The Hungarian parliament will likely be unable to reuse AT4AM, the European Parliament’s software solution for authoring and management of amendments on parliamentary texts, says hu.linkedin.com/pub/andrás-gyula-kádas/66/634/502 András Kádas, an adviser working for the Hungarian National Assembly. There are too many differences in legislative procedures, he says.
Hungary wants to make it possible for the members of its national assembly to table legislative resolutions and amendments electronically. A delegation from the Office of the Hungarian National Assembly led by Tibor Bárány Deputy Director Gereral for Legislation, visited a workshop on AT4AM, organised by the European Parliaments’s IT department in Brussels on 28 January.
“We were interested in AT4AM because we just launched our Parlex project”, says Kádas, who attended the workshop. Parlex focuses on the entire legislative cycle, including ministries. Conversely, AT4AM focusses on amendments by Members of the European Parliament.
An important argument to consider AT4AM is that the tool is available as open source software, Kádas says. Hungary’s Assembly says it will prefer this type of solution for its Parlex project.
Inspiring
The Hungarian delegation was impressed by the efficiency gains that are delivered by AT4AM, Kádas says. The advisers also agree that XML is the best technical specification for such legislative tools. “AT4AM is well-designed”, he added, “and it will inspire our own solution.” Other than that, concrete code reuse of AT4AM by Hungary “seems absolutely implausible”, Kádas says. “The different legislative methods between the two parliaments are obstacles to reuse.”
AT4AM was made available as open source software in 2013. The open source version is not actively maintained by the EP’s IT department. “The last public version of AT4AM was released on 15 October 2013. Given the lack of third party interest, there is no future development foreseen for this version for the time being” the European Parliament’s Secretary General writes on 21 January, responding to questions by the EP’s Budget Control Committee.
More information:
news item by the European Parliament on the Hungarian delegation
AT4AM
AT4AM fork