Parelon Presentation Slides - LEX2013 10 September 2013, Ravenna http://summerschoollex.cirsfid.unibo.it/

1. PARLAMENTO ELETTRONICO ONLINE
Design Principles
Ravenna, Summer School LEX2013, 10 September 2013
Presentation by Emanuele Sabetta, Lead Project Designer

2. 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.)

3. USER INTERFACE
Redesigned to Improve Usability

4. INTUITIVE RECOGNITION OF INTERACTIVE ELEMENTS INTHE PAGE
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

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

6. 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
benefits deriving from approving it.
•Legal and Financial Commissions provides
a report of feasibility but can also
propose fixes and modifications to the
draft bill that users must approve with
another vote.
•Neutrality Guaranteed by "Randomized
Shifts" of members at each convocation.

7. LEGISLATIVE ITER PHASES BAR
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.

8. EVENT NOTIFICATION SYSTEM
Another problem was the difficulty in following the events and the changes
happening in Liquid Feedback.
There was no way to figure out what had changed, what were the new
proposals or the new amendments introduced since the last login in a
specific proposal.
The introduction of a notification system for each proposal, with indicators
the type of event and the number of modifications, 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.

9. KEYWORDS AND LABELS
•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
theTechnical 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.

10. •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 HOWTO 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.
ACCESSIBILITY FOR ALL

11. 3 Security Mechanisms
•Two Factor Authentication Based on strong
passwords and OTPTokens
• FullTransparency : Open Source , Public User Profiles ,
PublicVotes, Independent BallotsVerification ( Helios-Voting
inspired digitally signed receipt )
•Open Mirroring: Remote Duplication & Auto Recovery,
Data Consistency garantita tramite Multi-Paxos

12. DETAILS OF
THE PROPOSAL
•Phases Bar
•Author Identification With NIN
•Referring Issue Short Summary
•Keywords buttons
•Users Support of this Proposal

13. PROPOSALTEXT
PREVIEW
•Preview of the text ( No AkomaNtoso)
•Option to full page view in AT4AM
•List of linked documents
•Notifications for new or updated
documents

14. COMMISSION
BOX
•Any user can submit a request
for a Commission
•Number of Requests must
reach a quorum to be approved
•Sistem creates a temporary
discussion area and invites
members

15. SUGGESTED
AMENDMENTS BOX
•Any user can submit a new amendment
•Amendments can be supported or opposed (5 level
scale)
•Only the author of the proposal can choose to
approve and implement an amendment.
•The author has more chance to see his proposal
approved if he choose to implement the more
supported amendments.
•Amendments are edited in a custom edition of
AT4AM, using Akoma Ntoso format

16. AT4AM INTEGRATION AND UI REDESIGN
www.at4am.org
European Parliament Amendment Open SourceTool

17. AT4AM "LIGHT" FORTOUCH DEVICES

18. TWO COLUMN AMENDMENTVIEW

19. COLUMN /TABLE CELLS SELECTION

20. Page
Left
Margin
Page
Right
Margin
Right NeckLeft Neck
Selected Article
ToolboxLeft Edge
SelectionToolbox Components
•Left Edge : Position mark
•Necks : Visual Connectors (size
constant)
•Selection Box : SelectedText or
Paragraph
•Toolbox : Multilevel Menu

21. Page
Left
Margin
Page
Right
Margin
Left Edge Toolbox
Right Neck
Selected Article
Left Neck
Browser
Window
Page
Left
Margin
Page
Right
Margin
Toolbox
Right NeckLeft Neck
Selected Article
Left Edge
Browser
Window
TheToolbox is anchored
to the selection
in the document page
HowTheToolbox Works

22. HowTheToolbox Works
Default position
Page
Left
Margin
Page
Right
Margin
Right NeckLeft Neck
Selected Article
ToolboxLeft Edge
End of Page Position
Page
Left
Margin
Page
Right
Margin
Left Neck Right Neck
Selected Article
Toolbox
Left Edge

23. HowTheToolbox Works
Default position
Page
Left
Margin
Page
Right
Margin
Right NeckLeft Neck
Selected
Paragraph
ToolboxLeft Edge
End of Page Position
Page
Left
Margin
Page
Right
Margin
Left Neck Right Neck
Selected
Paragraph
Toolbox
Left Edge

24. http://lime.cirsfid.unibo.it/
INITIAL DRAFTING OF
THE BILLS
•We are encouraging the creation of the first draft
directly in Akoma Ntoso format
•We are collaborating with University of Bologna
(Prof. Monica Palmirani and Prof. FabioVitali ) to
integrate the Lime Editor in PARELON
•We 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.
•We 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.

25. END
Slides created by Emanuele Sabetta
emanuele.sabetta@gmail.com
http://www.parelon.lazio.it/