
ensuring that the overall Parliamentary community have a shared vision
and common direction to ensure the availability of the best tools and
services to meet their collective needs. This vision, and the IT and IS
Strategies foundation elements that underpin it, provide a framework for
the development of what some have termed the nascent emergence of
“e-Parliaments”: that is, Parliaments positioned to make maximum and
efficient use of technology to improve their operations and hence
provide an updated democratic model for our modern times.
Introduction
Parliaments face an increasing range of demands from both internal
and external sources. These expectations – from the media, public,
businesses and Members and Officials alike – are creating pressures for
change in existing working methods. Such changes range from ensuring the
best means of providing high quality Members’ services through to the
effective management of routine Parliamentary business. They also
encompass the implementation of improved internal operational and
administrative systems – with corresponding transformations in the
importance and timeliness of information and the adoption of new and
improved ways of working. As governments themselves adopt new
technologies, modify existing business processes and generally implement
new and more efficient ways of operating and delivering public services,
so too the Parliaments that oversee them need to ensure that they are
adequately equipped to continue to fulfil their essential constitutional
functions.
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Figure 1: the
wide range of competing demands being placed on Members |
Alongside these demands, Parliaments also have the potential to
realise a benefit from new technologies and ways of working. Changes in
mobile communications, including cellular phone technology and wireless
networking, are producing an environment in which the aspiration to have
access to information, any time, any place, is now an increasing
reality. Swift, dependable access to reliable and high quality
information – appropriately secured – will undoubtedly provide a key
advantage to Members and their staff.
Those responsible for Parliaments’ information and technology
infrastructures find themselves required to be able to respond to these
pressures and opportunities in an appropriate fashion, applying the best
practice learnings of both public sector and private sector
organisations. They also need to take advantage of new technologies that
can help provide innovative leaps in capability and enable more
effective and flexible ways of working that will benefit both Members
and Officials alike. In addressing these demands, Parliaments must
satisfy the needs of a wide range of both internal and external
stakeholders. Such external stakeholders include Members’ constituents,
who expect timely and high quality responses from Members to both
constituency and individual issues. Internal stakeholders within the
Parliamentary environment include the Members themselves as well as the
various Officials who help run the facilities and infrastructure of the
Parliaments and who need to ensure their security, reliability and
availability.
To support Parliaments in meeting their increasing workloads and the
expectations placed upon them, a well-defined information system and
technology strategy plays a key role. A good IS Strategy will enable
Parliaments to manage information more efficiently and ensure the right
information flows to the right people at the right time. It will provide
tools to analyse and understand the significance of information and
provide Members and other users with the power to act rapidly on their
conclusions. The machinery of modern Parliaments, the increasing
expectations and demands of citizens, and the media-driven demand for
fast action and reaction to domestic and world political events have all
increased in complexity – requiring Parliaments to find more efficient
and cost-effective ways of conducting their business and in providing
responses to these external expectations.
This White Paper describes an IS/IT vision that seeks to provide
principles and guidelines that can be used to provide an agile, secure
and scalable environment for Parliaments. Underlying that vision is the
concept of a common architectural framework that provides both
operational agility and the ability to deploy specific applications to
address particular needs.
Vision
With the rise of factors such as the internet, rolling twenty-four
hour television news, e-mail and improved telecommunications there are
increasing expectations that access to relevant information should be
both universal and near-instant. Such a thirst for information and real
time communication is also influencing expectations about how Members
and Parliaments need to behave. This in turn creates the need for a high
degree of agility in the way Parliaments handle information. And timely,
secure and appropriate access to reliable information will in turn
enable more effective decision-making.
One good example of an evolving and changing business model – and the
need of IT to support such changes – is evident in the modified balance
between Parliamentary plenary and committee meetings. Whilst the plenary
proceedings of the chambers of a Parliament remain a key focus for
Members and their staff, there is an increasing tendency for much of the
major scrutinising and oversight of government work to be carried out
elsewhere – most typically in committees. As such Parliamentary
committees have risen in importance – both through statutory and ad-hoc
committees – Officials and staff have had to adapt support services in
recognition of this changing business focus. This gradual change in
workload from the main chamber to a variety of separate working areas
further increases the need for excellent capture and dissemination of
the deliberations and conclusions of such committees to ensure that the
overall Parliamentary community – and particularly those with an
interest in the outcome of such committee work – are automatically kept
informed of developments. A good IS implementation will support the
ability to adapt to such changes in working practices on the fly and
enable the best use of modern technologies in ensuring that information
is indeed efficiently captured and disseminated. A by-product of using
technology appropriately in this fashion can also be to improve
understanding and visibility of the key functions of such committees
outside of Parliament – amongst the media and constituents for example,
who may not appreciate where much of the significant work of a
Parliament now takes place.
Improvements in communications technology – from mobile phone usage
through to more recent developments such as broadband and wireless
networking – are changing the way that society operates and have raised
expectations about being able to access information, colleagues and
constituents: at any time and in any place. The need to address these
expectations and to manage the vast amount of information demands they
generate is critical to all organisations, including Parliaments.
The result of many of these changes is that users gain an “always
online” capability that allows them connection anywhere and enables new
patterns of working, including working effectively when away from the
office. A Member for example could be collaborating and accessing
information whether on the train, at home or during constituency
meetings, allowing them to deal with issues on the spot or access
colleagues’ calendars to set up virtual meetings. New innovations, such
as handwriting recognition software and Tablet PCs on whose screens a
user can write and capture information as they would on a traditional
piece of paper, are also providing more flexible ways of using
technology that map more closely to the way users want to work.
