Provision of Open Parliamentary Data : Commitment 3: Improvements of the Hellenic Parliament Website and implementation of new standards-technologies

Context
A Hellenic Parliament website is available since 2001 for the provision of parliamentary information. In May 2010, a new web portal was activated in accordance with the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) guidelines for the creation of parliamentary websites. The (web) portal is the main mean of communication between citizens and the Parliament since a broad range of parliamentary data and information are available through it, in various formats.
Technological developments in the areas of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), together with Civil Society’s requests for additional, timely, accurate and re-usable information, call for the portal functionality reevaluation, as well as additional ways of production, disclosure and disposal of parliamentary data.
Commitment description
Open Parliamentary Data is a major challenge for the Hellenic Parliament, following the example of parliaments worldwide. Moreover, proper structuring of information ensures user broader and more qualitative experience and pooling of all requested data sought for at specific points of the portal.
The specific commitment requires functionality improvement in the Hellenic Parliament portal, in line with new standards that meet the Open Public Data, content enrichment, application development for visual representation of information and development of search tools.
OGP values
Access to information, technology and innovation for parliamentary transparency, accountability
Implementing bodies
Implementation: Hellenic Parliament.
Cooperation with Parliaments worldwide, as well as with the European Parliament, aiming to best practices exchange.
Objectives
Through reviewing and improving the functionality of the Hellenic Parliament web portal, the present commitment aims at:
• Strengthening integrity, accountability and transparency of the Parliament and its Members.
• Improving the overall user experience in terms of understanding and use of parliamentary information.
• Presenting in a simple and systematic way the information / documents related to parliamentary proceedings.
• Guaranteeing completeness, accuracy and validity of information.
• Abolishing or minimizing restrictions of public access to parliamentary information.
• Adopting a policy ensuring the supply of parliamentary information through the use of ‘Open Data’ principles, in a machine readable format.
• Further dissemination of parliamentary information in social media.
Milestones – Timescales
• Setting up of a project team in order to evaluate parliamentary information flow and technological infrastructure. Determination of the information’s exact nature and the parliamentary data implementation scope, redefinition of standards concerning the kind of information to be disclosed, where, when, and in what format.
• Review of the terms of use of the Hellenic Parliament portal, in order to allow for content reuse.
• Review of ways, means and time of information presentation.
• Presentation of existing data, information and documents in a variety of formats: creation of e-books, legislative documents and Minutes of the Plenary in html format further to pdf and word formats.
• Web portal size and key features (menus, images, text) adjustment, depending on user’s screen device dimensions (responsive web design).
• Further utilisation of the general search tool provided through the web portal in order to enable advanced searches, using logical operators and selection of distinct information groups.
• Better visualization and linking of given information.
• Supply of parliamentary information in an open data format (JSON, XML etc.) in a separate section of the web portal.
• Content enrichment with data which may concern: dissemination of voting results through open standards, publication of MPs amendments, publication of first draft Minutes of Committee Meetings, additional data on MP’s activity (votes, participation in Committee meetings, in parliamentary missions, abstracts of their interventions in the committees and the plenary etc.), additional data on parliamentary control means (protocol number, search by subject), advanced search criteria of the Plenary composition, publication of Independent Authorities reports, periodic publication of parliamentary control special procedures data, dynamic presentation of the Parliament organization chart etc.