The drafting, enacting, amending and repealing of legislation is the core activity of a parliament. The processes for managing bills and other statutory instruments are typically the most complex in any Parliament. Many bills modify existing statutes, while some are written from scratch. This module supports the submission of proposed amendments and the engrossing of the approved ones into a new version of the Bill, the mark-up of Debates according to AKOMA NTOSO standards and other valuable functionalities aimed at reducing the time, cost and effort required to support the Bill life-cycle.

• Drafting and amendment environment (OpenOffice.org):

• provides the drafter a familiar word-processing interface;

• provides a "style format" interface to mark-up the document that hides from the drafter the technicalities of the XML schema;

• allows the drafter to manually format portions of a Bill if necessary; e.g. to quote an international treaty that may not match the data structures of the local jurisdiction or to include tabular data and graphics;

• generates and automatically updates section numbering of bills;

• supports automatically updating section numbering, cross-references.

• Submission of amendments (Plone-Marginalia - OpenOffice.org)

• The submission of proposed amendments (MPs) is done through a web browser interface (Plone-Marginalia) or by actually working on the bill itself in OpenOffice.org (the second case is for instances where an MP submits amendments directly to the clerk's office via email or in writing).

• Plone-Marginalia module:

• the Bill is published on the Bungeni portal and made available to be amended within a specified period of time; [OpenOffice.org] [Plone]

• Plone-Marginalia uses an HTML representation of the bill document. The original bill document is composed in OpenOffice and posted to the Bungeni Portal. Using a browser-based annotation facility, MPs (or Clerks in case the MP has submitted the amendment on paper or by e-mail) annotates the text, highlighting the portion of the text that should be "deleted", "substituted" or where a new text should be "inserted" and then entering the desired content.

• the system records the proposed amendments, where they begin and also contextual information like the relative paragraph/section;

• This recorded contextual information is used by the Bungeni OpenOffice.org editor to import the amendments into the OpenOffice.org bill document.

• Open.Office.org module:

• the Bill is published on the Bungeni portal as a downloadable OpenOffice.org document made available to be amended within a specified period of time;

• using OpenOffice.org, MPs (or Clerks in case the MP has submitted the amendment on paper or by email) may actually make the changes proposed on the actual text of the Bill using the word processor "track-changes" environment. Using "track changes" mode automatically records the context of the changes without losing the original text.

• the modified Bill OpenOffice.org document is uploaded into the system for check-in;

• the system records the proposed amendments, where they begin and also contextual information like the relative paragraph/section;

• The changes proposed by each individual MP are recorded in a separate copy of the Bill Document, since each MP starts from the point of view of the original text. I.e. if an MP proposes 10 changes to the Bill, these changes are recorded in a single document identified with the MP. The changes are also recorded in a separate database table. This output in the database is used to generate amendment list reports of different types like: the sequential order of changes, list of changes grouped by MP etc. [Amendment Tracker Application]

• Amendments submitted through Plone-Marginalia will be imported back into the OpenOffice.org bill document by an OpenOffice.org "importer" that imports Marginalia amendments into OpenOffice [This has been further described below]

• Amendments Management (Clerks):

• Amendment Lists

• amendments submitted through the web-annotation [Plone-Marginalia]

• will be extracted, and the Marginalia location markers (in terms of section name, paragraph number, number of characters, beginning and end, etc.) will be translated into OpenOffice track-changes style markers, and made available to OpenOffice.org in a format compatible with "track-changes" [Intermediate "importer" application between Plone and OpenOffice.org]

• will be made available within the OpenOffice UI to the Clerk who may fix spelling, grammar or style and applies appropriate formats and records the changes to the Bill using a familiar word-processing "track changes" functionality (the amendments will be processed in a number of iterations, each iteration presenting the amendments of one MP); [OpenOffice]

• amendments submitted through the "track-changes" OpenOffice.org module will be revised by the Clerk within OpenOffice.org who may fix spelling, grammar or style and applies appropriate formats and records the changes to the Bill using a familiar word-processing "track changes" functionality; [OpenOffice]

• changes to the documents (e.g. spelling, grammar or style revisions) are recorded by the system for accountability reasons; [OpenOffice]

• the system extracts the "changes", and stores them into an intermediate database table and generates a preliminary amendments list in the required format by extracting the "tracked changes" recorded in the database; the amendments list includes:

• the name of the MP proposing the amendment/s,

• the reference to the bill document and other contextual information that may be applicable, like Section, Paragraph, Article, etc.

