Process Modelling and Knowledge Management in the Legislative Process

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Process Modelling and Knowledge Managementin the
Legislative Process

• Günther Schefbeck
• ECPRD Seminar Digitisation of Parliamentary
  Information and Archives Part 1
• Brussels, 30 May 2002

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A legal enactment ... traditional style
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Legislative Processes

• Complex and multi-layered
• Highly formalized legal procedure
• (going back to 19th century)
• vs.
• Informal political decision-making process
  (semi-structured or negotiation process)
• Interaction of political and legal layers

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The value of legislative processes

• A business process is a collection of activities
  that takes one or more kinds of inputs and
  creates an output that is of value to the
  customer (Hammer Champy)
• What is the value of a law?

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The value of laws

• Individual law quality of content
• Rule of law quality of justice
• (Aristotle Under the rule of law the chances
  for justice are better than under the rule of
  men)
• Law produced in a democratic process quality of
  legitimation
• (Luhmann legitimization by procedure)

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Rule of law in a democratic system

• Knowledge of laws as a prerequisite for
  acceptance of laws and law enforcement
• Transparency of the legislative process as a
  prerequisite for the acceptance of this process
  and its output
• Crucial function of publicity of laws and
  legislative processes

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Transparency and democracy

• Means of parliamentary transparency
• public access to (plenary!) meetings
• media coverage
• print documentation
• are as young as democracy (or even younger early
  19th century) and
• have been given a new quality through the NICT in
  the 1990s

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The IT impact

• 1970s law documentation (mainframes)
• 1980s documentation of legislative processes
  (mainframes PCs)
• 1990s electronic availability of data (metadata,
  full texts of documents, audio/video streaming)
  to the general public (PCs Internet)
• Today electronification of legislative
  processes
• Tomorrow ?

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Legislative processes and E-business/government
functions

• Information
• Communication
• Transaction
• Communication and transaction functions have been
  made large-scale available through the Internet
  and Intranet applications

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Five steps of electronic support of legislative
processes

• Knowledge management
• Workflow management
• Improving the procedural quality
• Improving the output quality
• Improving the participatory quality

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Process modelling

• Knowledge management descriptive modelling
  (reduction of complexity)
• Workflow management descriptive/prescriptive
  modelling (complex legal and administrative
  procedure)
• Future development prescriptive
  modelling/process re-engineering (changing the
  legislative process, e.g. by introducing new
  instruments/steps)?

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Present situation functional variety

• Plain information systems
• Mixed systems combining information with aspects
  of communication/transaction
• Fully electronic workflow systems

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Present situation organizational variety

• Isolated systems of single parliamentary chambers
• Overall systems of (bicameral) Parliaments
• Integrated systems of all organs involved in the
  legislative process

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Example Switzerland (1)

• Workflow system introduced in 1998
• Electronic production of all legislative
  documents
• System and format breach Parliament
• Authenticity paper document

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Example Switzerland (2)

• Functional view electronic workflow system with
  derived information function, parliamentary
  information and production systems
• Organizational view government system,
  Parliament involved as a black box

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Example Austria (1)

• Workflow system operational since 1 January 2002
• Electronic production and transfer of all
  legislative documents
• System (but not format) breach Parliament
• Authenticity paper document/at least as to
  publication from 1 January 2003 on electronic
  document

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Example Austria (2)

• 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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Example Austria (3-5)
Way of federal legislation (simplified
organizational view)
Federal Minister
Federal Government
Parliament
Federal President
Federal Chancellor
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Process steps
Legal enactment
Government bill
Proposal to the Council of Ministers
Authentication
LIS
Consultation
Publication
Federal Minister
Federal Government
Parliament
Federal President
Federal Chancellor
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Electronic workflow system
LIS
Federal Minister
Federal Government
Parliament
Federal President
Federal chancellor
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Improving the procedural quality

• Process modelling makes aware of capability of
  improvement
• Necessary amendment of rules of procedure (shift
  of paradigm towards autheticity of electronic
  documents) gives opportunity to improve procedures

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Improving the output quality

• Legimatic systems for improving the formal
  quality of laws (checking the implementation of
  or implementing guidelines for legislation)
• Impact assessment and simulation systems for
  improving the material quality of legislation

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Improving the participatory quality

• Already emerging standard solution introducing
  new communication tools into the representative
  system
• Dichotomy indirect vs. direct democracy?
• Visionary concepts for intermediate democracy
  models the discussion is opened