We will come back on our method and the way we think, exchange and work on this *big* project (and, by the way, your comments are really hepful).

In the meantime, we are very impressed by the way the BBC (of course, whoelse?) did their own rewamp:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2010/02/a_new_global_visual_language_f.html

European Parliament gathering ideas for their new website http://bit.ly/5Nb2uK

On interaction between Parliament, Parliamentarians and Citizens

Right now, through this exchange, there is an interaction happening between the European Parliament and (at least some) European Citizens. It works because the question was honest and open, and the results can be and are honest and open as well. It’s neutral ground, so to speak – even though the editorial force actually lies with Steve and his team.

For any interaction between the elected Members of Parliament and their electorate to work, I would argue that we not only need neutral ground—which can be created by the Parliament itself, as we are just experiencing—but also editorial supervision that is citizen-organised or citizen-controlled or citizen-comanaged. The power to influence what is being written or published cannot solely rest within the realms of the institution itself.

One major problem is indeed, that the investment to run such a site is major – so how could a citizen-driven, multi-lingual “Parliament Watch Platform” be established?

I am tempted to suggest a round of EU investment, but the thought, quite honestly, makes me cringe – not because I am afraid to lose political neutrality, but because I know that the funds would go to some kind of weird agency specialised on milking EU funding opportunities.

Another problem is to convince all political parties and fractions across the political spectrum to support—or at least accept—such an initiative…

It has already been raised but it can’t be stressed enough: open up you data! (and start with your roll call vote file downloadable in CSV and JSON)

Other than that: get rid of all the pop-ups and use proper links. It will greatly help your sub-pages to show up in Google.

Single most important issue (so far for me): Create a homepage that does not consist of the language switcher; the language switcher certainly is important but not as the permanent destination for the home-button (logo) and should not occupy “www.europarl.europa.eu” for all time (and the language switcher on the lower pages should not resemble a search field btw).

Some brief thoughts on web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 (yes, this is to a certain degree marketing slang, but you could develop it into helpful principles for your work, develop your genuine understanding of the field, all aspects are highly relevant to your site):

- web 1.0: the document/pages web. the main challenge here is to unlock the content from proprietary formats (office, pdf) and transfer to valid + semantically correct html-pages. Also included: getting rid of infographics that were designed for print brochures and the like; writing good copy/translation into all the different languages, maintaining same high quality. Establish editorial guidelines for text, images, video, etc.

- web 2.0: the people web. Giving power to the people, putting the audience in front. Report about normal people in Europe, picture their lives, their views, hopes, fears, etc. The EP is elected by the people, people’s lives are affected by EP’s decisions. Bring discussions, initiatives, projects etc. to the site, don’t rely exclusivly on third party tools for your community (be on Facebook etc., but bring the discussion back to your page as well). Bring “real” people to the page (not just parlamentarians).

- web 3.0: the data web. Make all data available to be re-used, by everybody – and most prominently by your site itself. Replace more and more links and put the available data-excerpts and snippets directly to the different places on your page. Add metadata and make it visible for everybody. Connect to web 1.0 (eg by clean URI’s for everything) and web 2.0 (give possibilities to create + share document or topic collections, so that the huge data pile can be accessed through various ways; more experienced users could serve as pathfinders for newbies to a special topic…)

RT @stctweets EU Parliament seeks ideas for new site. General amazement, it seems, but why? Inspiring ideas here please http://bit.ly/6zhFVJ

European Parliament seeks ideas for new site. General amazement, it seems, but why? Inspiring ideas here please: http://bit.ly/6zhFVJ

Btw, design-wise, I’d like a page which is not crippled to a specific maximum width.

Just looking at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/hearings/default.htm – the text is justified, which causes much white on such short lines. And about 45% of my screen width are unused …

Of course lines of text should be limited in width, otherwise you drop lines while reading etc. – but that does not mean the whole layout must have a maximum width.

“I hope indeed to get feedback from other parliamentary websites, by the way.”

Bundestag.de has a quite ok database (DIP21), although the granularity also stops at the document level (no access for example to single questions from Q&A hours, to roll call lists, or to petitions by reference number).