• the type of change proposed (addition, deletion or substitution), and

• the actual text that is proposed to be added, deleted or substituted with (e.g. "the word 'tax' in Section 3. clause 4 is substituted with 'voluntary donation'"). [OpenOffice] generates the reports and publishes them to [Plone]

• the system stores potentially contradictory amendments proposed by different MPs to the same Bill; [Plone][OpenOffice]

• the system allows the Clerk to manually override the proposed order of the amendment list and to force the re-ordering based on ad hoc sequence.

• the system allows the Clerk to edit or annotate the proposed amendments and to register the status of the amendments (admissible/not admissible, debated or not, approved or rejected, etc); [OpenOffice]

• Engrossing of amendments

• at the end of each stage, after the debate and the votes in the Committee/Plenary the Clerk will select the approved amendments; [OpenOffice]

• the system automatically prompts/imports the approved amendment into the relevant portion of the Bill, and upon validation by the Clerk, the amendment is reflected into the Bill by using the traditional conventions to improve readability (e.g. underline format is used to indicate inserted text, while strikethrough format indicates deleted text); [OpenOffice] > [Plone]

• the system stores and makes available a "tracked changes" version (containing each accepted change of MP who proposed it as the author of that change) and a "plain" version of the bill for a new cycle of revisions. [OpenOffice][Plone]1

• The system will record all steps, phases and status of the bill process. [Plone] [Registry]

• Once the Bill Amendments have been approved, a Bill Amendment list is generated and an "amendment bill" is published, and an ANxml version of the bill is generated and committed to storage [OpenOffice][XML Repository]

The Bill process is configurable to address the different workflows and amendment cycles in different parliaments.

Motions and Questions are the main modalities by which MPs exercise their legislative activities as well as oversight of the Executive. Motions and Questions are very important also from the point of view of citizens because they can provide a good indication of the concrete actions taken by the MPs to carry out their mandate.

The system module for Motions and Questions:

• provides a web-based interface for submitting motions and questions. The web form for entering the content of the Motions and Questions provides a rich text editor capable of allowing simple formatting like indentation, underline/bold typeface, numbering and bullets; [Plone]

• supports a web-based revision workflow for motions and questions. The system keeps each new version of the Motion/Question as it goes through the revision process prior to being accepted for tabling in the house. It uses the document versions feature to keep track of possible internal editing that a motion/question may go through during the approval workflow; versions are kept only for accountability reasons and are not accessible by the public (all changes are also written to an audit log); [Plone]

• provides an interface to record data such as the results of votes on a Motion or whether a Question has been tabled, debated, etc.; [Plone] [Registry]

• provides an interface to export approved motions and questions to the "Parliamentary Business" (Calendar), "Votes and Proceedings" and "Debate Report" module; [Plone] [Registry]

• allows searching for Motions and Questions based on MPs, by bill proposal, by topics and also supports linking or cross-referencing of the Motions and Questions with the related Debate Records so that it is possible to retrieve the debate report's portions relative to a specific questions; [Plone] [XML Repository] [Debate Record]

• Note that Motions and Questions will not be indexed in the XML repository as individual documents, as they always appear within the Debate Record - they will be indexed as elements appearing within the Debate Record.

The Parliamentary Business view lists scheduled items, such as Tabled Documents, Motions, Questions and any other items that may be in the parliamentary calendar of a specific sitting or week of Parliamentary business.

The module offers the following features:

• Questions/Motions/Tabled Documents are recorded in the portal as individual documents (of differing content types) - these documents have specific "event" information associated with them - "tabling date", "publishing date" and so on. These dates are picked up by the Parliamentary Business calendar and appear in the portal calendar. [Plone]

• The system also registers scheduled events (programmed sitting days, specific regular events, ad hoc events of both plenary and committees, etc.) [Calendar] into the main "Parliamentary Business Calendar";

• the Parliamentary Business Calendar provides a list of business and provides the capability to:

• view them within the calendar according to the phase in the parliamentary cycle;

• flag using check-boxes the items to include in the Parliamentary Business (e.g. Order Paper, Schedule of Questions etc.) and provide also a facility for flagging for postponement (change to a later date) etc.;

• Note that items like Questions / Motions are not usually scheduled by time - rather 10 questions could be scheduled for a particular date. The order of the 10 questions would be determined by the speaker's office by dragging and moving the questions using a user interface [Plone]

• the Parliamentary Business Calendar allows to

• select those that have been approved by the designated organ (e.g. the House Business Committee);

• assign a predefined order or assign an arbitrary order (see above, the example of motions/questions); [Plone]

