New start for Government legislation online project

By ADAM GIFFORD

The stalled project to put Government legislation on the web could be rebooted.

The project to came to a halt in May last year, when the Parliamentary Counsel Office fell out with system integrator Unisys over "scope creep" and technical glitches.

The Cabinet demanded that the project, which includes a complete overhaul of the software the office uses to write legislation and prepare it for publication, should cost no more than $8.17 million. Almost all of that has been spent already.

Timothy Arnold-Moore from Melbourne company InQuirion, which was chosen by international tender to do a technical review of the project, said it had some problems, but they were fixable.

The biggest problem appeared to be the print rendering engine, which takes the XML (extensible markup language) created by the Arbortext Epic text editor and turns it into the formats required for reproduction in print or on the web site.

InQuirion was subsequently asked to research alternatives to the Arbortext Print Composer engine chosen by Unisys.

Arnold-Moore said his recommendation should be ready "soon".

Arbortext's new print engine, Enterprise E-Content Engine, is among the options being considered.

Other XML publishing solutions used by governments around the world include Advent 3b2, Xyvision, RenderX from Germany and the FOP open source tool.

"Some jurisdictions use Word, including Western Australia, Victoria and Tasmania," Arnold-Moore said.

The cost of the engine ranges from free to about $200,000, so "if they have to switch, it will not blow the budget".

He said New Zealand had unique problems with change tracking, because of the degree of detail shown on consolidated bills.

"Other jurisdictions don't do nearly as much, and that is to do with the select committee process.

"New Zealand is much more transparent in that process so the requirements for change tracking are much higher."

Arnold-Moore dismissed suggestions the Parliamentary Counsel Office was being overly cautious.

"I have worked with a number of PCOs, some reasonable, some not so reasonable, and New Zealand is not unreasonable in comparison," he said.

"These are the most important documents in the land, and it is quite appropriate to deal with them in a cautious fashion."

Arnold-Moore said the way the on-line legislation solution was chosen was appropriate.

"On the information they had at the time, they were not poor choices."

Deputy Chief Parliamentary Counsel Geoff Lawn said the office was talking to Unisys about how the project could be completed. Unisys refused to comment.

The office has extended its arrangement with legal publisher Brookers to make legislation available at www.legislation.govt.nz

Bills can be seen on www.knowledge-basket.co.nz