You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April, 2009.
The House of Commons agreed on 30 March 2009 to a Report from the Procedure Committee recommending that there should be an experiment with the format of interleaving bills and Explanatory Notes in the case of a single bill in the current Session.
As recommended by the Procedure Committee, the House of Commons has today published the Equality Bill in a trial format as proposed by Chris Bryant MP, from the Deputy Leader of the House.
The Bill and Explanatory Notes are available as a:
- PDF with both texts side-by-side,
- an HTML with the texts side-by-side, and
- an interwoven web page (HTML)
All versions are available on the Equality Bill page
The Procedure Committee of the House of Commons is interested in feedback on this experiment, specifically:
- Do you find the interleaved document more helpful than the 2 separate documents?
- Which version of the interleaved document do you prefer? The PDF side-by-side, the HTML side-by-side, or the interwoven web page (HTML)?
The Web Centre would like to know your thoughts on this development, do you know of other sites that have this functionality, is there is a better way to present this information.
Let us know what you think on the blog comments or by email: webmaster@parliament.uk
We worked with the good folks from Tweetminster recently to put together a custom iFrame widget that we could use on the Parliament website.
This involved styling the widget Tweetminster already make available so that it fitted with the look of our new redesign, and specifying what Twitter feeds it would use. We wanted the widget to be ‘Parliament on Twitter’ – so it uses our own @ukparliament feed, any MPs or Peers that use Twitter (are there any Peers using Twitter yet?), but no parliamentary candidates, government departments or political parties.
The hope is that using this widget will further promote how Parliament and its Members are trying to engage with social media tools and with the public. During recess it should also give an insight into the work of MPs in their constituencies. Although, we have included a disclaimer because the Web Centre team is responsible only for the content of @ukparliament updates, not those from Members…
WordPress.com doesn’t like iFrames so below is just a screengrab, to see it working go to our new Get Involved page.
There’s a lot going on in Parliament, so you’ll want to stay in touch by using our calendar. Thanks to our recent redesign, a cut-down version of the calendar is now embedded on our main homepage and most of our top level pages, like those for the Commons and Lords.
But, if you don’t want to visit our site on a daily basis, you can now subscribe to our improved calendar feeds. These start with a big, subscribe-to-everything feed and are then split down into all the different areas our business takes place – like Westminster Hall, or Commons Select Committees. There are RSS and Atom feeds available for everything.
We’re going to make the availability of these feeds more obvious on the calendar homepage shortly, but you can see them through the URL address bar (in Firefox) and in the toolbar area (IE 7). The feeds are also all visible on our Commons and Lords homepages as you move through the different tabs.
In the meantime, while we work on raising the profile of these feeds on the site, here’s a list of the RSS feeds (you can switch them to atom by changing the ‘rss’ to ‘atom’). We’re in recess at the moment, so most of the feeds are showing business for when Parliament goes back to work:
Calendar, all: http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/all.rss
Commons, all: http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/commons.rss
Lords, all: http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/lords.rss
Commons, Westminster Hall: http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/commons_westminster_hall.rss
Commons Select Committees: http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/commons_select_committee.rss
Commons General Committees: http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/commons_general_committee.rss
Lords Grand Committees: http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/lords_grand_committee.rss
Lords Select Committees: http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/lords_select_committee.rss
As always, your feedback on this and other services is welcome. Leave a comment below or email webmaster@parliament.uk
What’s new?
We’ve launched a new design for the Parliament website: www.parliament.uk
The redesign features a refined navigation system and improved information architecture, together with a new section called Topical Issues and greater emphasis on our Parliamentary News area.
The Topical Issues area organises parliamentary research material by subject, with the long-term aim to draw in other areas of parliamentary business like debates and Bills. News covers the main parliamentary business in the Chambers, Westminster Hall and Select Committee reports, inquiries and evidence sessions (read about the development of our News area)
Why?
The Parliament website aims to make parliamentary information more accessible, show that Parliament is relevant, and enable people to connect and engage with us.
The aim of the redesign is to: provide a site that is modern, fresh and engaging; refine the routes to information, making it more accessible for the user; and offer more focused, timely and dynamic content to improve the overall user experience.
Development and testing
The design and new information architecture has been developed by our team following extensive consultation across Parliament and external users, alongside a comprehensive programme of user and accessibility testing.
Plans for 2009
The launch will be a phased approach. The first phase is the new homepage and major landing pages, the Topical Issue section and new top level and service navigation across all content areas. The next stage of the roll-out, a redesign of all content pages, will follow throughout 2009.
Our five main areas of work for the Parliament website in 2009 are:
- buying tools to improve both search and content management on the website and intranet
- making changes to the look and structure of information on the website so that it’s more user friendly and information is easier to find
- making significant improvements to the intranet so that it will become an essential tool for Members and staff
- working with our ICT department (PICT) and others to ensure that all information generated by the work of both Houses, including Hansard, Bills and procedural information, is delivered effectively to the web
- working on a strategy that will enhance engagement between Parliament and the public through the use of social media and other tools.
As always, we’d welcome your feedback on this work. You can leave a comment below or email us through webmaster@parliament.uk
(You can see earlier iterations of our website in this welcome post)
