Interim site for access to NZ laws

By ADAM GIFFORD

The first fruits of a $5.6 million project to give the public online access to legislation went on show yesterday with the launch of an interim website giving free access to acts and statutory regulations.

The site, built for the Parliamentary Counsel Office by law publisher Brookers, offers a searchable electronic database of New Zealand legislation.

It will be replaced early next year by a more comprehensive site built by Unisys and hosted by Datacom, which will also include bills and supplementary order papers before Parliament.



Unisys project manager Alan Grainer said Brookers provided the electronic legislative database which formed the core of the final system.

It also worked with Sydney company Media Technology to redo the document type definitions (DTDs) it uses for acts and regulations and write new DTDs for bills. These will make the documents fully searchable and simplify any changes.

Parliamentary Counsel project director Geoff Lawn said material on the site launched yesterday was considered unofficial.

"The longer-term goal is to have the legislation on the site being the official version so it is possible to produce a copy taken from the website in court," Lawn said.

"At the moment the only official version is the hard copy produced and sold in government bookshops through Legislation Direct."

He said the printing contract with Legislation Direct, which is part of the Blue Star Group, ends in January.

Negotiations are ongoing with other suppliers for the continued printing of bills and acts, but the pre-publication work now done by Legislation Direct is being brought in-house.

Five staff are being hired for the pre-publication work and another five will form a reprints unit, with responsibility for keeping the electronic database up to date.

Lawn said the number of copies of legislation printed was expected to drop.

"Certainly that has been the story in other countries which have put legislation online."

He said the "public access to legislation" project, which started with a discussion paper in 1998, was based on the principle that the state had a duty to make legislation available to the public.

"Since ignorance of the law is no excuse, we must make it available," Lawn said.

"The electronic age means people demand information in an electronic form."

Interim Website of New Zealand legislation