Access to Plenary and Committee Minutes (GR0084)

Brief Description of the Commitment

Upgrading the way the plenary and committee minutes are released and presented so as to provide faster and more complete information to the public as per the parliamentary process, the activity of the MPs and the legislative procedure.

Problem Definition

1. What problem does the commitment aim to address? The commitment aims to address a chronic problem pertaining to the lack of proper indexing (subject, speaker etc) of the minutes of the Committees as well as the format of their storage that made the relevant information difficult to access. This also hindered the proper interconnection of the Committee minutes with the rest of the Parliament’s legislative archive (Plenary minutes, legislation etc).

2. What are the causes of the problem? The root cause of the problem is that different services following different methods were responsible for releasing the minutes of the Plenary and the Committees. As a result the Committee minutes were not properly indexed.

Commitment Description

1. What has been done so far to solve the problem? The issue hadn’t been tackled previously.

2. What solution are you proposing? All indexing will take place by a single unit so as to guarantee homogeneity in the process. We also aim to introduce the Eurovoc thesaurus instead of our in-house thematic catalogue so as for indexing to follow internationally recognized standards. We aim to expand indexing to the Committee minutes. We aim to improve the interconnectivity between the various sections of the Parliament’s legislative archive.

3. What results do we want to achieve by implementing this commitment? Our main goal is to enhance the transparency of the parliamentary process by facilitating easier and more thorough access to the minutes of both the Plenary and the Committees. By linking the latter to the legislative output we also aim to offer in the near future the ability for interested parties to obtain all relevant information regarding the preparation, debate and vote of every legislative act through a one-stop-shop service.

Commitment Analysis

1. How will the commitment promote transparency? Minutes will be hereafter properly indexed according to subject, date and speaker making them easily retrievable via the website’s search engine. Interested parties will be able thus to gain faster and easier access to the data regarding the work of the MPs, the debate inside the Committees etc.

2. How will the commitment help foster accountability? Easy and thorough access to the Committee hearings, the Plenary and the legislative archive of the Parliament enhances public scrutiny over the MPs work and the quality of the legislative process and thus fosters accountability.

3. How will the commitment improve citizen participation in defining, implementing, and monitoring solutions? N/A

Commitment Planning (Milestones | Expected Outputs | Expected Completion Date)

1. Completion of the app that will support the introduction of the Eurovoc thesaurus into the Parliament’s internal network. | 1. Digital index in pdf and e-book form | 11/2022

2. Guideline for the way interested parties can access the Parliament’s legislative archives. | 2.Guideline for the use of the Parliament’s legislative archives. | 12/2022

3. Release of the minutes in both pdf and e-book form for easier access | 1/2023

Action Plan Review

Commitment 2. Index Hellenic Parliament’s plenary and committee minutes