There are a variety of constructions blocks involved in developing a
Parliamentary IS strategy that builds towards delivery of this vision,
including:
publishing, sharing and searching (enabling the capturing,
sharing and rapid search and retrieval of proceedings in chambers and
committees, for example);
collaboration (enabling the flow of appropriate information
between Parliamentary stakeholders such as those responsible for input
to a Committee Report);
tracking and workflow (enabling an understanding of the key
issues and where to focus attention, such as the progress of draft
legislation);
interaction with government (ensuring the smooth two-way
communication of appropriate information with the executive, including
questions raised by the Parliament for answer by the executive);
interactions with other Parliaments (ensuring that various
tiers of national and supranational Parliaments – such as between
national and regional levels, or between national and supra-national
bodies such as the EU Parliament – have effective means of
communication and interaction);
information analysis (enabling the transformation of
information into insight – including demographic patterns, health
service efficiency, crime pattern analysis by both constituency and by
other classifications);
multi-lingual support (enabling Parliaments to communicate
with each other effectively and within and across states where
multi-lingual environments are required, including support for
constituents with diverse language requirements);
accessibility (ensuring that both legal and moral
requirements are met in terms of equality of access and participation
to those with disabilities);
mobility of access (ensuring that the services and
information are available whilst Members, their staff and Officials
are on the move and that they do not physically need to be within the
Parliamentary estate to make use of Parliamentary services);
security (ensuring best practice security procedures and
the deployment of systems built to recognised standards of
international security accreditation);
adoption of open-interoperability standards (to ensure
interoperability between systems regardless of their platform,
technology or vendor)
Reliable, secure, timely and flexible access to appropriate
information by Members and Officials lies at the core of any effective
Parliamentary information strategy. This White Paper sets out a vision
of a model that will deliver high value to the wide range of
stakeholders involved in the effective working of a modern Parliament.
Information Systems (IS) Key Issues
The key driver for a Parliamentary IS strategy is to address the
business needs of the various stakeholders. This means that the strategy
must deliver specific business benefit to each of these groups and their
specific business needs. It is important that the needs of the
stakeholders are used to determine the strategy – in order to ensure
that it will fulfil their needs. An overall Parliamentary strategy is
best developed within the context of what is often referred to as an
‘enterprise architecture’ or ‘EA’: that is a consistent set of standards
and practices against which all IT developments need to conform. The EA
is in effect a blueprint for how systems should expose consistent
external interfaces and functionality to ensure they will work with each
other, regardless of which vendor or supplier is responsible for their
delivery and implementation.
Such a Parliamentary enterprise architecture needs to deliver an
environment that guarantees:
agility – to meet ever-changing business and policy needs;
the reusability of components;
interoperability and portability;
a basis in commercially available software;
a consistent component model;
consistent interfaces (schema, methods, etc);
consistent delivery standards (eg. web services)
In addition to the business-specific needs of the stakeholders, the
strategy also needs to provide services that demonstrate a level of
reliability, security, maturity, usefulness, success and
interoperability:
reliability, through proven products and associated management
processes;
security, through recognised accreditation and the effective
application of best practice operational procedures;
maturity, through tried and tested platforms and products;
usefulness, in its appropriateness to the requirements;
success, demonstrated by widespread use in many sectors both
government and commercial;
interoperability, ensuring best return on investment from
integration with existing systems whilst being able to move forwards
with the application of new solutions and technologies
The strategy must provide operational efficiency in terms of cost,
time, support for efficient processes and use. Clearly the costs of
implementing such a strategy can only be justified by delivering
significant benefits to the Parliamentary community. The time to
implement and deploy solutions should also be advantageous and the
strategy should be agile enough to adapt to the evolving needs of the
Parliament. The degree of support for efficient processes should be
expressed in terms of the ease with which transformation from existing
models to new models can be implemented.
Such a strategy is also likely to provide material for good public
relations from the standpoint of the Parliament (by making more visible
and accessible its proceedings and decisions), as well as a political
return by encouraging and enabling increased participation and
interaction with Parliamentary activities.
Cornerstones of the IS Strategy will be the establishment of a
secure, reliable network infrastructure combined with common
interoperability standards across Parliament (and ideally to dovetail
those interoperability standards into those of the wider community
outside, including those in use across government). For example, for
consistent data interchange, a vendor-neutral format for data
representation, such as XML (the eXtensible Markup Language1) may well be
adopted. To ensure that different application systems are also able to
communicate with each other in a consistent manner, a common enterprise
architecture set of standards for open interfaces on those systems (such
as those made possible by web services2) may need to be established. The
outcome of such an approach will be that Members and other users are
able to access reliable, diverse information systems in a consistent and
integrated fashion, pulling together a comprehensive view of proceedings
in Parliament and beyond. Not only does this approach have immediate
benefit, but it also provides a progressive step towards realisation of
what has been termed the ‘semantic web’: the idea of having data on the
web defined and linked in a way that it can be used by machines not just
for display purposes, but for automation, integration and reuse of data
across various applications3.
Alongside consistent data handling and exploitation of information,
other common standards are also required. One particular approach is to
ensure a common set of definitions – sometimes referred to as a
‘thesaurus’ of terms, or ‘data dictionary’. This facilitates effective
searching across systems and information sources to return consistent
results. There are a variety of metadata standards that may be suitable
for adoption by a Parliament, including Dublin Core and the RDF4 work of
the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium5, one of the key standards bodies for
the Internet). The development of a Parliamentary data dictionary –
ideally one that as its core shares consistent metadata definitions with
other Parliaments – will provide a mechanism for much more efficient
classification and retrieval of information.
