PARLAMENTO ELETTRONICO ONLINE

Design Principles
Presentation by Emanuele Sabetta, Lead Project Designer
Ravenna, Summer School LEX2013, 10 September 2013

PAR.EL.ON.

An Open Source Platform for Direct Democracy Integrates solutions from 20 years of eDemocracy experiments all over the world Completely based on open standards (Akoma Ntoso, EuroVoc, etc.)

USER INTERFACE
Redesigned to Improve Usability

Big Buttons with 3D look to be easily distinguished from the plane of the page and sized for touch devices. Graphic Language For UI Interaction ( curved = interactive , sharp corners = no )

Abandonment of Underscore as a Link Indicator

INTUITIVE RECOGNITION OF INTERACTIVE ELEMENTS IN THE PAGE

Breakdown of User Stories of Liquid Feedback in its atomic elements and restructuring these sequences in a simpler Step-by-Step actions like those of an ATM terminal.

One Page = One Choice

Reduced the number of choices per page to a minimum, while maintaining a levels of nesting below 5.

Introduction of Commissions of Experts

Solves the Problem of the "Government
of the Incompetent" raised by Plato

Technical Commissions Reports allow

citizens to provide "informed consent" when they vote a law proposal, ensuring that users are aware of all the risks and benets deriving from approving it.

Legal and Financial Commissions provides

a report of feasibility but can also propose xes and modications to the draft bill that users must approve with another vote.

Neutrality Guaranteed by "Randomized

Shifts" of members at each convocation.

Most of the problems of comprehensibility in Liquid Feedback derived from the non-immediate understanding of the complex life cycle of a proposal. We added a phases bar that associates a set of boxes representing the phases of the legislative iter. A moving arrow above the boxes allows you to see immediately at what stage you are in, what you do at the current stage, and what will be the next step.

LEGISLATIVE ITER PHASES BAR

Another problem was the difculty in following the events and the changes happening in Liquid Feedback. There was no way to gure out what had changed, what were the new proposals or the new amendments introduced since the last login in a specic proposal. The introduction of a notication system for each proposal, with indicators the type of event and the number of modications, now allows the user to get immediately an idea of the new things that need to be examined and keep track of those he already checked.

EVENT NOTIFICATION SYSTEM

Introduction of Standard Keywords ( Teseo, EuroVoc, GeoNames... ) associated with the Proposals and
Issues , to make it easier to catalog and to search them.

Introduction of Competencies Labels associated with the Proposals and the Issues. Those tags indicate all
the Technical Areas of Expertise needed to evaluate an issue or a proposal, making easier to understand the type of technical background necessary to assess the validity of the proposals, allowing the citizens with such expertise to pick the proposals in which they can contribute more.

KEYWORDS AND LABELS

ACCESSIBILITY FOR ALL

Use of very readable sans serif fonts and very LARGE sizes ( Oregon LDO )

Use of large SUMMARY labels that accompany the data or the options displayed and which
highlight the contents in a concise way.

At any time and in any page the user must be able to read in clear WHERE HE IS , WHAT
CAN HE DO and HOW TO GO BACK

In the case of time related parameters (for example at what stage you are in the legislative

iter) we add a time bar or phases bar with a moving arrow that will show where in time or at what stage the user is.

 Two Factor Authentication Based on strong

passwords and OTP Tokens

Full Transparency

: Open Source , Public User Proles , Public Votes, Independent Ballots Verication ( Helios-Voting inspired digitally signed receipt )

Open Mirroring: Remote Duplication & Auto Recovery,

Data Consistency garantita tramite Multi-Paxos

3 Security Mechanisms

DETAILS OF THE PROPOSAL

Phases Author

Bar Identication With NIN Issue Short Summary buttons

Referring

Keywords Users

Support of this Proposal

PROPOSAL TEXT PREVIEW

Preview Option List

of the text ( No AkomaNtoso) to full page view in AT4AM

of linked documents for new or updated

Notications

documents

COMMISSION BOX
Any

user can submit a request for a Commission of Requests must reach a quorum to be approved creates a temporary discussion area and invites members

Number

Sistem

SUGGESTED AMENDMENTS BOX

Any

user can submit a new amendment can be supported or opposed (5 level

Amendments

scale)
Only

the author of the proposal can choose to approve and implement an amendment. author has more chance to see his proposal approved if he choose to implement the more supported amendments. are edited in a custom edition of AT4AM, using Akoma Ntoso format

The

Amendments

AT4AM INTEGRATION AND UI REDESIGN

www.at4am.org

European Parliament Amendment Open Source Tool

AT4AM "LIGHT" FOR TOUCH DEVICES

TWO COLUMN AMENDMENT VIEW

COLUMN / TABLE CELLS SELECTION

Left Neck Selected Article

Right Neck

Selection Toolbox Components

Toolbox

Left Edge

Left

Edge : Position mark

Necks

: Visual Connectors (size constant) Box : Selected Text or Paragraph : Multilevel Menu

Selection

Toolbox
Page Left Margin Page Right Margin

How The Toolbox Wor ks

Left Neck Selected Article Right Neck Left Neck Selected Article Right Neck Left Edge Toolbox

Browser Window

Left Edge

Toolbox

The Toolbox is anchored to the selection in the document page

Browser Window
Page Left Margin Page Right Margin

Page Left Margin

Page Right Margin

How The Toolbox Wor ks

Left Neck Selected Article Right Neck Left Neck Selected Article Right Neck

Left Edge

Toolbox

Toolbox

Left Edge

Page Left Margin

Page Right Margin

Page Left Margin

Page Right Margin

Default position

End of Page Position

How The Toolbox Wor ks

Left Neck Selected Paragraph Right Neck Left Neck Selected Paragraph Right Neck

Left Edge

Toolbox

Toolbox

Left Edge

Page Left Margin

Page Right Margin

Page Left Margin

Page Right Margin

Default position

End of Page Position

INITIAL DRAFTING OF THE BILLS

We

are encouraging the creation of the rst draft directly in Akoma Ntoso format are collaborating with University of Bologna (Prof. Monica Palmirani and Prof. Fabio Vitali ) to integrate the Lime Editor in PARELON are working to develop a customized regional and national set of legal rules and constraints to help the user drafting a well formed law proposal using the LegalML format. are developing a new user interface for both Lime and AT4AM that will allow the user with no knowledge of law or of xml to understand and use all of the legally binding elements of the Akoma Ntoso.

We

http://lime.cirsd.unibo.it/

We

We

END
http://www.parelon.lazio.it/

Slides created by Emanuele Sabetta emanuele.sabetta@gmail.com