House of Commons - Modernisation of the House of Commons

Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons First Report

4 Provision of information for the public

33. Professor Stephen Coleman of the Oxford Internet Institute pointed out to us that many more people now 'visit' Parliament virtually than physically.[15] Peter Riddell of The Times argued that the Internet is now the principal means by which Parliament as an institution communicates with voters and that it had significantly reduced the importance of press reporting of Parliament:

'We are never going to get back to the days of massive reporting in the press of Parliament and in many respects I think it is less important now because of the Internet. I think the answer to a lot of your questions … [is] to do with the parliamentary website, which is as relevant to us as working journalists who use it … as it is to your constituents and I think a lot of the answers to your questions are improving the website and improving the information in that way.'[16]

34. The Web Centre Project Board told us that Hansard is now accessed online by many more people than receive the printed edition, as are many select committee publications and much legislative material.[17] Getting the website right is therefore probably the single most important thing that Parliament needs to do in this area.

The Parliamentary websites

35. There are three Parliamentary websites: the main site at www.parliament.uk, the educational site for schools and colleges, www.explore.parliament.uk and the webcasting site, www.parliamentlive.tv. Between them, these sites carry a vast archive of material including virtually every official parliamentary publication since the mid-1990s,[18] a directory of MPs, Peers and staff, general information for the public about how Parliament works, Library Research Papers, practical information for visitors, live audiovisual coverage of both Chambers and Westminster Hall, and audio-only and audiovisual recordings of recent committee meetings. There are over 9,000 pages hosted directly on the Commons site alone, and over a million pages of linked publications.[19]

36. The House of Commons has made tremendous advances in recent years in the development of its website, part of the www.parliament.uk website run by the Parliamentary Communications Directorate on behalf of both Houses of Parliament. In July 2002, the House of Commons Information Committee produced a Report entitled Digital Technology: Working for Parliament and the Public.[20] The Report set out five draft principles for information and communication technologies, which it recommended the House should adopt, reporting annually on progress against each one. The principles, which the House of Commons Commission has agreed to take into account in its strategic planning, and which we endorse, are:

A. To use information and communications technology (ICT) to increase the accessibility of the House and to enable the public, exercising its right to use whatever medium is convenient, to communicate with Members and with Committees of the House.

B. To use ICT to enhance the professionalism of Members, their staff and House staff in all aspects of parliamentary life.

C. To use ICT to increase public participation in the work of the House, enabling it to draw on the widest possible pool of experience, including particularly those who have traditionally been excluded from the political and parliamentary process.

D. To recognise the value of openness and use ICT to enable, as far as possible, the public to have access to its proceedings and papers.

E. To develop and share good practice in the use of ICT by other parliamentary and governmental bodies both within the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and to work in collaboration with outside bodies.[21]

37. A new design for the main website was launched in conjunction with a content management tool in the summer of 2002. The new design won a number of accolades. It was described as 'simple, elegant and business-like' and 'the best example of "open government" adoption of internet technologies that we have seen' by the British Web Design and Marketing Association. Since the re-design there has been a steady increase in use of the www.parliament.uk site, reaching over 2.5 million page requests on the main server and over 5 million hits (300,000 unique users) on the publications server in the month of January 2004.

38. Given the size and importance of the site, the scale of the investment which lay behind the 2002 redesign was very modest (around £100,000 shared by both Houses, plus some £30,000 on improvements to the search engine). Furthermore, there are only two staff dedicated to co-ordinating content on the website, both shared between the two Houses. Most content is generated in a decentralised way by various staff throughout the two Houses, as a by-product of their other duties.

39. Unlike some other organisations, the House cannot easily make savings in other areas to pay for web development. Web publication does not replace the need to provide printed documents for internal and external use (in particular, for libraries); nor does the development of the Explore Parliament website replace expenditure on the school visits programme; nor webcasting replace televised broadcasting; nor on-line consultation replace conventional consultation by committees. The House authorities have had to consider plans to expand and enhance the website alongside a range of other pressures on the administration budget.

40. Despite the progress that has been made, there is widespread dissatisfaction with the main website. As part of the Connecting Communities with Parliament programme, participants were asked to find the answer to a series of questions on the website. When we met participants in Birmingham and Reading, almost all of them told us they had experienced some difficulty finding the answers even to simple questions. Many suggested that the search facility was not satisfactory and that information was not classified and grouped in a helpful way.[22]

41. These views were shared by Professor Coleman, who told us that the website worked well for people who knew exactly what they were looking for but not for the majority of people. He thought that the website could not be said to be performing a 'democratic function' unless it was able to reach those people 'who cannot find what they might need but they do not even know is there'.[23]

Options for change

42. A number of incremental enhancements to the websites have recently been made or are currently in the pipeline. These include live webcasting (some in audio only) of all public sessions, more and better guidance for the uninitiated on how to use the site, a more informative and topical 'news' page, more inward links to the site, specimen pages illustrating the parliamentary art collections, progress towards RNIB certification and further use of e-consultation.

43. The Committee Office is working on a range of improvements to the presentation and usability of select committee material on the web with a view to making the scrutiny role of the House clearer to the non-specialist user.

