Open Parliament (NL0035)

Open Parliament
Start and end dates of the action point: 1 July 2018 - 30 June 2020
Main action owner (organisation) House of Representatives of the States General
Description of the action point
Which social issue does the action point seek to address? • Not all websites are accessible to, or can be used by, people with a functional or cognitive impairment.
• In a democracy, it is important that everyone can easily access Parliamentary information.
• The corporate site of the Dutch House of Representatives, tweedekamer.nl, contains many parliamentary documents that are difficult to access by people with a functional or cognitive impairment.
What is the action point? • To improve the accessibility and usability of parliamentary documents on the website of the House of Representatives, including access to parliamentary documents, by applying the European guidelines for digital accessibility, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), to parliamentary documents.
• This improvement is not only intended for the target group of people with a functional or cognitive impairment, but for all users.
How will the action point contribute to remedying the social issue? • 'Removing the threshold' will make parliamentary documents more easily accessible and easier to use for everyone.
• The House of Representatives would like to lead by example and would like to share the knowledge that is gained through this process with other authorities.
Why is this action point relevant to OGP values? • The action point will contribute to the OGP values of transparency and civic participation:
o The action point will contribute to improving the quality and the accessibility of the information on the website of the House of Representatives and thus increase the transparency of the parliamentary process.
o The action point will contribute to strengthening opportunities for civic participation by making parliamentary documents more easily accessible to people with a functional impairment and others.
Additional information

Milestone with a verifiable result (please note: SMART) Start date: End date:
Completion of an advisory report (analysis phase) on “no-threshold” publications on the website of the House of Representatives. 01/06/2018 01/10/2018
Project plan, incl. assigned budget, established 01/10/2018 31/12/2018
Implementation of the project plan 01/01/2019 30/06/2020
Conducting an audit 01/07/2020 23/09/2020
Sharing knowledge and experiences gained while applying the European guidelines for digital accessibility 23/09/2020
Contact information
Name of the responsible person representing the main action owner Jos de Groot
Position, organisational unit Directie Bedrijfsvoering en Informatisering (Business Operations and Computerisation Department)
Email and phone number j.dgroot@tweedekamer.nl, +31(0)6-14796822
Other actors involved Authorities involved

Other organisations or bodies (such as community organisations or the private sector) Leer- en Expertisepunt Open Overheid (Open Government Learning and Expertise Centre - LEOO)

4. Open Parliament

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

1. To improve the accessibility and usability of parliamentary documents on the website of the House of Representatives, including access to parliamentary documents, by applying the European guidelines for digital accessibility, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), to parliamentary documents.
2. This improvement is not only intended for the target group of people with a functional or cognitive impairment, but for all users. [16]

Milestones

4.1. Completion of an advisory report (analysis phase) on “no-threshold” publications on the website of the House of Representatives.

4.2. Project plan, incl. assigned budget, established.

4.3. Implementation of the project plan.

4.4. Conducting an audit.

4.5. Sharing knowledge and experiences gained while applying the European guidelines for digital accessibility.

Start Date: July 2018   

End Date: June 2020

Context and Objectives

Assuring access to government websites, irrespective of possible disabilities or physical impairments, is an important part of making sure that open government works for everyone in society and every person can access important documents needed to take part in the democratic process. As such, the EU (as part of its obligations related to the Digital Single Market) requires member states to adopt legislation that requires websites of public sector bodies to meet the so-called Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 (level AA) standard. New websites must comply from 23 September 2019 onwards, and old websites from 23 September 2020 onwards.

In light of this directive, the Dutch parliament has committed to ensure its current website meets the WCAG standard. In that sense, the commitment is relevant to the OGP value of access to information. The planned activities and milestones are specific enough to be verified. They include the establishment of a needs assessment (4.1) and subsequent project plan (4.2, 4.3) including an evaluation after implementation of the project (4.4) and sharing best practices (4.5). The commitment does not mention the place within the broader open access portal of parliament, [17] to what documents it pertains (pdfs and videos are currently exempt), nor what the retention will be and what limitations there are to full retention (until what date/time one is able to retrieve documents in the mentioned standard). It is therefore unclear what the exact baseline and possible problems were at the start of the project. It is therefore difficult to assess the potential impact beyond minor.

Next steps

The IRM researcher recommends embedding such commitments in future action plans within the broader work on openness and accessibility of the Dutch parliament website. Commitments that would imply setting new standards, higher than the legal minimum required, on accessibility could be ground-breaking. In particular, efforts to enrich the current API on opendata.tweedekamer.nl with audio-visual content could be considered, given its current absence from the database. The general user-friendliness could be improved in consultation with end-users such as journalists, CSOs, national statistics office, etc.

[16] The complete text of this commitment, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Netherlands_Action-Plan_2018-2020_EN.pdf

[17] https://opendata.tweedekamer.nl/

Commitment 4. Open Parliament

Limited

As part of this commitment, the House of Representatives selected a number of parliamentary documents that it aims to make more easily accessible online, particularly certain XML and PDF files. There is no information available, however, to determine if the objectives of meeting the specific criteria under the European guidelines for digital accessibility, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), were met. According to the House of Representatives’ assessment, the website currently partially complies with WCAG, [9] which it also did prior to the start of the action plan.