Process Modelling and Knowledge Managementin the Legislative Process

Günther SchefbeckECPRD Seminar „Digitisation of

Parliamentary Information and Archives“ Part 1

Brussels, 30 May 2002

A legal enactment ... traditional style

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

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?

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”)

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

Transparency and democracy

Means of parliamentary transparency• public access to (plenary!) meetings• media coverage• print documentationare as young as democracy (or even younger:

early 19th century) andhave been given a new quality through the

NICT in the 1990s

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: ?

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

Five steps of electronic support of legislative processes

• Knowledge management

• Workflow management

• Improving the procedural quality

• Improving the output quality

• Improving the participatory quality

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)?

Present situation –functional variety

• Plain information systems

• Mixed systems combining information with aspects of communication/transaction

• Fully electronic workflow systems

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

Example: Switzerland (1)

• Workflow system introduced in 1998

• Electronic production of all legislative documents

• System and format breach: Parliament

• Authenticity: paper document

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”

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

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

Way of federal legislation (simplified organizational view)

FederalMinister

FederalGovernment

Parliament FederalPresident

FederalChancellor

Example: Austria (3-5)

Process steps

Government bill Legal enactment

Authentication

Publication

LIS

FederalMinister

FederalGovernment

Parliament FederalPresident

FederalChancellor

Consultation

Proposal to theCouncil of Ministers

Electronic workflow system

FederalMinister

FederalGovernment

Parliament FederalPresident

Federalchancellor

LIS

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

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

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