44. Work is also continuing on options for improving the accuracy and usefulness of the search engine, for example by automatically linking common-usage terms to official language (e.g. 'dole' to 'unemployment benefit').

45. Further research could also be commissioned into the needs and interests of potential target audiences (e.g. young people, aged people, ethnic minorities, the disabled) for whom there may be better ways of explaining and presenting information about the House of Commons using the internet. Such research would be an essential prelude to any future fundamental upgrade of the site, but need not hold up the other improvements outlined here.

46. The first phase of Parliamentary Information Management Services (PIMS) is currently being designed and implemented. Towards the end of 2004 this will replace the existing POLIS on-line index to parliamentary information for internal users and allow the libraries of both Houses to provide Members of both Houses and their staff with a much improved full-text on-line information service, equipped with a powerful search engine.

47. Although the priority for PIMS is to replace ageing systems for internal information management, the content management and search tools needed for the project have been selected with the possibility in mind that they could be adapted and extended to cover the whole of the parliamentary intranet and internet sites in the future. Integration with e-mail might also make 'e-alerting' possible for internal and external users.[24] The technical and financial implications are being explored actively on behalf of both Houses. Subject to feasibility and a full exploration of the costs and benefits, these developments could pave the way to significant improvements for users of the www.parliament.uk site from 2005 onwards.

48. The costs of such a significant enhancement would not be limited to software licences and technical integration. Even with the help of sophisticated content management and search tools, a user friendly, continuously updated on-line 'encyclopaedia' of parliamentary activity would require significant additional editorial work to ensure accuracy, impartiality and high-quality explanatory material which helps users to understand the work of Parliament and how it differs from Government. Additional staff, and additional accommodation to house them, would be needed to support a high-quality service of that kind.

49. As noted above, the House of Lords has very similar interests to the House of Commons in these matters and close cooperation is a practical necessity. Decisions to invest more would therefore have to be closely coordinated with the authorities of the House of Lords. Both the PIMS project and exploratory work to improve web services (internal and external) are already being managed by joint project boards under a joint Information Systems Programme Board for both Houses.

50. There is scope for improvement to the accessibility and usability of the House of Commons area of the parliamentary website (and of the website as a whole) both in the short and the medium term. While incremental changes of the kind described above can be made during the financial year 2004-05, a more radical overhaul of design and searchability linked to the whole range of parliamentary documentation will not be possible until the first phase of the PIMS project has been completed at the end of 2004. We are convinced of the need for a radical upgrading of the website at an early opportunity, which will require significant investment in systems and staff. The financial implications of this are for the Finance and Services Committee and the House of Commons Commission to consider.

Interactivity

51. Digital media have a number of characteristics which determine the way in which they can be used. They are 'deep media', containing many layers and types of information, which users can store, retrieve or search for at the level of their choice. Digital media are capable of reaching a small, target audience; they are interactive, capable of conveying users' feedback; and they do not embody clear boundaries between different types of media, such as television, the press, radio and photography. Professor Stephen Coleman argued that it was important to recognise the distinction between connecting with the public as spectators and connecting with them as participants; treating the Internet simply as 'television for small audiences' was a mistake.[25]

52. The BBC Parliament channel is broadcast on digital television, which is also an interactive medium. It is likely that in the fullness of time the House may be able to exploit the interactivity of digital television to connect more directly with viewers. The BBC told us that the channel's audience drops sharply during a division, which is unsurprising given that all they can broadcast is Members milling around in the Chamber for fifteen minutes. It may be that these hiatuses could be used to promote some interactive features of the medium. We recommend that the Broadcasting Committee keep under review the possibilities offered by the digital broadcasting of Parliament.

On-line consultations

53. The internet is more than a medium for publishing documents and broadcasting proceedings in Parliament; it is an interactive medium that allows genuine two-way communication between politicians and the people they represent. Of the five questions we asked in our on-line consultation, the one which attracted the most responses—nearly half the total—was 'does Parliament adequately reflect the concerns of ordinary people?' While some respondents thought that it did, the overall impression was that it did not. We believe that the greater use of on-line consultation is a good way for Parliament to take account of the views of the wider public.

54. Professor Coleman pointed out that on-line consultation is something which the UK Parliament has pioneered:

'On-line policy consultations are something that you have in fact pioneered, and have done better than any other parliament in the world. There is quite a lot of data suggesting that these consultations have had an effect on the fairly small minority of people who have engaged in them—because they have been deliberative, because they have been expansive over a period of a month, and because you have taken people seriously.'[26]

55. The House has so far conducted several on-line consultations in partnership with the Hansard Society, on subjects such as the draft Communications Bill, the Family Tax Credit, and electronic democracy. It is not only select committees which have initiated these consultations: the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) commissioned a forum to discuss issues relating to flood management and the All-Party Group on Domestic Violence also commissioned a forum.[27] Professor Coleman told us that these consultations had generally been successful, drawing on public expertise, treating the public with respect and encouraging a respectful attitude. It was notable that Parliamentary consultations did not attract the actionable or offensive contributions which accounted for 20-25% of those submitted to Government departments' on-line forums.

