The Wardman Wire

I’ve been looking at the excellent proposal for the Free Our Bills project from MySociety.

This is a project/campaign aimed at making information about forthcoming legislation more easily accessible and useable. This is the brief outline from the MySociety website. They point out the process whereby legislation “emerges”:

As bills are written they go through various stages. Towards the very end of the process, they are dumped out in a format that is sent to the printers, and which is converted to HTML so that it can be put up on the Parliamentary website.

MySociety wants standard and open information formats (i.e., ones that can be processed by outsiders) to be used throughout that process - so that they can tell us what is happening, and we can then scrutinise legislation more effectively.

The whole country and it’s Mother-in-Law is currently talking about disengagement from politics being one of the big problems in politics at present. Given that MySociety has a track record of doing useful things, I support the campaign.

In pursuit of this campaign, there is an Early Day Motion (2141) in Parliament aiming to persuade whom-it-may-concern to start the ball rolling. I live in the Bolsover Parliamentary constituency, and my MP - Dennis the Menace - has already signed it (Hip-Hip-Hooray!).

This is the full text.

FREE OUR BILLS CAMPAIGN

22.07.2008

Swinson, Jo

That this House believes it has a duty to publish Bills in such a fashion that they can be accessed as easily and as early as possible by the public; notes that the non-partisan Free Our Bills campaign is urging the House to publish bill texts in a new electronic format to improve accessibility and public scrutiny of legislation; further notes that the changes requested would have no impact on the content of Bills, nor upon the process by which they are currently made; considers that the new format could be delivered cheaply and quickly; acknowledges that the Leader of the House’s office did not accept a prior request for new formatting from mySociety, nor provide an explanation of why the changes could be made; and calls on the Leader of House to ask House of Commons Clerks to work with Free Our Bills campaign staff to commence publication of Bills in the new format.

100+ MPs have already signed the motion, and you can encourage yours to do it using the Write to Them website, or by writing on paper.

Simon at Puffbox has a bit more information on what happened when he asked his MP. There is also a webpage about the Free Our Bills project.

Why not write to your MP asking them to sign EDM 2141, or congratulating them if they have already done so?