We can’t really say our hearts are in it, but some quick notes nonetheless:
On the public bill procedure mapping front, we were delighted to be joined by Mhairi and Gael of Scottish Parliament fame. For once, we had done our homework having combed through assorted committee reports in search of all things legislative consent motion related. Or at least Librarian Jayne had. An hour later - give or take some tidying time - and we are now in possession of the first fairly comprehensive legislative consent motion procedure map known to woman. Or at least we think we are. Though we did say similar last week. It only remains to add our usual sprinkling of standing order citations and our homework will be ready for marking.
Also in public bill world, our librarian quotient expanded to include Librarians Tim and Martin for yet another deep dive into the House of Commons first reading map. Or rather the bits of it pertaining to hybridity. Or at least the bits we think are pertinent to hybridity. We now have bubbles for referrals to both the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills and the Standing Orders Committee. Though we got somewhat confused around what happens should the latter say no to the dispensing of standing orders. And what might happen should the House think differently. More work next week. As ever.
On the subject of standing orders, not content with House of Commons standing order data, we also hanker after something similar for the House of Lords. Which is why Monday saw us breaking bread over pixels with Journal Office Anna. There was no great round of applause for our efforts but we don’t think we scared any horses. Which is not nothing.
In remedial order mapping news - despite spending several weeks puzzling over the nature of the made affirmative’s representation period, we completely forgot to include steps for Government statements made in response to said representations. Something of a schoolboy error. That omission is now rectified.
On Thursday we had the pleasure of welcoming House of Lords Kath, House of Commons Robi and House of Commons Librarian Corie to yet another pixel based meeting, this time on the subject of papers and the laying thereof. Confusion reigns over our current taxonomy of parliamentary and not parliamentary paper types, not all of which was cleared up over the course of the hour. We remain convinced that many of our problems would be solved by a meeting room and a whiteboard but, sadly, we don’t appear to have re-entered that world quite yet. Nevertheless, pixels were sketched and talk turned once more to powers and indeed duties. Which should at least get John’s attention. For now, it’s just a start. Of what, we’re not quite sure.
Librarians Anya and Silver continue on their quest to bring a single-subject view of House of Commons Library inputs, outputs and indeed processes to fruition. A quest they don’t appear to be finding trivial given the groans we’ve overheard. Still, if a job’s worth doing, as they say.
Elsewhere, Librarian Phil has been busying himself with the knobs, dials and gauges of the Members’ Names Information Service. Much like a trusty old steam locomotive, it’s never entirely clear which lever connects to the brakes and which to the regulator. The only means at our disposal is to prod around and find out. As a result of this prodding, we now know that Cabinet members appear on the website Cabinet page if and only if they have a value set for their Cabinet rank. The presence of an association to a department acting merely as a decorator atop this pattern. We’ve also learned that a similar situation applies for the Shadow Cabinet page. Despite contraindications appearing in manuals passim. Manuals have been updated and Phil has emerged from his experiments with a soot-stained face and his engine driver’s cap perched at a slightly jaunty angle. No data was harmed in the performance of this experiment.
In other Phil related news, he’s also knocked up a quick script to loop over Member’s website and social media links and check which ones return a 200, which ones a 404 and which ones a 30x. In the course of which he’s noticed that a not inconsiderable number of ex-Members have fallen victim to domain squatting. Team:Phil are now in the process of removing broken links. What to do about ex-Members remains a question for next week.
The only other news from the week centred around another attempt to hook up parliamentary data to yet more Twitter bots. An experience akin to pulling teeth with your head in a bucket. We now know that - should you ever want to write to Twitter using OAuth 2 - you must first turn off OAuth 2, turn on OAuth 1, set OAuth 1 to read and write, turn off OAuth 1 and turn OAuth 2 back on. Obviously. We include this note for the sake of posterity having found over many years - many, many years to be exact - that the best place to document anything is somewhere where Google might find it.
