Nextsense Integrated Legislative Information System

ICT have become essential in supporting the work of legislative bodies. As these technologies have matured and grown in sophistication, they have acquired the necessary capabilities and flexibility to assist governments and parliaments in making the laws; conducting supervision of the executives and communicating with the citizens. Nextsense e-Democracy Solutions help the public institutions to be more representative, transparent, accessible, accountable and effective through ICT.

The Nextsense government solutions integrate multiple legislative stakeholders and processes into a distributed and orchestrated process that transforms preparation and execution of the legislative procedure from paper to paperless.

Last year at the e-Democracy Conference 2010 we focused on separate independent pillars in the legislation development process and showcased 3 different solutions for governments, parliaments and official journals: e-Parliament, e-Cabinet and knowledge management system.

This year we are going to emphasise the importance of having a solution that incorporates all three separate solutions and integrates the whole legislation development process.

Today, there is an increased necessity of integrated management, monitoring and reporting on the nationwide legislation development life-cycle. For instance every country needs:

• To report the progress of national legislation towards supra-national organizations or unions
• To monitor implementation of bilateral and multilateral program implementations and action plans
• To initiate and guide law drafting process with enforcement of legislation and drafting standards
• To foster civil engagement in the legislation process

The law-making process consists of several stages. As a rule, during the life cycle an act is prepared, scrutinized, adopted and published. The first stage includes preparing of the first version of a project law (bill) in which an idea on law is realized. Individual, group of individuals, associations and political parties but usual a governmental body, may do this work. The next stage consists of scrutiny of a project within a governmental body or parliament. After the law is adopted it is published in official editions like the Official Journal. Each of these phases of the legislation process is covered with the specific functionalities of the Nextsense e-Democracy solutions: e-Parliament, e-Cabinet and legislative knowledge management system.

The essence of the Nextsense Integrated Legislative Information System is full two-way interoperability between the three core systems:

• The Official Journal as an integrator of the National Legislation Database is the start and end point in the legislation development process. The Official Journal receives all acts that are promulgated by the President of state and all the government decisions.
• In the opposite direction, a regularly updated legislation database is the starting point for drafting new or amending existing laws. Law drafters need to have all the data from the Legislation database including interconnectivity between acts and references to laws.
• A two way communication is also necessary between the Parliament and the Government because the Government is the initiator for more than 90% of the laws in the Parliament and the connection in the other direction from the Parliament to the Government is necessary for scrutiny and oversight purposes.

The Integrated Legislative Information System also includes consolidated planning, monitoring and reporting. With this dashboard every participant in the process including citizens can track the status of all project laws no matter of the phase of the law making process.

Public involvement is essential in every step of the legislative process. Nextsense Integrated Legislative Information System pays particular attention to this, by giving the public an opportunity to influence and participate in the legislative processes. Additionally the consultation with the citizens is essential because of the deeper contributions and debates in law drafting process.