IPEX The next version A preview of ongoing work to redesign the IPEX website Jerry Hilbert European Parliament, DG ITEC (DIT)
INTRODUCTION IPEX is An EU inter-parliamentary network of correspondents to exchange information on legislation and policies A comprehensive website to support this exchange of information (www.ipex.eu) A reference site for national parliaments to publish and share their results of EU related parliamentary scrutiny, as well as on issues related to subsidiarity
INTRODUCTION Why IPEX Cope with the growing relevance of EU information exchange among parliaments Facilitate and improve exchange of parliamentary scrutiny, especially in national parliaments Increase transparency of EU decision making
Sep-09 Oct-09 Nov-09 IPEX - The next version INTRODUCTION Statistics of pages added IPEX (Pages) 25000 20000 15000 10000 5000 0 Aug-09 Nov-06 Dec-06 Jan-07 Feb-07 Mar-07 Apr-07 May-07 Jun-07 Jul-07 Aug-07 Sep-07 Oct-07 Nov-07 Dec-07 Jan-08 Feb-08 Mar-08 Apr-08 May-08 Jun-08 Jul-08 Aug-08 Sep-08 Oct-08 Nov-08 Dec-08 Jan-09 Feb-09 Mar-09 Apr-09 May-09 Jun-09 Jul-09
CURRENT SITE Homepage
CURRENT SITE Legislative dossier Dossier page
CURRENT SITE Legislative dossier Scrutiny page
CHANGE IS IN THE AIR 2009-2010 May 2009: Annual Correspondents meeting 2009suggested enhancements and improvements for the IPEX website October 2009: the TWIG was established by the IPEX Board December 2009: The Lisbon Treaty came into force early 2010: EP agreed to fund the developments January-March 2010: Meetings of the TWIG May 2010: IPEX Board approved specifications
CHANGE IS IN THE AIR Old site: Advantage: Technical aspects Based on the Open Source WCMS Jahia (http://www.jahia.org) - existing CMS framework, coping with multilingual aspects - quick initial development - easy hands-on for the users (contributors) Disadvantage: - performance issues if the content has a high turnover -considerable investment to migrate to recent versions which correct issues - huge investment to answer specific needs (notification, webservices,..)
CHANGE IS IN THE AIR Technical aspects New site: specific CMS (Java, Javascript(JQuery, ExtJS), Spring, Hibernate, SolR (Lucene)) -Focus on the specificities and new needs of IPEX - Back office separated from frontend (website) -Performance optimized - Specific functions are easily implemented - Common rendering of output - New web services proposed
CHANGE IS IN THE AIR Technical aspects
FEATURES OF THE NEXT VERSION Updated and improved site structure Redesign the homepage Review and standardize the page structure
SCREENSHOT - WEBSITE Public Homepage Language selection Search Main menu General news (changing) Calendar Sections explained EU documents new/deadline Links
SCREENSHOT - WEBSITE Standard structure of an IPEX page
FEATURES OF THE NEXT VERSION Updated and improved site structure Redesign the Dossier page and structure - complete and comprehensive outline - include comments and responses from all actors - information related to the informal political dialogue
SCREENSHOT - WEBSITE Documents & Dossier page (1)
SCREENSHOT - WEBSITE Documents & Dossier page (2)
SCREENSHOT - WEBSITE Documents & Dossier page (3)
SCREENSHOT - WEBSITE Scrutiny page (1)
FEATURES OF THE NEXT VERSION Improved accessibility Language issues Provide means for - allowing navigation possibly in all EU languages -contributions from National Parliaments in English or French and/or in another language - list the availability of other language versions -apply a substitution rule if a language version is not available WAI level A compliance
FEATURES OF THE NEXT VERSION Search facilities & Personalisation Extended advanced search -a more modern and complete search Full text search - include content from uploaded documents Saved searches - RSS and Notifications
SCREENSHOT - WEBSITE Private Homepage
FEATURES OF THE NEXT VERSION Forum Forum Back office - Websites Provide spaces restricted to identified users for exchanging information about legislative proposals or other documents Ease adding and editing of content Incorporate other web site - EU Speakers conference
SCREENSHOT BACK OFFICE Back office: A desktop in the browser (ExtJS)
SCREENSHOT BACK OFFICE Back office: A desktop in your browser (ExtJS)
SCREENSHOT BACK OFFICE Back office: example of a Scrutiny
FEATURES OF THE NEXT VERSION Integration with other information systems Direct transmission from the European Commission to IPEX following contacts to decide the transmission modalities Negotiated receipts from the Council of the European Union following contacts to decide the transmission modalities Retrieval of information from the Publication Office Exchanges by XML feed with National Parliaments
WEBSERVICES WEBSERVICES in GENERAL
WEBSERVICES XML Feed = Transmission of scrutinies [old architecture]
WEBSERVICES XML Feed = Transmission of scrutinies [new architecture]
FEATURES OF THE NEXT VERSION Requirements not everything can be solved by IT Technical working group to get in contact with the European Commission and the Council of the European Union for defining the transmission modalities for documents Recommendation for open document formats Language issue
IMPORTANT In brief Reviewed structure of the website and the core product Different technology used Back office separated from the website Recent browser requested for contributors (IE 7, Firefox 2, Chrome 3, Safari 3, )* XML feed: AXIS (phase out) replaced by SPRING (smaller change) * Following a survey done in October 2010, only 1 chamber out of 29 that answered may have a concern (only using IE6)