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Annual Report 2002–03 You are currently viewing: Annual
report > Performance Review > Output
Group 1 > Output 1.2 Output Group 1: Chamber, Main Committee and Community Awareness1.2 Legislation and research services
LegislationDuring the year, 203 bills were introduced (214 in 2001–02), 194 of which were initiated in the House of Representatives and nine of which were received from the Senate. Of the bills introduced, 17 were private members' bills, for which the department provided drafting assistance. Details are provided in Table 15 in Appendix 2. The House amended 28 bills, requiring the Table Office to incorporate the amendments and reprint the bills prior to their transmittal to the Senate. In addition, 32 bills were amended by the Senate and agreed to by the House, requiring further processing by the Table Office before their presentation to the Governor-General for assent. In total, the Table Office prepared, printed and checked for accuracy 160 bills prior to assent (143 bills in 2001–02). The department provided drafting assistance for the second reading (in principle) amendments and detailed amendments to bills moved by private members during the year (see Appendix 2). As previously mentioned, all members who had used the department's drafting services were satisfied. The Table Office maintained very high levels of accuracy during all stages of processing legislation and met all deadlines. No significant errors arising from the department's processing of bills were identified during the year. With the transfer of the computer system to the OneOffice platform referred to above, the department made sure that the specialised software used to edit bills was updated to allow processing of legislation to continue on the new platform. During 2002–03, the department conducted further testing on various software products used for comparing electronic documents. The department subsequently purchased Workshare's Deltaview document comparison technology, and used it in parallel with the traditional manual checking processes for several months to ensure its effectiveness with all types of legislation. Following the success of that trial, the traditional 'reading school' process was largely eliminated, saving staff time and ensuring continued application of rigorous quality assurance checks in the processing of legislation. The Table Office now checks all legislation using the document comparison software, complemented by limited manual checks of some aspects of the final document. Protocols for the use of the technology were developed and applied. Document managementThe department continued to relocate House records in archival quality containers, focusing on parliamentary papers and original Votes and Proceedingsrecords. This work originated from an internal review of document management and archiving practices conducted in 2000. It will continue as resources allow, taking several years for full implementation. As an adjunct to this work, the Table Office devoted some resources this year to transferring data on miscellaneous papers tabled in the House from a card reference system to an Access database. Staff completed the initial data entry of information held on approximately 8,000 cards. They also finished checking duplicate entries or missing entries, and should complete a quality assurance review of the electronic information by the third quarter of 2003. Having this information available electronically will allow quicker searching and identification of material, and speedier retrieval of documents to meet client needs. You are currently viewing: Annual
report > Performance Review > Output
Group 1 > Output 1.2
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