Monitoring by Intercantonal Conferences

Monitoring by Intercantonal Conferences#

User Story – In a Nutshell#

As a subject specialist/research associate at an intercantonal conference, I want to continuously monitor certain political topics and bills on the national and cantonal level in order to reliably provide the relevant committees, specialist conferences, and specialist agencies with critical policy-making information.

Status Quo and Problem#

In federalist Switzerland, more than a dozen intercantonal conferences foster exchange and cooperation between the 26 cantonal authorities and represent their interests vis-à-vis the federal government for their respective topics such as education (EDK), health (GDK), finance (FDK), and security (KKJPD)[1]. Comprehensive monitoring of political affairs in 27 unharmonized parliaments is currently very time-consuming, resource-intensive (i.e. costly) and error prone. Furthermore, in a manual process, existing synergies between intercantonal conferences cannot be used. All this makes it challenging to reliably provide the relevant committees, specialist conferences, and specialist agencies with critical policy-making information.

Various intercantonal conferences (KdK, SODK, GDK, EDK, and KKJPD) are currently making efforts to reorganize the monitoring of political affairs or modernize existing processes.

Use Case#

        flowchart TB
    Parl1["Most Parliaments
        (Data Providers)"] -- Web Crawling --> OPD["OpenParlData.ch
        (Data Intermediary)"]
    Parl2["Some Parliaments
        (Data Providers)"] -- API --> OPD
    Parties["3rd Party Data Providers"] -. API .-> OPD & Tool["Tool Providers 
        (Data Users)"]
    OPD -- API --> Tool & User2@{ label: "Intercant. Conference 2
    (Data User)" }
    Tool -- GUI --> User1["Intercant. Conference 1 (End User)"]
    User1 <-. share/collaborate .-> User2
    Tool -. API (enriched data) .-> OPD

    style OPD stroke:#BBDEFB,fill:transparent
    style Parties stroke-width:2px,stroke-dasharray: 2

OpenParlData.ch imports, cleans, harmonizes and openly publishes data from Swiss parliaments. It currently offers public data on political actors, parliamentary proceedings, decrees, consultations, votes and more from 78 parliaments. Directly or more likely indirectly (via tool) using our API continuously supplying harmonized legislative data, subject specialists/research associates at intercantonal conferences can more efficiently and comprehensively…

  • monitor and compare progress on (specific) bills relating to a certain topic at different federal levels,

  • monitor (parliamentary) motions on certain topics at different federal levels,

  • monitor (topical) trends in parliaments in their respective field,

  • monitor and compare decrees relating to their respective topics at different federal levels,

  • monitor politicians/parties who comment on topical issues (including the extent of their comments), and thereby…

  • promote exchange and collaboration between cantons and improve cantonal participation in federal political processes.

Furthermore, intercantonal conferences can share enriched data and insights and coordinate their activities. Tool providers can share enriched data (e.g. topic classification) with our data infrastructure.

Current scale#

Lead by our project partner EDK and their specialist agency IDES, we are currently gathering the requirements of all interested conferences in order to develop a detailed project application for a joint solution. Their tool should focus primarily on being easy to use and integrate with existing systems.

Intercantonal conferences can potentially be a strategic partner/multiplier when it comes to cantonal parliaments and governments implementing eCH standards and providing Open Government Data.

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