But their “Dokumente & Recherche” menu is just ugly. They but everything in there that was remotely related to that heading – without any consolidation. What is the difference between “Textarchiv” and “Parlamentsarchiv”? Between “Parlamentsarchiv” and “Parlamentsdokumentation”? You might think you’ll find an explanation by clicking on the menu heading, but no: There is just a collection of “info boxes” (which you are supposed to customize or whatever …).

Great! Thanks again to those leaving comments. We’re starting to get a mixture of views now and even some straight contradictions. Such is the spirit of online debate.

So far I see an emphasis on ease of finding information, even very technical and/or internal information, intuitively and via few clicks, and then the great importance placed by many on ease of re-use of that information, e.g. by APIs. I also see some – not universal – enthusiasm for the “interactive space” (some seem to think it’s not our job?).

So far less stress on news, though that may be a question of semantics, as there is plenty of desire to know “what’s going on in area XXX” or “what is my MEP doing righht now?”.

@Jens Very much on the (re)usability of info. I think we get this message, even if I understand that the situation is frustrating for many at the moment. (We hate those huge pdfs too.) There has to be a lot of work on APIs for the new site, that is clear.

@Andreas. I love your idea of “playful discovery”, which actually adds up to a whole editorial strategy. And we want the virtual tour too, yes!

@Ralf As ever, your wish to access the innermost sanctums of Parliament does you great credit, and does your devotion to the nitty-gritty documents of parliamentary work. Leaving aside the question of form (pdf, doc, html) I think we currently publish everything classified by the institution as public parliamentary documentation, and of course we do not ourselves decide on how documents are classified. We can however point out the demand that exists to those who do.

I hope indeed to get feedback from other parliamentary websites, by the way.

@Karl It would be great if you could specify examples of what you mean. (Sorry if I reveal my technical limits by asking this.)

@Benoît You, I see, are one of those who would rather leave the interactive space to third parties. Have I understood right? I think we would all love this to happen, but myself I wonder if, given the very fragmented state of the current European public political space, the Parliament itself could not have a useful role in helping get things moving?

@Andu A different perspective from you, reminding me for one, that we need to look at our most basic assumptions from time to time. It is an article of faith for us that we keep news about Parliament constantly updated, as things are happening here all the time. Your notion that we should – as an institutional site – somewhat “rise above the fray” is an interesting one, but I wonder if it is one which works rather better in a national context where the work of the parliament is a constant, even dominant – factor in the daily national news agenda?

Anyway, once again thanks to all. Keep ‘em coming!

European Parliament web team are asking for ideas on how to improve their website – what are your thoughts? http://bit.ly/7I5K6P

RT @bloggingportal: The #EU parliament wants your help designing its new website http://su.pr/1lgIQ8 … (via @deebdublin)

I just read this stuff. I like how you blog about it. hard task for sure.
My input won’t be constructive..whatever: you mentioned the UK and the Irish sites. Don’t like them. UK looks like a Newspaper and the Irish one like a random cheap start-up.
less pictures might help to keep it professional. dunno. keep it simple. a lot of information. You cannot do too much interactive stuff anyways (I guess it needs to be neutral, it’s an institution).
don’t do things like user polls or anything. You’re choice of a question would be too political already etc. On the other side I guess many users enjoy pictures an stuff. maybe offer different versions, e.g. one for kids.
Don’t update the first page on a daily or even weekly basis. There is no reason to inform about the topic of the day with a big photo on the first page just to show off up-to-dateness. you gotta be above that daily newspaper-like shit. think of the EU to be everlasting. try to represent some of that spirit. there is no reason to implement the newest flash animation or run after the flavor of the year. use gimmicky, technical stuff only where it is really usefull and sensible. that’s the art I guess

I wish @sunlightlabs would do a mockup for http://is.gd/60P7Q (like the redesign for the US gov @ http://is.gd/60Pfm )

RT @gh_eu: RT @bloggingportal: The #EU parliament wants your help designing its new website http://su.pr/1lgIQ8 …

RT @bloggingportal: The #EU parliament wants your help designing its new website http://su.pr/1lgIQ8 …

RT @bloggingportal: The #EU parliament wants your help designing its new website http://su.pr/1lgIQ8 also read a #euroblog reaction http …

@BRAVENUE

Forums, interactions with MEP, etc. could (or should?) be provided by third parties (as seen in http://www.abgeordnetenwatch.de but in other sites as well: nosdeputes.fr theyworkforyou.com, etc.).

