Comparing legislative Internet sites.

• Author: Martyn, Maureen

Maureen Martyn is Internet Librarian with the Library of Parliament in Ottawa.

Over the past few years, federal, provincial and territorial governments have begun publishing their legislative documents on the World Wide Web. Today, concerned constituents can follow government proceedings from their home, office or public library. This article looks at a number of issues related to this aspect of the information revolution. Only those sites open to the general public have been included in this survey. Intranet sites where information is limited only to persons within the institutions have not been considered. The article is based on the state of these sites at the end of August 1997. It tries to make some constructive suggestions for the future development of these sites and also points out some broader considerations that have to be kept in mind when dealing with parliamentary information.

The decision to go digital is economically driven. Most modern legislative publications start out in digitalform. The real costs are printing, storage and distribution. With web publishing, costs for printing are downloaded to the end user.

Web publishing can also increase availability since web sites are open for business 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, availability is often confused with accessibility. With paper publishing, legislative documents are available through any depository library. Furthermore, Hansard, journals and committee proceedings include indexes which allow users to browse these documents by subject. Some of these features have been lost in the move to the web. The task of finding some documents has become considerably more difficult.

The following pages look at the content of each legislative sites in Canada, their accessibility and design. Often secondary information, such as workings of the legislature or tourist information, is included on these sites and these elements are also compared.

The Parliamentary Internet (http://www.parl.gc.ca)

What's available: The Parliamentary Internet publishes parliamentary proceedings of both the Senate of Canada and the House of Commons. Debates, journals, and committee proceedings for most of the 35thParliament (1993-1997) are available for both chambers in English and French. The Senate offers photos, addresses and biographies of members, whereas the House of Commons has several listings but no addresses. Perhaps this will be added with the new parliament.

For the virtual visitor, an online tour is available including interesting details about each chamber and the Library of Parliament. For those who wish to visit in real time, visitor information is available.

What's accessible: The sheer size and number of documents available can be overwhelming. Navigation tools, including icons, differ for the House and the Senate as well as between documentss. This can be disorienting.

A powerful and user friendly search engine helps bypass some of these difficulties. Search options include individual publications as well as a key word search of all publications. A search of all publications for gun control yielded dozens of documents -- no number count, with a Senator's biography deemed the most relevant. Hansard indexes for both chambers are also available through this search engine and yield more accurate hits.

Worth Noting: The Parliamentary Internet has extensive content but navigation requires some work. Tighter, centrally controlled publication groupings would ease access for the hundreds who visit this site for daily updates. Finally, much concern was raised when certain sections of the 35th Parliament's proceedings were removed from the web site with no forwarding address. Although they have been restored, hopefully, future archival attempts will be well notified in advance to allow libraries and researchers to provide access to these important documents.

Quebec (http://www.assnat.qc.ca)

What's Available: All major parliamentary publications are there, including the debates --first the hour by hour transcripts and final versions. This process is repeated for committees. Significant reports are listed separately. Bills...