A common work flow - Design and Production

Søren Broberg Nielsen

The presentation will from a practical point of view give an overview of the advantages in the comprehensive cooperation between the Danish parliament (Folketinget) and the Ministry of Justice developing and operating the new data capturing system for the official journal online and the legal information systems of the Folketing and the Danish state.

The Danish constitution states the separation of powers, but nevertheless the Folketing and the government since 1998 have cooperated in creating a common data capturing system, where the work flow and user profiles reflects the separation of powers. Thus creating a very unique situation, where drafting, proof-reading, introduction, passing, promulgation, publication, end-user access is supported by one single system. No additional processing from other public bodies or private contractors is required to bring the passed bill or the promulgated act into the legal information systems.

On September 24 2007 the Lex Dania production had go-live one week before the opening of the new parliamentary session. In the years before during the development the inter-institutional cooperation secured a common document standard that meets all formal requirements in the legislative process (Lex Dania xml)¹ , as well as a work flow that sustains the process from drafting a bill to promulgating the act.

Benefits of the cooperation in operating the legal information systems are numerous, but some of the most important are:

A single system for data capturing for all parties in the legislative process thus securing uniform and consistent data and metadata.
Data capturing by legal experts.
A common document standard in XML facilitating presentation of data in different channels including the future electronic Hansard.

Vis-à-vis end users the cooperation secures a seamless integration of data from different sources.

¹ Please find the schemas and documentation on https://www.retsinformation.dk/offentlig