The European Parliament has a consolidated experience in promoting the widest access possible to the legal texts adopted at the EU level. The increased services offered to citizen’s in accessing not only the adopted texts, but the also complete decision-making process are a testimony of the intent to strengthen the bonds between the Institution and the citizen through the use of ICT.
The Directorate-General for Innovation and Technological Support (DG ITEC) is a central actor in promoting and implementing the digital transformation of the Parliament. The level of maturity of the digital journey undertaken by the European Parliament enables to conceptualize the digital relationship with the citizen around three objectives that will be the central topic of the presentation.
The first objective is to digitalise the legislative chain in order to create one single, seamless process that goes from the decision-making to the publication. The e-Parliament Program is the series of IT projects that support this ambitious objective. Throughout the last years, e-Parliament has delivered many solutions (on amendments, legal texts, verbatims, etc.) that will be outlined in the presentation.
The second objective responds to the need of reducing the time elapsing between the production of the document and its availability to the public. An Institution that wants to be closer to the citizens has to factor in this variable of transparency, and DG ITEC has made substantial efforts in that direction through a wide xmlisation effort.
The third objective is participation. Transparency has conceptually shifted from “access” to “participation” in the recent years, and this impacts the ways a Parliament work. The European Parliament launched several initiatives in cooperation with other Institutions and also the EU Publication’s Office, the most notable being the Linked-Open Data project providing the technical solution to a multi-lingual, in real time, participative process on the EU laws. Two other examples supporting this shift are the ePetitions Portal and the Online Consultations initiatives carried out at Parliamentary Committee level. Both initiatives will be illustrated during the presentation to illustrate the European Parliament’s approach to participation from a technological point of view.
Finally, the presentation will put all these innovative solutions to diversify the ways of interacting with the citizens in the perspective of the broader strategy of reinforcing democracy through technology. The reflections on this topic have been divulgated through several publications these last years that will be referred to during the discussion.
Related Session:
October 11th, 2018
Session I. Legal Data under (Free, Open, Linked, Big) Data Deluge
10:30-13:30
Aula Magna of the Rectorate of the University of Florence