56. The purpose of on-line consultations must be made clear to participants—they are being asked to provide advice and information, not to make policy. Parliament must also make a clear commitment to the process, providing interaction with, and responses to, the public participants. Good on-line consultations therefore always need facilitators or moderators to guide (and where necessary edit) the discussion. Participants can remain anonymous in the public forum—for some subjects, this might be a prerequisite for participation—but they need to register so that they are identifiable to some independent third party.

57. The Information Committee's Report endorsed these views on on-line consultations, adding that special efforts needed to be made to identify individuals and organisations who could impart experience and expertise to the consultation, and to make on-line consultations socially inclusive.

58. We conducted our own on-line consultation as part of this inquiry, both to canvass public opinion on the issues we were examining and to explore the consultation process itself. We devised the list of key questions that we wanted participants to address and the Hansard Society designed, maintained and moderated the site.[28] The exercise generated a total of 152 responses from a wide range of people ranging from those with a long-standing interest in or connection with Parliament to those with no special interest in Parliament at all. It is highly unlikely that we would have received such a volume and range of responses to a traditional 'call for evidence' inviting interested parties to submit memoranda in writing to the Clerk.

59. There have now been several experiments with on-line consultation on an ad hoc basis, both by select committees and by all-party groups. They have generally been successful and have proved effective as a way of engaging members of the public in the work that we do and of giving a voice to those who would otherwise be excluded. We urge select committees and joint committees considering draft legislation to make on-line consultation a more regular aspect of their work.

A Commons newsletter

60. In response to our survey, Members told us that constituents often inquired about recent or forthcoming business in the House,[29] and the suggestion that a short Commons newsletter should be available for circulation to constituents was generally welcomed. Journalists also told us that they would welcome more straightforward guidance on the business of the House, in the form of e-mail alerts:

'You could have an e-mail on Friday prepared by a press officer saying, "Here is the business for the following week"'.[30]

61. The principal digest of information about the work of the House of Commons which is available to the general public is the Weekly Information Bulletin (WIB). This is published every Saturday, and contains a comprehensive list of the previous week's proceedings, a list of the business for the forthcoming week, and provisional details for the week after that. It also includes details of forthcoming select committee meetings, as well as a great deal of other material such as comprehensive information about the progress on each Bill in the current Session of Parliament, a list of certain types of paper laid each week and information about the state of the parties. The Bulletin typically runs to 50 or so pages.

62. The WIB is an extremely useful document for Members, journalists and officials, as well as those outside Parliament who already take a close interest in our proceedings. However, it does not meet the needs of the average citizen: it contains too much information, it is extremely dense and it contains very little explanatory material. This is no criticism of the Weekly Bulletin—it was never intended or designed to meet these needs. It is a valuable document in its own right and we would wish to see it continue to be produced.

63. However, there is a case for a simpler, more user-friendly document that provides less information but is more accessible to the general reader, as well as for media purposes. This might also be of use to Members. Such a document might run to only a few pages, and include only the information about business for the previous and forthcoming week. But it should also incorporate some explanatory material so that the reader can find out, for example, what is meant by 'remaining stages' of a Bill and what an adjournment debate is. We recommend that the House make available to those interested in receiving the information (by post, e-mail or other convenient method of communication) a weekly newsletter. Aimed at the general, non-specialist reader, it should summarise the business of the previous week and set out forthcoming business for the following week. In due course, it may be possible to extend this service to allow for communication of other information by e-mail (such as the daily list of papers available in the Vote Office) and regular, subject-based updates for which users could subscribe. A printed form of the newsletter should be made available to visitors at various points around the Parliamentary Estate, including the bookshop. Electronically, it should occupy a prominent position on or near the front page of the Parliamentary website.

Information for young people

64. Members of the UK Youth Parliament and Professor Stephen Coleman suggested to us that the House should provide a separate website for young people. The educational website, explore.parliament.uk, is an excellent educational tool, which ties in with the National Curriculum and enables young people to learn about how Parliament works; it is not designed to provide up-to-date information about the business currently before the House. The main website, www.parliament.uk, is rather dry, and there is not much there to appeal to young people.

65. We recommend that, as development of the website progresses, the House authorities, in consultation with young people, develop the website in a form which is more accessible to them. This should not involve an extension of the educational site, but a reorganisation of the main site which draws attention to the issues Parliament is currently dealing with which are likely to be of special interest to young people—education and training, for example—in a way that is lively and accessible.

15 Q 111. Back

16 QQ 1, 13 & 67. Back

17 Ev 63. Back

18 Some papers which are laid before the House of Commons by the Government pursuant to an Act of Parliament are printed by Order of the House. These 'Act papers' are not housed on the Parliamentary website since they do not originate in Parliament, but many of them are available via the websites of the relevant Government department or agency. Back

19 Some of this material is not published directly on the Parliament website, but by contract partners such as The Stationery Office Ltd. Back

20 First Report from the Committee, Session 2001-02, HC 1065. Back

21 Ibid., paragraph 11. Back

22 For example, that select committee publications were listed in chronological order by Session, rather than being grouped by inquiry or subject. Back

23 Q 100. Back