LEGESE Platform

The LEGESE system will provide an user-friendly citizen-centric single point of access to all of the relevant information allowing easy access by using simplified citizen-friendly terms i.e real rather than legislative language. The service will (a) inform, and (b) empower citizens to track and participate in the implementation of EU-initiated or affected legislation in their local region. Success will be evaluated through a 25% increase in user take up and involvement.

The impact of the LEGESE Service on citizens will be to increase their participation in the local implementation of EU-initiated legislation by broadening their awareness and perspective, and building their trust in the whole process:

  • Citizens have little awareness or trust in the distant unknown European Parliament
  • While they have a lot more trust in the local Regional Council, whom they can see and where they can participate on the Public-i service.

Citizens will access the LEGESE service, using a standard Web-Browser on broadband (or dial-up) Internet access on any standard PC for interactive live participation in European legislation implementation and decision making at local and regional level initially.

During the project in each of the 3 regions, the relevant legislative body will broadcast (webcast) their decision making proceedings, using the LEGESE tools to find and store relative EU documents to their legislative implementation process on-line and actively encourage citizen participation. The project will develop the interaction and improvement of each of these inputs. This will include:

  • The production of explanatory webcast videos and links to the relevant EPLive archived and other audio visual material (as discussed in section 3.1) on the proposed legislation, acting as an informative guide to the process, its background and its implications.
  • The ability for the legislative body / citizens to map legislative language (the taxonomy) to citizen-focused language (the folksonomy)- demystifying the process and improving the speed of access, using the multilingual LEGESE Jargon Buster (described in Annex A), which will automatically detect jargon in the documents and provide the user with an explanation.
  • The ability to link series of information to a single legislative process. Effectively allowing citizens to search for documents, broadcast meetings, legislation, petitions, consultations based on single or multiple buzz-word entries. This will use the XML602 forms facilities to find and retain links to the vast online store of EU legislative documents as well as links to the relevant indexed local debates on the Public-i webcast archives. This may also involve integration with existing Local Authority document management systems. In implementing this feature, while some documents may be copied into a local repository in the standard XML602 format, most will be accessed through their existing URL to the version in the local National language.
  • Interactive facilities to enable citizens to ask questions and gain clarification around the legislative implementation process and upload video/videoblogs and ask for feedback in a number of different formats - text / video / audio. This will be provided through a Forum for questions, feedback and discussion. These threads will also be linked back to the topic of the specific local implementation of the EU legislation. This may include video consultation tools currently under development by Public-i. It may also expand to a community of interest forum such as www.mysociety.org, and provide mark-up/facilities such as those at www.commentonthis.com which is an experimental site designed to make it easier to have detailed discussions around the contents of major public documents. It is a first iteration of an ongoing attempt to build a system that makes really detailed discussion about public documents as easy and intuitive as possible. The Forum could also be subsequently enhanced to provide more proactive tools such as eConsultations, eVoting and ePetitions and other such services to empower citizens to have a more direct affect on the legislative process. Or even further to empower Local Authorities to create a petition to National and EU Parliaments – for instance on environmental issues – with the active participation and support of its local citizens.

As discussed in section 3, environment related legislation will be the focus of the initial version of LEGESE that will be pilot trialled in the 3 regions in WP2.1 during the project. In this regard the system will provide access using the 11 environmental categories listed in section 3.2.

The initial LEGESE System for the WP2.1 pilot trials will provide the following functionality to the Local Authority and Citizen users:

For a particular debate on the local implementation of environment-related legislation:


