Using XML for Legislative Applications

»Nancy Odell, »Arbortext

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Abstract

The abstract was not available at the time the proceedings were created. Please check an updated version of the paper abstracts at the conference proceedings web site.

Drafting and approving legislature is a dynamic and complex process involving many parties, including legislative chambers, committees, state agencies and the legislative services group. These groups must build a collaborative environment that supports information exchange so that legislation can be efficiently drafted, tracked and delivered.

The following diagram shows a successful collaborative environment that supports information exchange.

When sessions are in, state legislatures are working in a time-critical environment resulting in heavy workloads. Errors that are introduced into a bill may require new legislation to correct them, which is both time-consuming and costly. Accuracy needs to be improved.

State legislatures are implementing XML-based applications to create and publish statute data to draft bills, amendments and regulations that are accurate, relevant, timely and maintain statute integrity. Using XML, these groups are able to able to automatically generate journals, committee assignments and other necessary reports that drive the legislative process.

State legislatures are using XML to address these critical requirements:

Change management — Many times authors are working together on the same draft legislation document. Change management provides automatic document or element locking to prevent an editor's work from being written over and lost. This capability results in efficient legislation drafting and reduces the draft time in a time-sensitive environment.
- Collaborative workgroup support — Journal editors can spend too much time locating staff for clarification on committee reports. Collaborative workgroup support enables staff to work more efficiently resulting in more legislation creation.
- Multichannel publishing — Enables staff to automatically publish multiple versions of the same regulatory code to print, Web and CD-ROM.
- Change tracking — This capability enables authors to mark 'adds' and 'deletes' using XML tagging so that bill drafters can quickly track changes and update draft legislation. Errors are reduced because numerous change requests can be tracked and resolved.
- Line and page numbering integrity — Line numbering must be preserved after changes are applied for easy reference.

State legislatures that use XML can reuse text, track changes, add numbered references, collaborate with other agencies and automate publishing processes, ultimately streamlining the legislative information lifecycle

Biography

»Nancy Odell

Solution Architect

»Arbortext

»Ann Arbor, Michigan

»United States of America

As solution architect for Nancy Odell is responsible for managing the proposal, specification, implementation and integration of Arbortext software at large, multinational organizations. Ms. Odell has over 10 years of project management experience and demonstrated success in the areas of data modeling, content management, product development and training methodologies.