Some of the underlying best practice principles for a Parliamentary
information strategy therefore encompass:
establishing framework standards for all Parliamentary systems, to
ensure consistency of data interchange and interoperability between
systems, combined with a consistent security framework;
information segregation, to meet security requirements at the
appropriate levels and to ensure protection and separation of
restricted or confidential information and that which can be made
public;
adoption of a suitable metadata model to ensure consistency of
meaning between information and data held in diverse systems (and also
to ensure interoperability for example with wider environments,
including the exchange of information between Parliaments and between
a Parliament and government bodies);
an appropriate balance between centralisation and delegation of
the physical location and management of information, whilst providing
a consistent level of availability, protection and resilience;
maximising the ability of users to share all necessary information
with other authorised users;
exploiting existing information assets and systems, through the
use of integration and interoperability components;
the flexibility to cope with change quickly – and for scalability
to extend the solution to multiple environments;
an affordable total cost of ownership
A Parliament’s IT Strategy needs to not only recognise the changing
business requirements that they need to respond to, but to provide an
overall environment that will continue to be able to adapt and change
flexibly to meet future demands. In general, there has recently been a
shift in the way IT systems are developed and maintained in order to
make them more applicable to organisations. The key elements in this
shift are illustrated in the table below.
|
Old Approach |
New Approach |
|
Function oriented |
Process
oriented |
| Build
to last |
Build
to change |
|
Prolonged development cycles |
Incrementally built and deployed |
|
Application silos |
Orchestrated solutions |
| Tightly
coupled |
Loosely
coupled |
| Object
oriented |
Message
oriented |
| Known
implementation |
Abstraction |
Table 1: new approaches to business-led IT
This transition – to what is often termed a ‘Service Oriented
Architecture’, or SOA – provides a key means of not only fulfilling
immediate business needs, but also of ensuring future agility in terms
of meeting changing business requirements. An SOA orientates the
technology infrastructure around the needs of the organisation rather
than the organisation being designed around the limitations of
technology. As the name suggests, a service oriented architecture is
designed around a collection of services. Some means of connecting these
services to each other is needed: later on, this paper sets out the idea
of a “Parliamentary Message Bus” as the way of establishing a reliable
means of communication between such services.
This SOA approach has other benefits too. As well as IT being more
closely aligned with business needs, it also simplifies the integration
of existing systems with new solutions. This clearly has both cost and
information systems benefits since it enables the exploitation of
existing information and IT assets rather than involving their immediate
replacement.
This structured approach to the development of a Parliament-wide
architecture relies on a framework that will include:
interoperability enablers – so that information can flow freely
and consistently between systems;
a metadata framework – so that information has consistent meaning
and context across systems;
a security framework;
a management and operations framework – to ensure reliability,
security, availability and predictability
Interoperability Enablers
Several Internet-derived open standards initiatives are now generally
accepted as the basis on which to build interoperable systems. These
include:
Internet (IETF, W3C, WS-I) interoperability standards (eg. XML);
web services as a vendor-independent method of exposing
functionality between diverse systems;
a common metadata approach (eg. Dublin Core / Resource Description
Framework)
These open interoperability enablers need to be underpinned by
appropriate open standards such as:
TCP/IP for ‘wire-level’ transport;
HTTP and HTTPS 128 bit SSL vs 3 for the data communications
transport;
HTML for the presentation of web-page based information;
XML for the structured and consistent exchange of information;
x.509 certificates – where digital certificates and digital
signing are required, for example;
W3C digital signature standard as the open standards method for
the use of digital certificate as used for digitally signing
information;
SOAP for accessing systems in a vendor-neutral way;
SMTP for the exchange of email;
Web Services as the primary vendor-neutral method of interacting
with different services;
WS-I (WS-Routing, WS-Secure, WS-Referral, etc) for providing
consistency in the ways that systems are designed to interoperate with
each other in a secure, reliable and predictable fashion
By applying this ‘toolkit’ of interoperability enablers, Parliaments
will be able to ensure that their systems are capable of exchanging
information in a consistent fashion. But in addition to these tools, a
higher level guiding framework is required that sets out more
specifically the set of standards that these tools should deliver
against. As noted above, this is often defined through the use of an
organisation-wide enterprise architecture. This will set out more
specifically, even prescriptively, how the items in the toolkit should
be combined and used together in a consistent and interoperable fashion.
Compatible, Cross-Parliament Enterprise Architectures
All systems and IS investments within Parliament should therefore
take place within the context of a well-defined enterprise architecture
that will progressively work towards delivery of the desired
service-orientated environment.
This is best achieved through:
consistent interfaces (schema, methods, etc);
consistent delivery standards (eg. web services);
individual departmental enterprise architectures developed within
an overall cross-Parliamentary enterprise architecture framework
designed to deliver an overall Parliamentary SOA
These open interoperability standards enable the delivery of
information services that span multiple information sources. The result
of a well-developed IS Strategy framework will be the implementation of
a Parliamentary “Message Bus” that provides the backbone of the overall
SOA for Parliament. Services plugged into this bus can be hosted on a
wide range of different technology platforms, but because such services
are obliged to comply with open interoperability standards, messages can
still flow freely between them. This is because the Message Bus is in
turn underpinned by the core enabling standards (such as data
interoperability) that enable information to be exchanged reliably and
consistently between systems.
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|
Figure 2: the use
of interoperability standards in the delivery of integrated
information systems |
Inter-Parliamentary and other core external communications will also
benefit from the adoption of this model. An increasing number of
countries are adopting open interoperability standards such as XML and
SOAP/web services to ensure interoperability within and between existing
systems. Those same standards will also enable simplified exchange of
information between Parliaments and other organisations. For example,
within Europe the IDA (Interchange of Data between Administrations) will
be greatly simplified if all countries adopt XML and some of the RDF
type metadata standards: data will then be able to pass between
different institutions and organisations immaterial of the particular
systems, technologies or applications in use in those environments.
