First look at legislation online

By ADAM GIFFORD

The first fruits of the $5.6 million public access to legislation project go on show today 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 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.

"We knew it would take some time to get the things we need on the main site defined and designed. Brookers offered to put this site up as a way to have something available early without disrupting the overall project," said Unisys project manager Alan Grainer.

He said Brookers provided the 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.

Another Unisys subcontractor, Brisbane-based Absolute Data Group, customised the Arbortext Epic Editor authoring tool which Parliamentary Counsel Office staff will use to produce documents in the correct style and format, whether for print or electronic publication.

Parliamentary Counsel project director Geoff Lawn said material on the site launched today 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 next January.

Negotiations are going on with other suppliers for the continued printing of Bills and Acts, but the prepublicaton work now done by Legislation Direct is being brought in-house.

Five staff are being hired for the prepublication 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 is expected to drop.

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

He said the public access to legislation project, which started with a discussion paper in 1998, was based on the principle the State had 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