Public Access to Legislation Project

Discussion of technical review

In February 2007, the project’s independent technical adviser, Dr Timothy Arnold-Moore of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), undertook a high-level technical review of the project. His report, finalised in March, examined the state of the project, and identified particular areas where further work was needed.

In making his recommendations, Dr Arnold-Moore noted:

… It is quite normal for a system of this complexity to be deployed with known outstanding issues providing that viable workarounds are in place, the integrity of the data is not compromised particularly in a way that requires considerable additional effort in data conversion, and that long-term, sustainable capabilities are pending.

Key parts of his recommendations are noted below, along with a summary of work carried out since his report was finalised.

Editorial diary

The editorial diary is a tool that will be used to track new legislation and the effects it will have on existing legislation (eg by way of amendment or repeal/revocation). It is a key workflow tool in maintaining the legislation database in an up-to-date form, and in compiling and publishing reprints. The editorial diary component of the PAL system makes extensive use of DLM, the link management software (see below).

Development and testing of the editorial diary was completed relatively recently. As at the completion of SIT, Unisys reported that that the editorial diary was robust and no major issues had been identified as a result of SIT and regression testing.

Although the editorial diary has yet to be tested with a full load of legacy data (see below), this is one of the key entry criteria for UAT. The PCO’s Reprints Unit has also done some business process testing of the editorial diary in advance of UAT, and a number of items have been identified for early resolution by Unisys during UAT.

DLM—link management software

The ability to navigate via links within a document (eg where one section refers to another) and between documents (eg where an Act refers to another Act) is a significant benefit of viewing documents in HTML, and will be an essential component of the PAL website.

Links are managed by DLM (Dynamic Link Manager), a relatively new tool from software supplier PTC/Arbortext. Linking in legislation presents a particular challenge because legislation is highly structured and requires a great many links. A large document like the Income Tax Act 2004 will contain tens of thousands of potential link targets for other legislation to link to, and thousands of actual links to provisions within the Act itself and to other legislation.

Unisys has worked closely with representatives from PTC/Arbortext to resolve issues arising out of the complexity of these requirements. Some significant gains in performance have been obtained by fragmenting documents into smaller pieces when registering targets and links in DLM.

As at the completion of SIT, there were no outstanding issues with DLM that might adversely impact on UAT.

The entry criteria for UAT include a requirement that DLM (and the editorial diary) be fully populated with legacy data, which will enable the PCO to fully test the database maintenance and reprints business processes during UAT. A full load of legacy data is also essential for the Unisys performance tests on the PAL system.

To enable continuing progress on UAT in the event that it becomes necessary to reload legacy data during testing, Unisys has developed a process for reloading the full legacy dataset within 3-4 days. If done over a weekend, the impact on UAT is expected to be a 2-3 day delay.

Graphics formats

The SAIC report notes a number of outstanding items requiring attention relating to the format to be used for graphics in the PAL system.

These have subsequently been resolved and there are now no outstanding items requiring attention relating to graphics formats. SVG will be used for all graphics, except in a small number of cases where SVG does not produce print output of sufficiently high quality. In those cases, TIFF will be used. All graphics on the PAL website will be rendered as JPG. (See section 5.8.1 of the SAIC report for an explanation of these terms.)

Data integrity

The SAIC report identified a number of matters that could potentially impinge on the integrity of the underlying XML data that is created in the PAL system, such as character mapping (including the representation of macrons) and hyphenation. To resolve this, Unisys has now implemented numeric UTF-8 character references across the entire PAL system to ensure proper handling of special characters. The PCO has set up an exception table to handle non-standard hyphenation, which has now been tested and solves the problem. The revision tracking attribute issue raised in the SAIC report has been considered, but Unisys and the PCO agree that no action is required.

System usability

The SAIC report identifies a number of recommendations from Dr Arnold-Moore to improve the usability of the PAL system by drafters and other staff. Dr Arnold-Moore recommends that these usability items should be prioritised together with other issues to provide a complete, integrated, implementation priority list.

Now that SIT has been completed, the PCO has commissioned a review, by a health and safety expert, of the impact of the PAL system on those working within the PCO, Office of the Clerk, and IRD in terms of occupational health. The purpose of this review is to provide recommendations on ensuring that the system is implemented in a way that meets appropriate health and safety standards. This review will enable any relevant recommendations to be taken on board as part of the training and enhancement programme for the new system.

Extensive consultation with representatives of user groups within the PCO, the Office of the Clerk, and the Tax Drafting Unit of the IRD has already taken place on the usability of the Uniform User Interface for the new system. This consultation resulted in the identification and prioritisation of a list of key usability issues. A small number of the highest priority issues have been raised as change requests, to be implemented before the completion of UAT.

The facility to provide automatic updating of internal cross-references in draft legislation, which Dr Arnold-Moore identified as a significant benefit for users, is being implemented before final acceptance of the system. In addition, the defect preventing users from opening documents directly from the "My Recent Documents" and "My Worklist" screens has been fixed. Other lower priority usability issues, including the issues raised by Dr Arnold-Moore, will be addressed after final acceptance of the system.

The PCO intends to encourage the formation of internal user groups to identify and publicise tips for using the system, discuss how the system is working, and come up with ideas for improvements. These groups will also be able to consider and prioritise usability issues, for inclusion in the enhancement programme for the PAL system.

One particular usability issue identified by Dr Arnold-Moore, the density of tags on the screen, is likely to be considered early in the enhancement programme. The Canadian Federal Drafting Office in Ottawa has developed an Arbortext Epic-based drafting system that allows drafters to draft in "tags-off" mode. Significant development work was required to deliver this functionality in the Ottawa system, but it is not known at this stage how much development work would be involved in customising the PAL system to provide this functionality.

Scheduling and prioritisation

Dr Arnold-Moore recommends that the PAL team continue to prioritise all outstanding issues in order of preference so that the development team steadily works towards addressing these in a defined order so that the most crucial to deployment are more likely to be delivered to UAT and to the first deployment.

This approach is already being followed. The PCO and Unisys have agreed a release process for UAT, with high priority issues outstanding at the completion of SIT prioritised for resolution or implementation in the first half of the UAT phase. This approach is intended to ensure that the PAL system is as stable as possible at the completion of UAT.

For information on problems dealt with earlier in the project, see Technical issues and their resolution.