• consolidate the list into a pre-defined template to produce a draft document (e.g. Order Paper, Schedule of Questions, Weekly Parliamentary calendar,etc.) that includes the approved items in the sequence that conforms to the requirements of individual parliaments; [OpenOffice] [Plone]

• the system provides alerts for items that are due for tabling/debate in the House/Committees (e.g. Questions, Motions, etc.) e.g. through email to the relevant parties e.g. In a "Question" to the MP who presented the questions and to the Ministry that is supposed to provide the answer; [Plone]

• the system does not allow adding of any business of Parliament to the calendar that has not been recorded into the "Registry" or "Calendar". The main goal of the Calendar is to provide at a glance a view of what activities are pending today, next week, or at any time in the future. This will be used to prepare the daily and the weekly schedules for the parliament.

Dates can be assigned to not just documentary schedules (like for example, an expiry date for a motion to be moved) but also for committee meetings  (the dates that a certain committee will be meeting).

The system of assigning items to a particular date on the calendar must detect other assigned activities for that date from the parliamentary calendar and warn the user of the same. This can be done by assigning a pool of dates at the beginning of the year as "available dates" and assigning dates with events from this pool of dates.

The dates must be selected such that they fall on days when there will be a parliamentary session, and of course must have checks to warn for public and national holidays.

The calendar map can now be queried by dates and by categories, using either a "select" query for the purpose of preparing required documents like the Programme of Parliamentary Business, Weekly Schedule, Order Paper:

The system can populate the details into a document which can be used by the Clerk to prepare the different calendar/list of activities/documents to be debated.

The Votes and Proceedings is the authoritative record of the proceedings of Parliament. It is not a verbatim record of everything spoken (see Debate Records for that), but is a summary description of all the decisions taken. The Votes and Proceedings are used as a source of reference by a variety of people, including constituents, private companies and members of Parliament.

The module offers the following features:

• the system provides a word-processing interface (OpenOffice) through which a user loads the Votes and Proceedings template that imports the relevant data from the Parliamentary Business of the relative sitting; [OpenOffice] [Plone]

• avoid re-entering data that have already been entered elsewhere in the system. For example, pull in text of Motions; names of MPs, data from Parliamentary Registries (ID of Motions, Questions, Bills, etc.). Importing of such data would function in a similar manner to that of the Debate Report; [OpenOffice] [Plone]

• allow the Clerk to edit imported items, add items and specific formulas that might be required to finalize the document. [OpenOffice]

Virtual Workspaces are workspaces within the portal where groups of users, e.g. members of a committee, can share documents and information and work together on common issues. In Bungeni, parliamentary committees and parliamentary groups will be represented as virtual workspaces. Other ad hoc workspaces for common interests and issues are also possible.

Virtual workspaces are customized Plone TeamSpace3 workspaces.

• URI Metadata will be associated with Workspace definitions (especially for Committees, and Political Groups), so that URI naming conventions for addressing committees and political groups are adhered to (refer to AkomaNtoso naming standards for non-document entities).

• Some workspace definitions are directly related to parliamentary functionality (like Committees, and Parliamentary Groups - which are directly identified parliamentary entities), while others might exist just within the Bungeni system but not as part of a parliamentary process.

One of the aims of the Bungeni portal, beside improving access to parliamentary works, is to provide opportunities for Citizens' participation in the legislative and oversight process. The Bungeni portal will provide the following functionalities that may be used in whatever section/part of the site each parliament may choose:

Annotation: parliaments will have the ability to allow registered users to annotate draft documents (e.g. bills, committee reports, etc.). This functionality will allow parliaments to collect the advice and opinion of citizens in a very detailed and articulated fashion.

Blog-like-discussion: Committees and/or MPs can set up a blog where they can present issues that are debated, or issues of concern to a particular MP, and allow citizens to comment and present their contribution on the web. The debate records of the MP could also be published as dated blog entries.

Feedback: parliaments will have the possibility to allow citizens to easily send feedback from any section/page of the website by simply clicking the "feedback" icon and filling in a form with the notes of the user.

Poll and Surveys: parliaments will have the possibility to have an online poll on any page of the site to solicit the opinion of the citizens and/or request them to fill in a survey if the information requested are more complex than a simple "yes/no" poll.

Petitions: parliaments will have the possibility to allow registered members of the public to submit petitions and allow other members of the public to sign the petitions. It be possible to track the status of petitions on the portal. Petitions submitted will not be accessible before the designated staff of the parliament is satisfied that it complies with the specific regulations and requirements that each parliament will set.