As will be clear from this proposed model, web services are playing a
key role in the development of such business-focused SOAs since these
enable organisations to create a loosely coupled IT infrastructure. Web
service standards such as XML, UDDI and SOAP are important enablers as
they allow communication on an as-needed basis over a network. By
designing business processes around these business objects, which can
then be exposed via web services, IT is better able to meet and continue
to meet the changing business needs of an organisation.
Members of the Parliament and their Staff
Members are the principal stakeholders within a Parliament. Their
primary challenge is to have reliable and timely access to appropriate
information that enables them to fulfil their role effectively. This
includes information relating to oversight of government, specialist
information relating to specific issues in which they have an interest
or may indeed be responsible (through, for example, membership of a
Parliamentary committee), as well as handling the work associated with
managing their constituency activities.
In their role of scrutiny of governments and legislation, a wide
range of informational materials are now relevant: transcripts, text,
audio and video records all need to be fully available. All of these
also need to be managed simply, reliably and effectively if a Member is
going to be able to use the information effectively.
Staff who work for Members are another group of important
stakeholders, with similar challenges to the Members since much of the
time they may well be acting as a proxy of the Member and undertaking
the first level of information searching and retrieval. A large portion
of the routine initial research work and handling of constituency and
other administrative matters are often undertaken in the first place by
the staff working for Members.
Areas of interest to Members and their staff will include:
good research tools, enabling the rapid identification and
retrieval of appropriate information in a timely fashion;
instant access to high quality information and statistics,
particularly that relating to the operations of the chambers and
committees;
details of planned Parliamentary business and events;
handling of constituency correspondence and matters;
diary and appointment scheduling;
maintaining a personal profile via newsletters, websites, email,
interest groups (including local and national media and constituency);
access to news channels/feeds;
good integrated desktop tools for preparation of reports, briefs
etc.;
committees with special interests;
inter-Parliamentary communications and exchanges
The IS Strategy will empower Members and their staff to find and
interact with information relevant to them in a simplified and powerful
way, regardless of where the information may be drawn from in terms of
the underlying systems.
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|
Figure 3:
developing integrated views of diverse information sources through
the application of web services |
A single view into these disparate – and increasing – information
resources is essential in terms of enabling a Member and their office to
quickly identify the information relevant to them and which they need to
act upon. Sorting out the small nuggets of relevant and timely
information from the enormous quantities of information now in
circulation and increasing daily is a key focus of efficient
Parliamentary systems. Innovative ways of finding and re-finding
information are a large focus of research at present, including
innovative work being undertaken by organisations such as Microsoft
Research. Such information may be drawn not just from a variety of
systems (both within Parliament and from external sources, such as news
feeds), but also in a variety of formats (such as email, documents,
reports, press releases and so on).
Parliamentary Officials and Staff
The Officials and staff of a Parliament have information needs of
their own, many associated with ensuring the smooth running of the many
functions that Parliaments provide in order to serve their members. They
also have the challenge of providing the infrastructure and content that
services the needs of Members and their staff. Such responsibilities
cover the security of the Parliament, the provision of high quality
information services ranging from traditional library functions through
to the transcription of sessions in the chambers and committee rooms,
through to the capture of text, audio and video as well as other
functions such as accommodation and ceremonial duties.
A major component of the Officials’ work relates to their role in
reliably maintaining drafts of legislation combined with the effective
running and administration of the chambers and Members committees. The
transcriptions of proceedings, the drafting and re-drafting of
legislation and committee reports together with items such as the
handling of Parliamentary Questions are key to their activities. They
need effective and productive tools that enable them to make best use of
their time and to deliver the best possible quality of service to the
Members.
Other Officials carry responsibility for the core infrastructure of
the operations of the Parliament, spanning administrative systems such
as finance, administration and accountancy office activities (payroll
and expenses, pensions and general accounting and billing). Included
here are activities associated with upkeep of the Parliamentary
infrastructure, including wider topics such as catering and the security
systems associated with building access.
There are also the essential enabling functions of those responsible
for the IT infrastructure of the Parliament, including the
provision of network infrastructure and core IT systems to the various
audiences – both Members and their staff and Officials and their staff –
of the Parliament.
Areas of interest for the administration of a Parliament are likely
to include:
fast reporting tools; innovative technologies to help with
audio/video streaming and capture to text; automated publishing (to
web and printers); smart search and retrieval tools;
tools to assist with the management of the drafting and
re-drafting of Bills and committee reports, the handling of
Parliamentary Questions etc;
interfaces with Members’ and their staffs’ research interests
(best of breed information access and retrieval services) providing
both traditional and innovative Library functions;
administration systems related to upkeep of the Parliamentary
estate; security systems and building access; network infrastructure
and core IT systems; ceremonial logistics;
Finance & Administration/Accountant's functions such as payroll
and expenses, pensions (Members and staff pensions schemes), general
accounting and billing;
other aspects similar to a commercial environment such as the
restaurant environment (stock mgt; catering staff mgt payroll etc)
External Stakeholders
It is important to recognise the external-facing nature of much of
what a Parliament does. Whilst meeting the needs of the various internal
stakeholders who work within the Parliament is clearly a key focus of
any effective Information Systems strategy, a Parliament also needs to
maintain a very public, accountable and visible presence to the wide
range of external stakeholders whose interests it represents. These
stakeholders range from the obvious – such as the electors whose
representatives are now Members in the Parliament – through to the
media, businesses, voluntary organisations and a wide range of other
groups and interests who have a close interest in the activities of a
Parliament. A well designed IS strategy will also ensure that these
numerous stakeholders have timely access to appropriate information
about the workings of the Parliament, and in particular the ability to
easily track and monitor any particular aspects of, for example, new
legislation in which they may have an interest. This will enable a
Parliament to have a clearly defined channel to those it serves and to
ensure that the content of that channel provides high quality
information services that are reliable, accurate and timely.