Local Authority
  1. Set-up a specific LEGESE Space within a Forum in the Public-i Manager.
  2. Categorise the Space by one of the 11 categories of Environmental related EU Legislation
  3. Find & Setup easy to access links to relevant and related documents and multimedia objects in:
    • The vast EU Legislative online store, EPLive & multimedia sources.
      • Back to the initial legislation to show, for instance,
        • When it was initiated
        • Why it was initiated
        • The process that created it.
    • Indexed webcast items in the local Public-i archive
      • For previous related debates and discussions
    • An existing Local Authority Document Management System such as minutes, correspondence, maps etc.
      • For related local documents
Citizen
  1. As part of the Public-i contextual information and feedback facilities, users will be able to select a LEGESE Space on any particular environment related discussion, using one of the 11 categories of Environmental related legislation.
  2. In that Space the user will be able to easily browse and call up any particular document or multimedia object (including relevant archived previous local debates on the issue). Users will also be able to find and mark previous debates and EU documents that they feel are relevant and should be added to the Space.
  3. In reading any EU Legislative document the LEGESE Jargon Buster feature will automatically detect jargon terms and provide the reader with a simple on-screen explanation. Or the user can request such an explanation for any jargon term (for instance while watching a discussion on Public-i or EPLive).
  4. Users will be able to join in Forum discussion threads related to the specific implementation debate, to ask questions, provide feedback and join in the discussion on it.

In this way each LEGESE Space will be enriched by both Local Authority and Citizen users’ participation and usage of the service, and both will be more aware by broadening their perspective to National and European levels, and more effectively participate in each implementation debate.

Future extensions of the LEGESE System

In April 2006 the European Parliament issued a call for tender to provide the architecture and content necessary for the establishment of an in-house prototype for a European Parliament web channel by the end of 2006 and for the development of an online version of the channel .

The European Parliament aims to commission an overall service that can provide scheduled Internet broadcasts of on-demand video (together with links to live broadcasts supplied by others) as a web TV service. This service will be provided for all interested members of the public and, in particular, for all European Union citizens. The web TV system will first be built as a fully-functioning prototype, to run on a trial basis via the Internet. Should the prototype be accepted, then the web TV system will be made available on the public Internet, with an appropriate scaling up of bandwidth and storage space.

As a web-based service, LEGESE will complement and enhance at a regional level the European Parliament’s own EPLive webcasting service and web television channel (EPTV), and provide future potential functional and citizen e-participation enhancements to that service, and thus provide one possible route to the long-term viability of the LEGESE service. While this will be detailed in D2.3.1 and D2.3.2 (Initial and Final Viability Plans), initial thinking is that this could include the following:

  • The LEGESE Public-i platform could be extended to provide a bespoke Content Management and Web and video Scheduling System to interface with a web player facility, and enhance its functionality by adding content via blogs, wikis, discussion forums, reviews, ratings and so on. The EP web TV channel needs be easy to navigate and equally and freely available to all users, and its enhancement by the LEGESE experience and content contextualisation and user interactivity technology could help it to
    • Serve the different language needs of each Member country
    • Improve people’s understanding of the work of the European Parliament, its Members and its partners
    • Demystify decision making processes
    • Provide more in-depth analysis and insight into specific issues
    • Position the Parliament as the primary resource for anyone interested in the organisation
    • Build upon the work that the EP has already undertaken in delivering webcasts of plenary sessions and developing rich media content
  • Just as in LEGESE on the Public-i platform, the audience could be able to connect directly to what they are most interested in, and easily search or cross-reference to find associated material. For this reason, once key audiences have been identified, the EPLive and EPTV sites should be built around the concept of separate targeted channels, which are held together under the umbrella of a main brand but serve different needs.
  • Creating specific channels would mean that content could be categorised more effectively and in turn, this has the benefit that marketing activity can be more easily broken down into targeted segments. The European Parliament outlined possible types of audiences within the Tender Specification. However attention needs to be paid to the fact that new channels and new languages may need to be accommodated in future.

While EPLive and the EPTV will make the European Parliament more transparent and accountable, the site has massive potential to promote democratic engagement and participation at a global level. LEGESE will aim to complement and enhance this at a regional level and provide future potential functional and citizen e-participation enhancements to that service, to ensure that it is not just one-to-many broadcasting channel, but a two-way conversation with citizens to engage their participation and allow European Parliament institutions to listen and learn from all of its regions and citizens across Europe.