Parliamentary informatics is the application of information technology to the documentation of legislative activity. The principal areas of concern are the provision, in a form conveniently readable to humans or machines, of information and statistics about:
individual legislators particular legislative proposals votes thereon text of legislation
Parliamentary informatics is carried on both by officials of legislatures and by private for-profit and non-profit actors, with motivations ranging from the administration of parliaments to lobbying and facilitating democratic discourse.
The division of activities between official and unofficial activity differs widely between polities, even within a single country. There exists substantial overlap with disciplines such as psephology and, as far as the text of successfully enacted legislation is concerned, legal informatics in general.
The use of parliamentary informatics is also a rapidly growing trend in parliamentary monitoring. In a September 2011, joint report from the National Democratic Institute and World Bank Institute, a survey of parliamentary monitoring organisations (PMOs) found that parliamentary informatics are used by approximately 40 percent of PMOs worldwide. The report states, "These tools can automatically aggregate and organize information from parliamentary websites and other information sources, generate visualizations (such as political finance maps), and create new platforms for citizens to interact with MPs or participate in parliamentary monitoring and policy analysis." Strengthening Parliamentary Accountability, Citizen Engagement and Access to Information: A Global Survey of Parliamentary Monitoring Organizations, National Democratic Institute and World Bank Institute. Accessed 14 October 2011.
Issues
Access to parliamentary information is the most significant issue in parliamentary informatics; access may be inhibited technologically through the provision of parliamentary information in a form not amenable to processing by machines, or legally, by copyright or other protection of the parliamentary record.
Ultimately, it may be possible to provide citizens with a comprehensive overview of all the legislation going through parliaments everywhere in the world, which would allow the tracking of the implementation of international treaties and of general legislative trends.
In a September 2011 report from the National Democratic Institute and World Bank Institute on parliamentary monitoring organisations, open data is cited as a fundamental issue for further development. The report explains, "While they have proven effective in many instances, the most useful informatics tools require the availability of parliamentary data in machine-readable or "open data" formats, which remains a challenge in many contexts."Ibid.
Around the world
International see details at Akoma Ntoso Akoma Ntoso (Architecture for Knowledge-Oriented Management of African Normative Texts using Open Standards and Ontologies) is an initiative of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) that proposes an XML document schema providing sophisticated description possibilities for several Parliamentary document types (including bills, acts and parliamentary records, etc.). The work will provide the basis for the OASIS Legal XML LegalDocumentML project. Legal bodies such as the European Parliament, the European Commission, the EU Publication Office, the UK Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the Italian Senate, the Parliament of Uruguay, the Library of Congress of Chile, the Official Journal of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the German federal executive bodies alongside the federal legislative journal as well as several agencies within the United Nations have initiated projects to digitalize their legislative systems by developing application profiles of the Akoma Ntoso (AKN) legislative document standard. The "United States Legislative Markup" (USLM) schema for the United States Code (the US codified laws) was designed to be consistent with Akoma Ntoso. Akoma Ntoso was explicitly designed to be compliant with CEN Metalex, one of the other de facto standards besides Akoma Ntoso, which is used in the UK Statute Law Database. The United States Library of Congress created the Markup of US Legislation in Akoma Ntoso challenge in July 2013 to create representations of selected US bills using the most recent Akoma Ntoso standard within a couple months for a $5000 prize, and the Legislative XML Data Mapping challenge in September 2013 to produce a data map for US bill XML and UK bill XML to the most recent Akoma Ntoso schema within a couple months for a $10000 prize.
Albania Une Votoj (in English, "I vote") is a website that provides information about the Parliament of Albania. The site structures Parliamentary plenary and committee sessions and agendas, and summaries of the proceedings. It also provides biographical notes about elected members, attendance and voting records. It was established in 2005, and is presently run by Mjaft!, an Albanian non-governmental civil society movement.
Australia OpenAustralia.org is a community-funded site which was launched in June 2008 and automatically collects and publishes in an easy-to-read format the transcripts of all Australian Government House of Representatives and Senate debates, questions, discussions and notices. OpenAustralia.org also made available the Register of Senators' and Members' Interests online for the first time ever in Australia. The site was developed in Australia by the OpenAustralia Foundation, adapted from the UK site TheyWorkForYou built by mySociety. The site allows comment and discussion against debates and allows users to track the level of participation of Member of the House in debates, including statistics on their appearances in the House – so citizens can keep track of their representatives and be fully informed and involved with their Member's performance in the House. Within weeks of being launched OpenAustralia attracted a lot of attention and positive feedback from both the public and government and is set to pave the way for closer working relationships between government and citizens.