Areas of interest for external stakeholders are likely to include:
timely access to reports and transcripts of the proceedings of the
Parliament, both that of chambers and committees, including
historic/archived access;
details of proposed and passed legislation;
details of Members activities;
information on any consultation or other public access exercises
planned or in the process of execution;
the ability to communicate with a Member through their channel of
choice (letter, email, etc)
Parliamentary Scenarios
The need to access, interpret and manage timely, relevant information
lies at the heart of most of the challenges facing Parliaments today.
The desire is to provide an IS Strategy that enables more timely, better
informed and more effective decision-making based on the availability
and assimilation of comprehensive and reliable information drawn from a
diverse variety of sources.
This section takes an example set of challenges for stakeholders in
Parliaments in order to explore how they could effectively be addressed
through the application of an IS Strategy. These challenges are
re-visited later in this White Paper to show how an effective IS
Strategy implementation can help deliver solutions against these
requirements.
Challenges for Members and their Staff
Challenge 1: Members must
have available all information relevant to them for effective
participation in the proceedings of the plenary chambers and committee
meetings
In order to improve the oversight and decision-making processes of a
Parliament, and ultimately help inform debate and improve the quality of
legislation, there is a need for improved methods of accessing, managing
and using information. Increasing volumes of information, and the drive
toward the real time requirement, makes traditional approaches to
information handling vulnerable. Access to information needs to be
immediate, with tools to help distinguish and extract relevant
information quickly and efficiently. There needs to be the ability to
personalise the individual profile of a Member and how he/she interacts
with the information available. Attention also has to be paid to the
issues of information origin, trustworthiness and rights management.
Challenge 2: Members must have available historic records
(including text, audio, video) from proceedings in the plenary chambers
and committee meetings
Parliamentary information needs to extend beyond the boundaries of
textual based information. As well as the elements of Challenge 1 above
there are other forms of information to be used and managed, such as
audio and video media. There remains within this realm too the need to
personalise the individual profile of a Member and how he/she interacts
with the information available, and attention has to continue to be paid
the issues of information origin, trustworthiness and rights management.
Challenge 3: Members must have access to all information
relevant to them concerning all regional, national and supra-national
bodies, including other tiers of government and administration
A Parliament’s information needs are wider than their immediate own
environment: modern Parliaments are often part of a wider and more
complex structure involved not only with their own immediate interests,
but also those of other tiers of executive and legislative functions.
Within the EU, for example, a Parliament is equally interested in
developments at the European Parliament and the potential two-way
interaction of such supra-national and national bodies. Members need
facilities to personalise the individual profile of their interests and
the type of content and developments on which they wish to remain aware.
Challenge 4: Members must have access to all information
relevant to serving the needs of their constituents and in handling
interactions with their constituents
Members need fast and efficient tools to enable them to administer,
attend to and respond to those whom they represent. To meet this
challenge, the Parliamentary information infrastructure must address
issues related to case-management (to ensure the high quality of ongoing
dealings with constituents’ concerns), information capture, information
storage, information dissemination (including potentially in
“real-time”), information searching, information availability,
information retrieval and information access. In the same way that a
Member will want to establish a profile of their own interests, in order
to pro-actively receive the most relevant and timely information, they
may also wish to do likewise for their constituents so that routine
information updates on matters known to be of interest to constituents
and other relevant groups can flow automatically to them with a minimum
overhead being placed on the Member’s office itself.
Challenge 5: Members of the Parliament must have the
information they require available to them via a variety of channels
In addition to extending the challenge beyond the boundaries of
textual based information and other forms of information such as audio
and video media, there is also the issue of the channels used in
accessing and interacting with such information. Here too there needs to
be the ability to personalise the individual profile of a Member and how
he/she interacts with the information available, and, attention has to
continue to be paid the issues of information origin, trustworthiness
and rights management.
Challenge 6: Members must have available an impartial,
accurate and timely information service
In assisting Members of Parliament in their work in committees,
Parliamentary bodies and other Parliamentary activity which facilitates
the functioning of the Parliament, and, support of the Parliament’s
legislative, oversight and representation functions, accessibility in a
real time or near real time manner should be extended to access and use
‘in committee’.
Challenge 7: Parliamentary Members’ staff and research
assistants must have parallel access to all the solutions addressing
challenges 1 – 6.
In assisting Members of Parliament in all their work access to all
information for the purposes of research and preparation must be
available to member’s staff and research assistants.
Challenges for Parliamentary Officials and Staff
Challenge 8: Parliamentary
Officials and Administration staff need to capture and manage all
appropriate Parliamentary information (text, audio/video, etc) and
provide automated publishing and smart search and retrieval tools.
In order to facilitate Challenges 1 – 7, there must be infrastructure
and process in place to operate the provision of such an information
availability service. Parliamentary Officials and Administration staff
will need to be integrally involved in all aspects of the provision of
these services.
Challenge 9: Parliamentary Administration staff must have the
tools to enable them to ensure the effective running of the chambers and
committees
Parliamentary Officials and Administration staff will also need to
have access themselves to information in an accurate and timely manner,
as it is in part their function to ensure the smooth running of
Parliamentary activities such as the running of ‘committees’, and, the
provision of oversight and interrogation.
