[Open-Legislation] Practical example: EU decision-making complexity

Sat Jan 15 23:40:15 UTC 2011

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On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 12:12:50PM +0100, calixte tayoro wrote:
> You're right Friedrich - we have a real challenge here due to the following:
> In order to help people understand better what's going on in the EU, they
> need to access the data.
> Problem is: the EU's information system & architecture is a mess.
> Having the knowledge and experience of a #eugeek like Ronny is great because
> he can help us (and the users) navigate the mess and find the info.
> >> Just starting by understanding, emulating and automatizing the process
> that he follows (without changing the underlying existing EU info-system) is
> already an important work;
> >> On the other hand, provided we find one or two key data source that can
> help us correct the mess itself (which is a work i struggle with), we need
> to replace the underlying logic with something more rational.
> In both cases, the goal is to simplify two things:
> 1-s that would be made more accessible (let's call this part "access to
> information");
> 2- re-engineering of the underlying workflow (
> 
> 1) ACCESS TO INFO THROUGH A USABLE FRONT-END
> Access to information through document > Here the goal is to hide the
> complexity of the workflow that Ronny made visible behind a front-end system
> that makes things seem easy without actually changing the underling
> structure. This means that we would aggregate various existing data sources.
> 
> 2) COHERENCE OF THE WORKFLOW THROUGH A RE-ENGINEERING OF THE BACK-END
> Here the goal is to rationalize the underlying process > For that we need to
> locate the "master" data source (a sort of EU equivalent of
> THOMAS<http://thomas.loc.gov/>)
> and connect to by any means necessary - including screen scraping.
> 
> What do you guys think?
> Best,
> c
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 11:56 AM, Friedrich Lindenberg
> <friedrich at pudo.org>wrote:
> 
> > A very interesting read indeed - I'm beginning to wonder whether the
> > initial focus really should be documents or rather
> > procedures/processes (i.e. to do the agenda-mining before the
> > text-mining), but at this stage this would be changing the course of a
> > running rocket. What do people think?
> >
> > - Fr.
> >
> > On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 3:44 PM, calixte tayoro <klx4short at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > > That's excellent Ronny. Thanks.
> > > I want also to thank those who participated to the confcall yesterday &
> > > apologize to Stef for technical problems.
> > > After talking to Friedrich earlier today & more digging this afternoon,
> > I'll
> > > compile some of the info we have on the eu wiki as suggested by pudo.
> > > Best regards,
> > > calixte
> > > On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 2:10 PM, Ronny Patz <r.patz at gmx.eu> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Hi all,
> > >>
> > >> just a follow-up to our Skype telephone conference yesterday and some of
> > >> the issues I have talked about with Friedrich last week.
> > >>
> > >> When I talk about making the complexity of the EU-level decision-making
> > >> transparent, I refer to a story like the one I've just published on my
> > blog:
> > >>
> > >>
> > http://polscieu.ideasoneurope.eu/2011/01/13/the-quest-for-eu-documents-an-exemplary-journey/
> > >>
> > >> For this story, you pretty much have to know all details of EU databases
> > >> and the related search strategies. As I say at the end of the post: On
> > an
> > >> ideal platform, I would have started with (1) and after maximum 1-3
> > clicks
> > >> ended at any stage from (2) to (13), without ever having to use a search
> > >> interface.
> > >>
> > >> This is where we should head to, if we can.
> > >>
> > >> Ronny
> > >
> > >
> >
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