90 likes | 186 Vues
Learn about the redevelopment of ParlInfo, the Parliament's repository system for documents. Explore its limitations, principles for redevelopment, and project progress stages.
E N D
Redevelopment of ParlInfo system John Macdonald Director, Publishing
What is ParlInfo? • Conceived as the repository and retrieval system for documents created or collected by the Parliament • Interfaces to authoring systems • All documents held in a single repository • PDF, SGML, XML, Word • Two versions: ‘Full Client’ and PIWeb • First released in 1997
Chamber Hansard Committee transcripts Notice Papers Senate Journals House V&P Daily Program Bills, EMs, Amendments Bills Digests Parliamentary Handbook Standing Orders House/Senate Practice Library publications Library catalogues Journal articles Press clippings Press releases Radio & TV transcripts Constitutional conventions Constitution 1,900,000 documents, including:
So why replace it? • Expectations: clients have become “Google-ised” • Limitations: ParlInfo is: • Based on ageing technologies • Relatively inflexible • Complex in functionality and technology • Difficult and expensive to maintain and enhance • Suffering due to some data quality issues
Principles of redevelopment • Business needs of diverse user base: • Senators, Members and their staff • Parliamentary departmental staff • Authors/content providers • External agencies • Australian public • Distributed repository, federated search • Single web interface – no client software • Simple to use, develop and support • Buy not build (as far as is possible…)
Some issues • Conflicting needs of novice and sophisticated users • Providing global search over a distributed repository • Future-proofing technology choices • Blind men and the elephant
Project progress • Steering Committee • Stage 1: Repository audit, user needs analysis • Stage 2: Statement of requirements, Functional specification, plan for next stage • Stage 3…tba… • Stage 4…tba…