Official Report is available both in printed form and online from the year 1802 to date.[1] These records contain a “substantially verbatim” report of what is said in Parliament, with words being edited only “to remove repetitions and obvious mistakes, albeit without taking away from the meaning of what is said.”[2]
The Hansard website provides content from the House of Commons and House of Lords Hansards; the Parliamentary Digital Service is involved in producing it. Individual MPs have a personal profile on Hansard that provides links to debates they have spoken in and their voting record.[3] A site named Historic Hansard covers parliamentary debates for the period 1802-2005, providing content from the bound volumes processed in an online format.[4] The historical content currently has more limited metadata than the more current content, but future enhancements are envisioned.[5]
IV. Information Sharing Among Legislative Agencies
The Parliament’s Information Management Policy provides, “[t]he Houses promote a working culture of openness and collaboration. Parliamentary information that is not sensitive will be accessible to all staff and be restricted only when there is a business need to do so.”[6] To help foster openness, the policy requires that technology planning should take “access permissions and information sharing in systems into account.”[7] It further says that information should be protected against accidental loss or destruction, and unauthorized disclosure. Measures should ensure that users have the appropriate security clearance, and information should be shared through links in order “to mitigate the risks of working from out-of-date copies and information being over-retained in breach of policy.”[8] With respect to information sharing to develop government websites, by the early 2000s the government had developed a significant online presence, with each department having its own website. In 2010, the Government Digital Service was established to “focus on fixing publishing, digitising high-volume transactional services, and building ’wholesale’ technology platforms.”[9] The common gov.uk platform was established and more than 2,000 websites were placed under
it. The Government Digital Service’s position enables it to evaluate the work of digital teams
The Law Library of Congress
106
- ↑ Hansard (Parliamentary Debates), UK Parliament, https://perma.cc/TPY9-W2WJ.
- ↑ About Hansard Online, UK Parliament, https://perma.cc/465U-CVAT.
- ↑ Id.
- ↑ House of Commons Hansard Archives, UK Parliament, https://perma.cc/76GL-266D.
- ↑ About Hansard Online, UK Parliament, supra note 90.
- ↑ UK Parliament, Information Management Policy, supra note 56, at 6.
- ↑ Id.
- ↑ Id.
- ↑ Government Digital Service: Our Strategy for 2021-2024, Government Digital Service (May 20, 2021), https://perma.cc/GK2T-9NYQ.