Challenge 10: Parliamentary Officials and Administration staff
must have facilities to support them in their work related to the
legislative functioning of the Parliament, including the drafting and
re-drafting of Bills and committee reports, and the handling of
Parliamentary Questions.
The drafting and re-drafting of Bills and committee reports, and the
handling of Parliamentary Questions involves efficient document
drafting, handling and storage facilities that are essential to this
function.
Challenge 11: Parliamentary staff must have facilities to
support administrative activities (Payroll, Purchasing, Pensions,
Finance Office functions etc)
The day to day running of a Parliament requires underpinning with a
series of core systems which can allow the Parliamentary Administration
staff to provide such functionality as Finance, Administration,
Accountancy Office activities such as payroll and expenses, pensions and
general accounting and billing. As many of these should be self-service
as possible – enabling, for example, online procurement and payments
rather than long daisy chains of paper approvals.
Challenge 12: Parliamentary Officials and Administration staff
must have tools to manage the upkeep of the Parliamentary estate, the
provision of accommodation, management of ceremonial functions and the
security systems associated with building access.
The smooth running of the Parliamentary estate is one of many
fundamental functions that needs to be supported in order for Parliament
to continue to run efficiently and effectively.
Challenge 13: To provide a highly reliable, secure and
resilient “always-on” IT environment
In order to facilitate all the solutions associated with the
stakeholders’ challenges, the provision of an infrastructure to host the
constituent part of the strategy will need to take into account current
capacity, expected future capacity, security and trustworthiness.
Challenges for External Stakeholders
Challenge 14: External
Stakeholders must have all appropriate Parliamentary information
available in an easily accessible fashion
Certain information needs to be made available publicly (to citizens,
businesses, the media and others) via such means as a public web site.
There may also be a requirement to support other channels, such as for
example providing a subscription service that can send interested
parties real-time updates – for example, on the progress of legislation
through the Parliament.
The Parliamentary Information Systems Portfolio
An Information Systems portfolio for a Parliament needs to be derived
from a good understanding of the types of challenge outlined in the
preceding section, set alongside the broader context of the key drivers
and requirements that underpin the overall Parliamentary enterprise
architecture. These critical business requirements provide a portfolio
of information system application solutions which will form constituent
parts of the strategy. Some of the constituent parts will address one or
more of the challenges.
Within a Parliamentary strategy, constituent parts will typically
include:
Desktop applications: e-mail, calendar, task lists,
document creation and management, web browsers, etc. It may also
involve desktop constituency handling tools where Members are
responsible themselves for provision rather than the Parliament;
Parliamentary Web Sites: for both internal and external
use, with appropriate levels of authentication and access dependent on
the nature of the information;
Data/Information Repositories: archives of Parliamentary
and other related materials, be they documents, audio, video, etc that
can be intelligently searched and used. This would include the likes
of proceedings of the chambers, committees and so on;
Subscription News services: Reuters, FT, PA etc to ensure
the availability of a high quality of external information sources;
Document Management: for use both within contexts such as
the drafting and revision of key Parliamentary documents, as well as
within the general operational functions of the Parliament. It will
also embrace the likes of Library information management systems
alongside appropriate search and reporting tools;
Core IT systems: including Human Resources, Payroll,
Expenses, Pensions, Security, Building Access, Estates Management;
Catering: Stock Control, Point of Sales systems, Order
Processing, HR, Staff Management, Payroll, Pensions
Also included are those areas where extra functionality can help
enhance the application/solution portfolio. These include:
Mobility, WAN, LAN, WiFi: providing access to information
on the move, both around the Parliamentary estate and further afield –
for example from a Member’s constituency office or home or other
roaming location;
Audio/Video Streaming: in addition to traditional broadcast
of the audio and video streams, the network can also carry both live
and archive accessible video and audio sources and stream these in
real time to a variety of devices (desktop PCs, PDAs, etc). For
example, a two-way index between the transcription of Parliamentary
proceedings and the full video and audio archive would enable a
research assistant to move seamlessly between the written text of the
transcript and the ability to view on demand the actual archived
recordings of that particular debate in the chamber.
This portfolio is underpinned by a highly reliable, enterprise class
network and systems operational infrastructure. Many of the above
portfolio items are already available and in widespread use (such as
smart desktop tools, including Microsoft Office 2003, that are able to
interact directly with web services), whilst others are more emergent
technologies. Some of the portfolio of applications can be started now
and enhanced as new technological functionality becomes available and
some constituent parts will appear later on in the roadmap.
These are several types of solution that need to be identified when
referring to the needs of the Parliamentary IS. These include:
- Key Operational Solutions – those which are essential to
the day-to-day running of the core fabric of the Parliament. They are
the solutions without which the Parliament would not be able to
function. Within the Parliamentary portfolio these include:
o core IT systems
o some desktop applications
o catering
o security systems
- Strategic solutions – those which are critical to meeting
the business requirements of the Parliament and also need to take
account of the future strategy. These include:
o document management applications
o document/information repositories
o Parliamentary web sites
- High Potential solutions – these may be important to
achieving future success and require controlled investment and
implementation. These include:
o video streaming, including ‘on-demand’
o mobility and wireless connectivity
o XML enabled information
An example of how the overall solution portfolio could be constructed
to provide the required technical architectural environment to deliver
appropriate Members’ services is shown in outline below.
