Hardened followers of Parliament’s website may notice some differences about how the news pages cover the plenary session this week. As far as the Headlines page in concerned, fom now on we will will seek, more explicitly, to home in on a relatively small number of subjects in each plenary. We will do this from the beginning of the week, with a short briefing on the subjects coming up, and updating our reporting of these over the week as events unfold. The idea is to give greater “shape” to people’s perception of the session. They should know what’s coming up, what’s going on, what happened in the end, and all this information should be easily accessible, and easy to read, in one place.

In our collective mind’s eye, we all see something similar: slick, designer, multimedia aggregation pages updated with new material as it becomes available.

We are convinced that the idea is good, but of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and translating an idea into reality is always going to be an issue when your website is as huge and complicated as ours, and in 22 languages to boot. In our collective mind’s eye, we all see something similar: slick, designer, multimedia aggregation pages updated with new material as it becomes available. Want the latest on the immigration debate: concise, clear background, up to date coverage of debates and votes, helpful illustrations and arresting photos, video interviews, links to all relevant documentation and resources, a profile of the rapporteur perhaps? One click and it’s all there! Yay!

That is, until the man with the spanner very reasonably points out that this is all very well, but there is a small matter of developing all the underlying technologies, building a robust content management system, idiot-proofing the whole thing (that’s us…), and all this – lest we forget (which we, in spite of ourselves, inspired by our perigrinations on the web, always do) – IN TWENTY-TWO LANGUAGES! 

Hmmm you’re right, of course…

We take our good old familiar  front page in both hands, and start bending, folding, squeezing, pummelling it to extract the last drops of potential still lurking there

But still, time waits for no man, so let’s see what we can do with what we have. ‘Twas ever thus, fortune favours those who get on with it. So we’re operating a brand new state-of-the-art workaround system this week, using the tools and the technology we already have, while the man with the spanner disappears into the basement to build us the machine of our dreams. The sounds of clanging and rivetting (with just a spot of totally justified muttering about bloody clients who want everything done, like, yesterday) drift up the stairs. Meanwhile, we take our good old familiar  front page in both hands, and start bending, folding, squeezing, pummelling it to extract the last drops of potential still lurking there.  

The new tube of toothpaste is coming soon.

Now, dear reader, read on.