AT4AM source code

The request was successful.

Dear European Parliament,

According to the Secretary General of the EP, the AT4AM version used within the EP continues to be maintained and developed while the development of the public version of AT4AM has been discontinued [1].

According to the Project Initiator, the key purpose of the Pilot Project 26 03 77 05 is to make AT4AM look, feel and behave the same for all - citizens, MEPs, assistants and staff alike [2].

Therefore I would like to know the difference between the public version and the internal version.

Best regards,

Joel Purra
http://joelpurra.com/

[1] https://at4am.eu/pipermail/at4am/2015-Fe...
[2] https://at4am.eu/pipermail/at4am/2015-Ma...

Registre, European Parliament

1 Attachment

Our references : A(2015)3318

 

Dear Mr Purra

 

European Parliament acknowledges receipt of your request, which will be
proceed as quickly as possible. You will receive a reply within 15 working
days.

 

Best regards,

 

 

 

[1]Logo_EP_Signature_bigger-01 TRANSPARENCY- ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
EPRS - European Parliamentary Research
Service
Directorate for the Library
 
[2]Public Register webpage

 [3][email address]  
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

show quoted sections

Registre, European Parliament

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Purra,

 

Your request to European Parliament concerns information rather than any
specific document. Therefore we have transmitted it to the competent
services for response. They will deal with your question on AT4AM code
source.

 

Kind regards

 

 

 

[1]Logo_EP_Signature_bigger-01 TRANSPARENCY- ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
EPRS - European Parliamentary Research
Service
Directorate for the Library
 
[2]Public Register webpage

 [3][email address]  
 
 

 

 

 

 

show quoted sections

COOSEMANS Christelle, European Parliament

 

Dear Mr Purra,

 

Thank you very much for your enquiry.

 

The difference between the internal version and the open source version
(public) is essentially as follows:

The EP version used internally, is tailored on the EP internal business
processes while the public one is a more generic version, so that will be
easier to fit into the major part of legislative processes .

The internal version includes many panels developed specifically to handle
the internal workflow of the European Parliament internal legislative
cycle, in particular at Parliamentary Committee level although the tool is
also used, in a limited way, for Plenary amendments.  AT4AM is maintained
in the EP because the tool is a central component, amongst others,
integrated and used through platforms specifically developed  by the EP in
favour of the digitalisation of the legislative process of the EP (ex:
e-committee). This digitalisation process also intends to modernise the
way of working and offer a better service to MEPs while favouring the work
in mobility within the organisation. Indeed, the tool is also useable by
MEPs on mobile devices through accessing the specific platform.  

Another important difference is that the public version has been conceived
to receive as an input the Akoma Ntoso XML documents and parse them in
real time while the internal version has to pass through an intermediate
conversion of the document format.

 

The public version has been discontinued due to the lack of interest from
community (mainly national Parliaments) who participated, in the past
years, to the project.

For further information on the network please follow this link
[1]https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en-G....

 

As regards the project adopted by the EP Budgets committee (26 03 77 05),
as you are well aware, this has been assigned to the Publications Office
(OP) of the EU with whom DG ITEC services are collaborating.  Of course,
feel free to liaise with the OP for further information.  

 

Finally, I would like to seize this opportunity to provide some background
information on the AT4AM initiative in order to clarify the scope of the
AT4AM project. and, hopefully, explain why the development of the open
"public" version has been discontinued.

AT4AM: how an internal successful IT instrument has been provided as open
source

 

The history of AT4AM:

 

•             2008 AT4AM project started

•             2010 Roll-out in production to all EP Parliamentary
Committees and open to Plenary

 

•             May 2012: EP announced the start a project by DG ITEC aimed
to deliver an open source version of the code;

•             19/03/2013: EP  announced, in a video conference with the
United Nations Department for General Assembly and Conference Management
from New York, the UN/DESA’s Africa i-Parliaments Action Plan from Nairobi
and the Senate of Italy from Rome, the availability of AT4AM for All;

•             Several  parliaments shown interest in AT4AM open source to
improve their legislative chain (ex. Senate of Italy) and some political
parties to implement their e-democracy platforms (M5S with Parlamento
Elettronico);

•             The United Nations Department for General Assembly and
Conference Management from New York run a project to adopt AT4AM libraries
for amending UN resolutions.

 

AT4AM for All is compatible with Akoma Ntoso an XML standard specific for
legislative document.

The source code has been released under EUPL (European Union Public
Licence), an open source licence provided by European Commission that is
compatible with major open source licences like Gnu GPLv2 with the
advantage of being available in the 22 official languages of the European
Union.

The code is publicly available and downloadable at Bitbucket, an open
source code repository from Atlassian.