 |
|
Figure 4: an
illustration of the potential architectural model for Parliaments |
This model provides the Members, for example, with an integrated
desktop office environment capable of using all the standard office
features, such as email, scheduling, calendar, etc alongside the use of
web services delivering a range of integrated information services. The
power of web services and an XML-enabled information environment creates
future opportunities for innovation and change. For example consider
scenarios that exploit:
user-created documents that contain metadata added by the user,
such as key pointers, key words etc, allowing a better
organisation-wide searching capability, which in turn provides
increasing opportunities and effective ways to categorise and re-use
content. Through increasing collaboration and profiling, such an
approach can ensure that other consumers of the information can access
it in the format and define specific content they require. Each Member
or Official could develop reports based on several authors’ content,
but always in a consistent format with no need for manual
intervention, which will impact the day-to-day researching and
reporting processes, their accuracy and the ability to do more with
less;
use of smart documents – a cell in a spreadsheet for instance can
contain not only a web service link but also background management
processes that ensure the data returned by the XML based web service
(linked to internal or external data sources) has any calculations
performed before being displayed, or formatted if text, and
automatically inserted into a document if required. This can be real
time e.g. information on speakers on the floor of the chamber for
example or non real time such as a monthly reporting or meeting/debate
minutes. Such processes can be managed by Officials and the
documentation made available to Members via specific collaborative
shares and or web services.
An illustration of how a solution portfolio can be matched to the
earlier challenges and the benefits derived from the key drivers is set
out in the table below.
|
The Challenge |
The Strategy Solution Enabler |
Potential Benefit |
|
Challenge 1: Members must have available all information
relevant to them for effective participation in the proceedings of
the chambers and committee meetings |
Desktop
applications Parliamentary Web Sites
Data/Information Repository
Subscription News services
Document Management
Mobility, WAN, LAN, WiFi
Audio/Video Streaming |
Ensures
Members have timely, reliable access to the information they need in
order to fulfil their role effectively. |
|
Challenge 2: Members must have available historic records
(text, audio, video) from proceedings in the chambers and committee
meetings |
Desktop
applications Parliamentary Web Sites
Data/Information Repository
Subscription News services
Document Management
Mobility, WAN, LAN, WiFi
Audio/Video Streaming |
Ensures
Members have timely, reliable access to the information they need
(regardless of format in which it is held) in order to fulfil their
role effectively. |
|
Challenge 3: Members must have access to all information
relevant to them concerning all regional, national and
supra-national bodies, including other tiers of government and
administration |
Desktop
applications Parliamentary Web Sites
Data/Information Repository
Subscription News services
Document Management
Mobility, WAN, LAN, WiFi
Audio/Video Streaming |
Enables
Members to fulfil their role of scrutinising the work of other
Parliaments in whom they have a direct constitutional interest |
|
Challenge 4: Members must have access to all information
relevant to serving the needs of their constituents and in handling
interactions with their constituents |
Desktop
applications Parliamentary Web Sites
Data/Information Repository
Document Management
Mobility, WAN, LAN, WiFi |
Enables
Members to fulfil their role in terms of representing the interests
of their constituency both whilst within the Parliamentary estate
and whilst on the move |
|
Challenge 5: Members of the Parliament must have information
available via a variety of channels. |
Desktop
applications Parliamentary Web Sites
Data/Information Repository
Subscription News services
Document Management
Mobility, WAN, LAN, WiFi
Audio/Video Streaming |
Delivering
all forms of information through a wider variety of channels will
provide the ability for Members to work anytime, anywhere and make
best use of their time – by, for example, receiving updates on key
motions and debates on their mobile phone |
|
Challenge 6: Members must have available an impartial,
accurate and timely information service |
Desktop
applications Parliamentary Portal
Data/Information Repository
Subscription News services
Document Management
Mobility, WAN, LAN, WiFi
Audio/Video Streaming |
Accessibility in a real time or near real time manner to appropriate
information sources will assist Members of Parliament in their work.
In addition to ensuring they have the right information at the right
time for committees, Parliamentary bodies and other Parliamentary
activities, it will also help with dealing with enquiries from the
media and Members of the public. In a fast-changing information
world, Members need to ensure they are as up-to-speed as the next
person they are about to talk to. |
|
Challenge 7: Parliamentary Members’ staff and research
assistants must have parallel access to all the solutions addressing
challenges 1 – 6. |
The
above solutions in 1-4 apply |
Making the
functionality available to member’s staff and research assistants
will enhance the ability of Members of Parliament in all their work
research and preparation activities. |
|
Challenge 8: Parliamentary Officials and Administration staff
need to capture and manage all appropriate Parliamentary information
(text, audio/video, etc) and provide automated publishing and smart
search and retrieval tools. |
Desktop
applications Data/Information Repository
Subscription News services
Document Management
Audio/Video Streaming |
An
efficient IT environment will enable staff to largely automate the
processes in many areas, and hence focus on those items which
require more specialist intervention, such as the transcription of
proceedings in the chambers. |
|
Challenge 9: Parliamentary Administration staff must have the
tools to enable them to ensure the effective running of the chambers
and committees. |
Desktop
applications Data/Information Repository
Document Management |
Access for
Parliamentary Administration staff to smart and efficient tools will
enhance their function to ensure the smooth running of Parliamentary
activities. |
|
Challenge 10: Parliamentary Officials and Administration
staff must have facilities to support them in their work related to
the legislative functioning of the Parliament, including the
drafting and re-drafting of Bills and committee reports, and the
handling of Parliamentary Questions. |
Desktop
applications Parliamentary Web Sites
Data/Information Repository
Document Management |
This
solution functionality supports work related to the drafting and
re-drafting of Bills and committee reports, and the handling of
Parliamentary Questions. |
|
Challenge 11: Parliamentary staff must have facilities to
support administrative activities (Payroll, Pensions, Finance Office
functions etc) |
Desktop
applications Core IT systems |
The
provision of such Finance, Administration, and Accountancy Office