An important decision in the redesign is to make the life of the people does such website (connecting citizen and MEPs) easier: provide raw data and APIs to query MEPs profile, roll calls, etc.

RT @bloggingportal: The #EU parliament wants your help designing its new website http://su.pr/1lgIQ8 also read a #euroblog reaction http …

Using no third-party scripts on your site would be good.

A few limited suggestions from a user’s point of view:

1) Method: Not knowing the means you actually use to develop the EP web pages, I would try to enlist the web editors and designers of the national parliaments. Perhaps not by asking them to write exhaustive reports on the subject, but by taking a look at your pages and submitting their three best ideas for improvement (as bullet points).

They have the same interests concerning their own websites, so it might result in some ideas.

Promise to share the results with the respondents.

2) Finding documents: There is a small gap between the time the news on a vote is hot and the update on the Legislative Observatory, but inserting a link to the Oeil page and/or the committee report whenever possible would facilitate search.

3) Transparency: I still miss living and informative pages on the internal life of the EP, with easily accessible information about the agendas and decisions of internal bodies, budget, personnel, legal opinions in controversial questions etc.

The second part that I find extremely important is a powerful, correct and useful search. When entering the term education, I should see, at least:

processes currently underway, clearly structured according to current status;
taken decisions, chronologically;
relevant reports of meetings, chronologically;
MEPs associated with this topic, by political group;
staff associated with this topic;
registered lobbyists active in the area;
civil society contributions to parliamentary processes in this area.

For each of these, a selection of five could be shown with the option to go deeper for every single one of the aspects.

There is probably more aspects that would be useful, but the general idea and approach is more important than my suggested list of details – make the search a powerful and useful instrument.

While unsure how to usefully organise the slew of information I will be asking for in a moment—and unsure whether blog post comments are useful to discuss such aspects of navigation and organisation—here are a couple of thoughts:

I would find as many entry points as possible very useful and exciting. (I guess my underlying assumption could be is that an institution so strongly ruled by a mountain of procedures might only become interesting by playful discovery.)

Some questions that illustrate possible lines of discovery seemingly exciting at the moment of writing are:

What are the MEPs of my nationality—or my political preference—doing at the moment?

Could be answered in terms of time, space and contents – an agenda of the week or month that can be filled with dates of MEPs; lists and tag clouds of topics currently under discussion; a map showing the location of the different MEPs for any given day…

What is happening in any given area of interest?

Say I chose education, and the site returns a list of finished, ongoing and upcoming procedures, discussions, proposals – as well as who is contributing to these from the outside—such as experts, NGOs, lobbyists—and how I can influence or contribute to any of these processes. Could be combined with timelines to illustrate when a discussion is at which stage.

What is happening inside the Parliament?

A cool animation of the Parliament building, some 3D-Voodoo-Exploration of the collective spaces such as meeting rooms of committees and groups and fractions etc, associated with ongoing and upcoming meetings.

A second avenue for the website will follow in a sec in a separate comment…

Thanks for the comments so far, and in particular to Julien Frisch for getting the ball rolling with some typically lucid thoughts.

@Julien Yes, I think it’s important we start with the basics, news, information, documentation. They have to be there and we let out users down if we don’t provide them at a high level of quality. How we organise this stuff so it is intuitive and usable is crucial, of course, and we have to present it in a way which very clearly steers away from what Demonti calls “propaganda and self adulation” while still – not unreasonably – taking an institutional perspective.

The “political” content component – opinion, comment, debate, views, both from inside and outside the parliament is the hardest part to manage using online platforms of the institution as such, which is not to say it is not a vital part of what we must do. Bringing us to…

@Bravenue Absolutely, we have to think in terms of a public space for debate and interaction, between internet users (i.e citizens), politicians and other participants. It is especially here that we need to think beyond the classic website model and look at how we exploit blogs, comments, social media and so on.

