Post on 15-Apr-2017
Getting Government’s Message Across
Jennie Grimshaw
www.bl.uk 2
Official publishing
transformed
www.bl.uk 3
Change in the Air: UK Government
Mid-1990s:Government commits to making information
available electronically (Cm
3438, 1996)
Proliferation of ever-changing
government websites
Launch of GOV.UK as single point of access to UK Government on January 31st
2012
Websites disappearedWebsites were redesigned
Documents were removed and lostLinks were broken
www.bl.uk 4
Change in the Air: Parliamentary PublishingWhen? What? Where? By whom?From Feb. 2014 Command papers
and other papers laid before the House by departments and agencies
Published free on GOV.UK landing page as list with newest at top – no official print publisher
Loaded by government departments and agencies
From April 2016 Papers produced within Lords and Commons, e.g. Select Committee reports, Hansard
Published on Parliament website – no official print copy available to public - scattered
Lords and Commons staff
www.bl.uk 5
Change in the Air: The National Archives
UK Government Web Archive
• Launched as solution to broken links problem
• Crawls entire UK Government webestate at least 2-3 times a year
• Enables users to be redirected toarchive instead of receiving 404error message
• Includes themed collections &Video & Twitter archives
• Preserves datasets
www.bl.uk 6
In the Marketplace
www.bl.uk 7
Enter Commercial Publishers: Dandy
Public Information Online
• UK Parliamentary papers,Bills & Daily Hansard in pdf
• Scottish Parliament
• Northern Ireland Assembly
• Key non-Parliamentary papers
• Civil Service Yearbook
• Historic Lords papers 1901-2005
• Print available on demand
www.bl.uk 8
Enter Commercial Publishers: Proquest
UK Parliamentary Papers
• 18th, 19th, 20th & 21st centuryCommons papers online
• C19 Lords papers
• Licensed in perpetuity by JISCfor HE
• Institutions still need to payaccess fee
www.bl.uk 9
Enter Commercial Publishers: TSO
Official Publications Online
• Legislation (Acts & Sis)
• Gazettes
• Hansard
• Commons & Lords papers and Bills
• Current Act & Command papers, legislation, gazettes & historicParliamentary papers available in print
www.bl.uk 10
Emerging Formats
www.bl.uk 11
Good-bye PDF, Welcome ODF
• Preferred format to be used across government
• Chosen by Cabinet Office & Government Digital service
• Unfortunately, we can’t process it (yet)!
www.bl.uk 12
Good-bye PDF, Welcome HTML
• Documents published as HTML pages
• Constantly changing and being updated
• Concept of definitive bounded document lost
www.bl.uk 13
Good-bye Loose-leaf, Welcome Website
• The FCA Handbook now presented as linked html pages
• Use table of contents to browse
• Navigate using internal links
• Use search to find content by topic
• Use timeline options to see different versions
• Has some pdfs embedded
www.bl.uk 14
Good-bye Document, Welcome Database
• Gazette has become a searchable database
• Search for companies, honours, wills, insolvency or all notices
• Special section on World War I notices
• Can browse all notices back to 1665 (if you insist)
• Now disaggregated – no real concept of issue
www.bl.uk 15
The Future is Dynamic: GOV.UK
• To move away from confusing proliferation of versions:– GDS is working towards showing how guidance has
evolved – Aim to ensure that citizens can understand how guidance has
changed over time– Aim to make GOV.UK self archiving– Not yet scoped!
www.bl.uk 16
The Future is Non-text Based
• Commons is considering accepting papers in non-traditional forms:
– Command paper published as a video– Report a hybrid consisting of sound, video, data + text in a
wrapper– Being investigated by Ways and Means Committee
www.bl.uk 17
Riding the Tiger
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Challenges: Version Control
• Loss of concept of authoritative final version
• 9 November 2016 5:18pmRevised - figure 6.4 has been corrected due to errors in the formula used to create the index
• 17 March 2016 4:23pmTable and chart added showing raw material consumption up to 2013, as a result of ONS publishing "How much material is the UK consuming?“
• 26 January 2016 9:30amFirst published.
www.bl.uk 19
Challenges: Relating Documents
• NHS Digital, beta version
• Offers report, summary infographic, data tables, data collection forms, data quality statement presented with summary of key facts
• Need to be seen together, in time series
• URL probably won’t stay stable
• Solutions:– Web archiving?
UK Government Web Archive– DOIs?.
www.bl.uk 20
Challenges: Disaggregated Documents
• UK Parliament: Committee Evidence
• Published as separate documents on Inquiry web page, not collated into pdf
• May include links to video of evidence sessions
• Role for commercial publishers, e.g. Dandy
www.bl.uk 21
Challenges: Broken Links
• BL current strategy is to link out to foreign national government & IGO documents on the web
• Plan to run regular checks to see if links are broken
• First check run in September 2016 showed 4,358 of 288,359 links broken:
– 2,414 links to EU documents broken due to URL change– 1,835 links to US Federal Government documents broken
due to USGPO not having updated purls
www.bl.uk 22
Direction of Travel: Find out More
• Inside GOV.UK – what GDS is doing
• Second Reading – House of Commons Library blog – brief posts on current issues
• OfficialPapersUK – “a place for librarians and information professionals to share information and keep up to date in the world of parliamentary and government publishing”
www.bl.uk 23
Thank you