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

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…

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.

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…)

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.

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 …).

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!