Austria The National Council of Austria is covered by meinparlament.at. The website was modelled after a German partner website.
Belgium The Chamber of Representatives is covered by mijnkamer.be / machambre.be, a bilingual (Dutch/French) volunteer project launched in 2026. It publishes the named votes of plenary sessions per member of parliament and per political group, including party-line analysis and participation rates.
Africa "Africa i-Parliaments" is the portal of the regional initiatives of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) aimed at strengthening the role of African Parliaments in fostering democracy and good governance by developing common information services and tools, and building information management capabilities with the objective of making Parliaments i-nterconnected, i-nformed i-ndependent, or in short, i-Parliaments.
The project includes two main initiatives:
Akoma Ntoso (Architecture for Knowledge-Oriented Management of African Normative Texts using Open Standards and Ontologies) proposes an XML document schema providing sophisticated description possibilities for several Parliamentary document types (including bills, acts and parliamentary records, etc.). It aims to standardise simple, technology-neutral representations of Parliamentary Documents to improve inter-Parliamentary co-operation and reduce the costs of Parliamentary IT support systems. Akoma Ntoso defines a set of recommendations and guidelines for e-Parliament services in a Pan-African context and provides an enabling framework for the effective exchange of machine readable Parliamentary Documents such as legislation, debate record, minutes, etc. The work will provide the basis for the OASIS Legal XML LegalDocumentML project.
Brazil Interlegis is an integration and modernisation program of the Brazilian parliaments (municipals, states and federation) in partnership between the Brazilian Federal Senate and Inter-American Development Bank. The main development of Interlelegis was the LexML Brasil standard and portal.
Congresso Aberto – Open Congress.
Canada OpenParliament.ca is a volunteer-run website providing information about the voting record and speeches of MPs.
The City of Toronto makes legislative information including voting records at toronto.ca/council
Lipad.ca is the website of an academic collaboration at the University of Toronto that includes a searchable database of the written record of Parliamentary Debates since 1901.
Gnowit.com provides a platform that tracks the Canadian parliament, and political issues in global media in real-time.
Chile Vota Inteligente Vote in an intelligent way.
Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional Library of Congress.
Czech Republic KohoVolit.eu is a volunteer-run website providing a sample of votings both in the Lower and Upper Chamber of the Czech Parliament allowing the user to test her or his own preferences against the MPs.
Denmark The Parliament website (Folketinget) has records of votes, speeches, laws, and written questions in plain form.
Hvem Stemmer Hvadhvemstemmerhvad.dk has elaborate parliament voting statistics and tracks parliamentary questions and media mentions of politicians. The site offers access to its data through an API. The name translates to "Who Votes What".
Kend Dit Folketingkendditfolketing.dk has general statistics on speeches, voting patterns and legislative proposals.
European Parliament www.votewatch.eu has collected and displays full records of the activities of the Members of the European Parliament starting with 2004. VoteWatch.eu is based on the expertise of academics from London School of Economics and Universite Libre de Bruxelles. The website displays full records of voting, attendance and other activities (parliamentary questions, speeches, reports etc.) of MEPs from all member states. Furthermore, it shows a set of statistics that provide detailed information on how the coalitions are forming between the various European Political Groups. VoteWatch.eu has been updated for the 2009–2014 parliamentary term and in early 2010 has also released a reportVoting behaviour in the new European Parliament: the first six months on the voting behaviour in the newly elected Parliament.
The site It's Your ParliamentIt's Your Parliament .eu contains voting records of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and makes it easy to compare voting records of individual MEPs and political groups. Users can comment on legislation, MEPs and cast their own votes. In March 2010 It's Your Parliament opened an API.API
ParlTrack is closely monitoring the legislative process within the European Parliament. Among other things, it covers committee agendas, votes and tracking of dossiers via email and RSS. Parltrack is available as free software.
Testbeeld EuropaTestbeeld Europa (Dutch language) shows how the Dutch Members of the European Parliament voted. It is made by the nonpartisan, non-profit Instituut voor Publiek en Politiek (IPP).Instituut voor Publiek en Politiek (IPP)
IPP in Romania ran a full site monitoring MEPs. It shut down in December 2008.
Czech-Slovak KohoVolit.eu (in English, too) prepares calculators on match between user and political groups and parties in EP, and individual MEPs. It is available for the 2009– term.
Follow the MoneyFollow the Money which aims to monitor the EU budget and runs the twin sites FarmSubsidyFarmSubsidy and FishSubsidy.FishSubsidy