Indexing and Data Management Section

You can read about our work in our weeknotes.

What do we do?

We subject index parliamentary business of the Commons and the Lords, supporting researchers and others to find what they need. We tie together information from disparate procedural systems. We make links in data that reflect how parliamentary business actually happens.

We maintain a thesaurus. The subjects, organisations and names represented are emergent from parliamentary business in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. We consult with colleagues across Parliament, making best use of their subject matter expertise.

We have domain expertise. The team understands parliamentary procedure in both Houses. We adapt our information management as business practice and procedure changes. We document parliamentary procedures. We work with internal and external domain experts and colleagues in the Digital Service to design data models that reflect the complexities of Parliament.

We look after the central database for Members of the House of Commons - keeping it up to date with new starters and leavers, contact details, party affiliation changes, as well as changes to the machinery of government.

We collaborate with the History of Parliament Trust on Members of Parliament after 1832 covering the social background of MPs since 1832, and on Peerages in the Kingdoms of England, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom from 1603 to the present day.

Find our work

We publish our domain models at UK Parliament Ontologies. 

We manage data for the following services —

Search Parliamentary Material - a service in which people can search for parliamentary business and research briefings, from both Houses, indexed by IDMS, in one place.

Parliamentary Search - currently in development, a replacement for Search Parliamentary Material.

UK Parliament thesaurus - the thesaurus supports indexing by providing information about the terms, and the terms around them. We include terms relating to any subject discussed by Parliament, along with many procedural terms.

Treaty tracker - treaties are international agreements between states. Find and follow the progress of treaties laid before Parliament.

Statutory instrument service - statutory instruments (SIs) are the most common form of secondary legislation. Find and follow the progress of SIs laid before Parliament.

Written questions - written questions allow MPs and Members of the House of Lords to ask for information on the work, policy and activities of Government departments, related bodies, and the administration of Parliament.

Members of the House of Commons - information on current and former Members of the House of Commons.

Election Results - a website by the House of Commons Library providing election results data for the UK House of Commons.

Parliament: Facts and figures - the ‘Parliament: Facts and figures’ series covers topics including elections, government, legislation, Members and parliamentary business.

Parliamentary Time - a resource for parliamentary time, including data for parliamentary time periods (sessions, prorogations, parliaments and dissolutions). There’s an interval calculator, so you can calculate the number of sitting days between two dates. And a scrutiny end date calculator. Which is a bit more complicated: certain papers laid before Parliament - such as statutory instruments and treaties - are subject to scrutiny periods. This is the period of time during which each House can approve or annul. The end date depends on the sittings of either House. The calculator provides a calculation of these periods.