 

The ambition of EP is that other Parliaments with fewer resources may take
advantage of this development to improve their legislative drafting chain.
Moreover, the adoption of such tools allows a Parliament to move towards
an XML based legislative chain. In addition to strengthening transparency,
the distribution of legislative content in open document formats like XML
also allows other parties to treat in an efficient way the legislation
produced.

With  the effort of European Parliament, any parliament in the world is
now able to use the advanced features of AT4AM to support the drafting of
amendments. AT4AM  serves as a useful tool for all those interested in
moving towards open data solutions in the legislative process.

 

On the basis of the above, this initiative essentially looked at reusing
and share the advancement and modernisation initiatives developed by the
EP with other parliaments and similar organisations and foster improved
cooperation amongst these actors.

 

I hope you'll find this information useful.

 

 

Best regards

 

DGITEC central secretariat

 

References

Visible links
1. https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en-G...

COOSEMANS Christelle, European Parliament

COOSEMANS Christelle would like to recall the message, "Access to information request - AT4AM source code".

DG ITEC Secrétariat Central, European Parliament

 

Dear Mr Purra,

 

Thank you very much for your enquiry.

 

The difference between the internal version and the open source version
(public) is essentially as follows:

The EP version used internally, is tailored on the EP internal business
processes while the public one is a more generic version, so that will be
easier to fit into the major part of legislative processes .

The internal version includes many panels developed specifically to handle
the internal workflow of the European Parliament internal legislative
cycle, in particular at Parliamentary Committee level although the tool is
also used, in a limited way, for Plenary amendments.  AT4AM is maintained
in the EP because the tool is a central component, amongst others,
integrated and used through platforms specifically developed  by the EP in
favour of the digitalisation of the legislative process of the EP (ex:
e-committee). This digitalisation process also intends to modernise the
way of working and offer a better service to MEPs while favouring the work
in mobility within the organisation. Indeed, the tool is also useable by
MEPs on mobile devices through accessing the specific platform.  

Another important difference is that the public version has been conceived
to receive as an input the Akoma Ntoso XML documents and parse them in
real time while the internal version has to pass through an intermediate
conversion of the document format.

 

The public version has been discontinued due to the lack of interest from
community (mainly national Parliaments) who participated, in the past
years, to the project.

For further information on the network please follow this link
[1]https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en-G....

 

As regards the project adopted by the EP Budgets committee (26 03 77 05),
as you are well aware, this has been assigned to the Publications Office
(OP) of the EU with whom DG ITEC services are collaborating.  Of course,
feel free to liaise with the OP for further information.  

 

Finally, I would like to seize this opportunity to provide some background
information on the AT4AM initiative in order to clarify the scope of the
AT4AM project. and, hopefully, explain why the development of the open
"public" version has been discontinued.

AT4AM: how an internal successful IT instrument has been provided as open
source

 

The history of AT4AM:

 

•             2008 AT4AM project started

•             2010 Roll-out in production to all EP Parliamentary
Committees and open to Plenary

 

•             May 2012: EP announced the start a project by DG ITEC aimed
to deliver an open source version of the code;

•             19/03/2013: EP  announced, in a video conference with the
United Nations Department for General Assembly and Conference Management
from New York, the UN/DESA’s Africa i-Parliaments Action Plan from Nairobi
and the Senate of Italy from Rome, the availability of AT4AM for All;

•             Several  parliaments shown interest in AT4AM open source to
improve their legislative chain (ex. Senate of Italy) and some political
parties to implement their e-democracy platforms (M5S with Parlamento
Elettronico);

•             The United Nations Department for General Assembly and
Conference Management from New York run a project to adopt AT4AM libraries
for amending UN resolutions.

 

AT4AM for All is compatible with Akoma Ntoso an XML standard specific for
legislative document.

The source code has been released under EUPL (European Union Public
Licence), an open source licence provided by European Commission that is
compatible with major open source licences like Gnu GPLv2 with the
advantage of being available in the 22 official languages of the European
Union.

The code is publicly available and downloadable at Bitbucket, an open
source code repository from Atlassian.

 

The ambition of EP is that other Parliaments with fewer resources may take
advantage of this development to improve their legislative drafting chain.
Moreover, the adoption of such tools allows a Parliament to move towards
an XML based legislative chain. In addition to strengthening transparency,
the distribution of legislative content in open document formats like XML
also allows other parties to treat in an efficient way the legislation
produced.

With  the effort of European Parliament, any parliament in the world is
now able to use the advanced features of AT4AM to support the drafting of
amendments. AT4AM  serves as a useful tool for all those interested in
moving towards open data solutions in the legislative process.

 

On the basis of the above, this initiative essentially looked at reusing
and share the advancement and modernisation initiatives developed by the
EP with other parliaments and similar organisations and foster improved
cooperation amongst these actors.

 

I hope you'll find this information useful.

 

 

Best regards

 

DGITEC central secretariat

 

 

 

References

Visible links
1. https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en-G...