activities (or the integration of existing systems) ensures the
smooth operating and efficiency of the Parliamentary infrastructure. |
|
Challenge 12: Parliamentary Officials and Administration
staff must have tools to manage the upkeep of the Parliamentary
estate, the provision of accommodation, management of ceremonial
functions and the security systems associated with building access. |
Desktop
applications Core IT systems
Catering |
The
provision of such systems (or the integration of existing systems)
will help ensure the efficiency of the ancillary infrastructure. |
|
Challenge 13: To provide a highly reliable and resilient
“always-on” IT environment |
Desktop
applications Parliamentary Web Sites
Data/Information Repository
Subscription News services
Document Management
Core IT systems
Catering
Mobility, WAN, LAN, WiFi
Audio/Video Streaming
+Network and Hardware infrastructure |
In the
provision of an infrastructure taking into account systems
reliability, current capacity, expected future capacity, security,
trustworthiness and rights management, IT provision will be
underpinning the benefits to stakeholders and at the same time
maintaining control on costs and the time to implement new
requirements or upgrade existing solutions. |
|
Challenge 14: External Stakeholders must have available all
appropriate Parliamentary information available in an easily
accessible fashion |
Parliamentary Web Sites Data/Information Repository
Audio/Video Streaming |
Certain
information will be made available to the public to increase the
profile, visibility, accountability and degree of awareness of
Parliamentary proceedings |
Summary
This paper has provided an initial overview for Parliamentary
decision-makers and influencers of Microsoft’s vision for developing an
effective, business-led IS strategy for Parliaments. The development of
effective Parliamentary IS strategies is already enabling Parliaments
around the world to implement effective improvements in their own
operations. It is no longer necessary to adopt the expense of a ‘rip and
replace’ strategy proposed by many software and hardware vendors.
By adopting a core framework that encompasses:
interoperability standards;
metadata standards;
security standards;
management and operational standards
aligned with a service-oriented architecture developed within an
overall enterprise architecture, Parliaments will be well placed to
deliver an effective IS Strategy that meets the needs of its various
stakeholders – both now and in the future. The result is an environment
that places the needs of a stakeholder at the centre of the design: in
the case of a Member and his/her office, this provides them with an
integrated environment that enables them to manage everything through a
consistent approach and set of interfaces.
 |
|
Figure 5: the
integrated desktop - enabling the Member to take control of their
agenda |
Using Microsoft’s vision for Parliamentary IS strategies will enable
Parliaments to;
realise stakeholder benefits through improvements in business and
operational efficiencies;
free resources from administration and bureaucracy into direct
service provision;
manage a portfolio of current and potential opportunities to
define priorities for future investments and new ways of working;
act, react and adapt faster and effectively to the increasing
demands and expectations from both inside and outside
An integrated IS strategy in a Parliament is as much about cultural
change as it is about the technologies and solutions that deliver on
that vision. Microsoft’s, and our partners’, initiatives in this area
bring the same value for money benefits that the package software
approach has provided for traditional desktop systems. By deploying best
of breed open standards solutions that exploit the same use of high
benefit commercial software that has been applied elsewhere, Parliaments
can take benefit of improved services and information systems that are
able to better meet the needs of their various stakeholders – both now
and in the future.
Microsoft
Microsoft is uniquely positioned to help Parliaments in addressing
their specific business needs. We have a wealth of experience in working
with Parliaments. We have a solution set that ranges from the basic
operating system through to niche-specific applications developed by our
partner community. We use world-class best operational practice (the
Microsoft Operational Framework), based on the
internationally-recognised UK IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and
refined through the live experiences of many large enterprise-class
customers. Our platform is the only general purpose operating system
accredited to the demanding standards of EAL4 under the internationally
recognised Common Criteria security benchmark.
Microsoft also has strong support for open interoperability standards
built into its products. This enables close integration within and
between Microsoft products as well as those of third party vendors who
also comply with the open standards of bodies such as the W3C. Such
support includes the likes of embedded support for XML and web services.
New generation products (such as the Office 2003 and the recently
released Windows Server 2003) demonstrate the commitment to include open
interoperability standards throughout the Microsoft product family.
We have a unique way of working: in partnership. We and our partners
will work with you to meet your specific needs. Microsoft solutions and
services – aligned with the broad reach of our expert partner community
– help to address the type of business requirements and innovative
solution approaches that this White Paper has briefly touched upon.
Additionally, Microsoft software solutions can help to provide both
support and improvements in the ways that Parliaments work. Microsoft
brings integrated innovation, stronger security and better value for
money through integration across platforms.
Through the innovative and internationally recognised world-leading
work of Microsoft Research, we are also investing heavily in the future
and have unique insight into how the next generation of ideas and
technologies will further improve on existing solutions. This insight
can help inform your current business and technology vision – and ensure
that investments made today continue to pay dividends into the future.
Through the unique model of our Consulting Services arm we aim to
solve problems that create business value for customers. Consulting is
provided to customers in support of specific development and
implementation needs and focuses on skills transfer to customers – not
to exploit long term service-based consulting roles. Microsoft
Consulting Services also provides an ability to develop solutions and to
develop rapid joint proofs of concept for both technology feasibility
and business value qualification. It has a business model that actively
trains and involves software application and integration partners.
Contact Microsoft or one of our accredited partners today to learn
how we can work in partnership with you to help develop and implement
innovative solutions that meet the needs of your particular Parliament.
[1] See
http://www.w3.org/XML/
[2] See
http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/
[3] See
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/
[4] See
http://www.w3.org/RDF/
[5] See
http://www.w3c.org
|
