John Sheridan of The National Archives (UK) announced today that The National Archives would use the technique of “expert participation” to update and complete Legislation.gov.uk, the UK’s online statute book, according to a National Archives press release entitled Experts to contribute to world-leading legislation website.
According to the announcement:
The Expert Participation Programme … is a new initiative to bring legislation on the site fully up-to-date. The National Archives is teaming up with trained editors from the private and voluntary sectors to help our in-house editorial team revise legislation on legislation.gov.uk. John Sheridan, Head of Legislation Services at The National Archives, explains: ‘This project will, in time, transform public access to the law in this country. We are creating a sustainable model for revising legislation, making official, revised UK legislation available to the public for free and without any additional cost to the taxpayer.’
As Mr. Sheridan told Joshua Rozenberg of the Law Society Gazette:
a team of no more than 50 ‘external expert participants’ will be needed to bring the database up to date by 2015. He is looking for people who have a mental image of how legislation is constructed and amended, although his volunteers do not have to be lawyers. All will be trained and given the software tools they need to work online.
Mr. Sheridan made the announcement at the LawTechCamp London legal technology unconference, being held 29 June 2012.
The announcement was also described by Joshua Rozenberg in his article, The National Archives is recruiting volunteers to update the statute book, Law Society Gazette, 28 June 2012.
“Expert participation” is a public participation method advocated by Professor Dr. Beth Noveck of New York Law School in her book Wiki Government. Professor Noveck has implemented the method in such projects as Peer to Patent, Peer to Patent UK, and ExpertNet.
For more information on Legislation.gov.uk, please see Mr. Sheridan’s VoxPopuLII post, Legislation.gov.uk.
Tags: (John Sheridan, Beth Noveck, Beth Simone Noveck, Crowdsourcing in legal information systems, Crowdsourcing legislative updating, Expert participation in legal information systems, Expert participation in legislative information systems, Expert participation in updating legislative information, Free access to law, Legislation.gov.uk, Legislative information systems, Public access to legal information
