Mr Rogers is a senior Clerk. This letter is from him in response to a proposal we made suggesting that Parliament produce nicer XML for bills. That request became the Free Our Bills campaign, supported by thousands of supporters and over 100 MPs
These are other very senior clerks in the House of Commons
Other, officials, mostly more junior than the ones above. They had been handling mySociety's request when it was submitted
Wow - why would anyone need to cool off about a request for XML?
Aww - what a gent! And I wrote it in my best bland whitehall-speak too.
Misunderstanding: We're not asking parliament to get involved with us, we're asking Parliament to publish some data in a better format for everyone to use
Lack of evidence: What success in Publishing Bills better exactly? As far as the public is concerned the ways bills themselves appear online hasn't changed in years.
Misunderstanding: What we're asking for has zero impact on the words the bills contain. Even highlighting this suggests they don't understand the difference between data structures and editorial.
Mistake: We're clearly asking for permalinked URLs here, which is something that the Commons definitely does not supply.
Mistake: This service is not available to the public.
Mistake: No they don't, not for all Bills or even a majority
The Proposal here is basically to publish nice marked up XML of bills so that external people can make websites containing Bills that people will actually want to use. Thousands of people are now part of the campaign for this data: www.theyworkforyou.com/freeourbills
Free Our Bills FOI request - mouse over for notes (2 more pages to come)
Re: a permanent historical identifier ON THE
INTERNET that never changes... we do this
already they are called clause and schedule
numbers
you: "Mistake: we're CLEARLY asking for
permalinked URLs here"
me: may not be that clear to a
non-semantic-web-aware person? Maybe they are
thinking of something that shows up on a page
(text like "(1)(a)(iv)" perhaps),
rather than something directly addressable.
And do clause and schedule numbers provide
the necessary version control (eg an
amendment that replaces clause (b) with a
differently worded one, or deletes clauses
1(a)(ii) - 1(a)(iv)...)? If they do during
the committee and later reading stages, is
there a rationalising and renumbering so that
the final bill is consecutively numbered - in
which case, clause numbers are no longer
sufficient to permanently identify a bit of a
bill.
Re: Explanatory notes could be placed and
read right next to the relevant parts of the
bill themselves
me: could they be thinking you intend that
THEY write and place the notes - and are you
suggesting data structures that allow third
parties to place notes - on third party
sites? You could be at cross purposes? Or
are you just suggesting that the notes they
write can be rearranged automatically / on
demand to a more convenient location for the
reader?
... this is something we are ready to do
already...
you: "Mistake: No they don't"
me: they didn't say they did - they said they
were ready to. Weasel words, perhaps, or
maybe they are planning to do it or trying to
get permission, or working out who should add
them. They did mention they wanted to
maintain neutrality of interpretation - are
they thinking of notes they write?
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coffeemug (48 months ago | reply)
Good work - I hope this actually happens...
Re: a permanent historical identifier ON THE INTERNET that never changes... we do this already they are called clause and schedule numbers
Re: Explanatory notes could be placed and read right next to the relevant parts of the bill themselves
... this is something we are ready to do already...
adamamyl added this photo to his favorites. (43 months ago)