I am also very keen on what you say about mashable data to facilitate the work of others with an interest in Parliament. Some very interesting things being done in the UK by mysociety.org.

@Stefan. Your first point is on the same subject. On your other point about transparency and authenticity, this is an editorial issue of course. We do our best to reflect that the EP is, well, a parliament, that is a place where people with very different views, elected by people with similarly different views, come to disagree, to argue and ultimately sort things out by finding majorities and common ground. Naturally, there are outcomes too, which become the “position of the parliament”, but this is not like, for example the position of the Commission, which is a collective “line” binding everyone in the Commission. That said, it is admittedly difficult to spend one’s time drawing attention to what Parliament does, and why it matters to people, entirely legitimate tasks, without sounding, to some at least, like an “advertisement”.

@Tom You’re right, our urls are hardly intuitive. And yes, it would be much better if they could be, including for search engine optimisation reasons. Maybe we can do something about that, though technical people do seem to have a lot of reasons why this is not that simple, especially on a vast 22-language site like ours. Definitely something we will look into though.

@ Demonti I’d rather stick to talking about the Parliament’s online presence here, rather than getting into a debate about what a “real” parliament is. I would just say, initiation or no initiation of laws (even that is not quite so straightforward as you might think), this is an institution which can make a big difference to people’s lives, and, because of that, they have a right to expect, among other things, the best possible information on and access to it online. Hence what we are trying to do here.

@Peter. Your view. Fine, though I suspect an awful lot of MEPs, including one I guess you will have voted for, would be surprised to think that is what they are doing in the Parliament. But it’s their job to say that, not mine.

I use the website to get access to parliamentary documentation – everything like verbatim records, draft legislative acts, voting lists.

The current website does not provide easy access to that stuff. Data is not properly linked: You see a reference, and have to start all over. Data is often not available in accessible formats: E.g., you have to scroll through a multi-hundred pages PDF to get a vote list. Of course, there are no links _from_ that document.

All that data should be available using APIs. However, the EP should strive to provide the best possible UI for that API.

Julien: great ideas!

firstly I agree with Julien Frisch’s suggestions :-)

I find the following items imperative to have:

* some tools for direct involvement of citizens. At the very least a comment system (with email subscription) for press releases and such. Polls and petitions should also be seamlessly integrated.

* a forum to ask members of parliament questions and get answers publicly. The German website http://www.abgeordnetenwatch.de does this very well :-)

* an open data framework for voting results and other kinds of machine-readable content to allow mash-ups

That’s what I can think of so far :-) Hope you get many more useful suggestions!

Where is the need for a website for an institution that calls itself Parliament but does not meet the minimum criteria for it (e.g. has no right to initiate laws)? A parliament with ridiculous high hurdles for referendums? A parliament that is known to work against the peoples of the member countries and in favour of lobbies? As long as the gap is that wide, the only use of such a web site is to make propaganda and self-adulation. No thanks.

With regard to accessibility and usability there should be as much public content as possible enabling users and developers to reuse it and create new data and statistics with it. I.e. in my opinion any data should be accessible via XML or some other easily (automatically) readable format, at best in different formats at the same time (e.g. XML + JSON + CSV).

Moreover, you should try to create some transparency which is often missed in EU. I mean, you could use the lack of transparency on media level and “correct” it one your website, by giving as much information about work as possible. Probably, this is already done, but at the moment it seems a bit like an advertisment site for the parliament (as far as I can see), not so authentic and citizen-orientated.

However, this is just my impression, and therefore it might be wrong.

Hey, there is actually on thing which I remember making me mad while using the EP website.

They don’t have speaking URLs, there is much needless stuff in the URL and they change URLs from time to time.

Example:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/public/story_page/047-42861-322-11-47-908-20081120STO42662-2008-17-11-2008/default_en.htm

–>

http://europa.eu/news/an-aging-europe-meps-call-for-social-security-reform-en/

would be much more userfriendly.

Here’s the title for you…

COMMEUNISM-the REAL agenda

I have formulated some first thoughts.