“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “”it means just what I choose it to mean.”
Parliamentary drafters are a bit like Humpty Dumpty. And sometimes like Alice. They use words in legislation. Sometimes they rely on the ordinary and natural meaning. Sometimes they behave like Humpty Dumpty. When they behave like Humpty Dumpty, they can do some weird things.
“”In this Act “state’ includes “territory’,”” for example. Sometimes black is defined as white.
This makes legislation very hard to read. Especially big Acts, like the new Industrial Relations Act (about 400 pages). You do not know if Humpty Dumpty has been to work on a particular word, or what Humpty means by it, without constant thumbing back to the definition section.
Moreover, Humpty can sneak in definitions in other parts of the Act.
The new Industrial Relations Act which came in to force on March 30 is causing quite a deal of fear and loathing out there.
Help is at hand. Today, SoftLaw Corporation Ltd launches its electronic version of the Industrial Relations Act.
It is Windows-based _ all done by pointing and clicking the mouse.
You can start with the Parts of the Act or the Table of Provisions and click on the section you want. And it appears in a window. Any word that has been defined anywhere else in the Act appears in green text. Click on it, and the definition comes up in a small window.
The on-screen text is in readable Aerial (helivetia) type.
You can copy and past bits of the text into any letter, essay or other document you might be writing. Aside from saving time it reduces the chance of a mistake.
The cost is $120 (the paper Act cost about $40) and it will run on any computer that runs Windows. It comes on three disks and takes 6MB when loaded. The instructions on how to load it are on a label on the disks and all other help is on-screen
SoftLaw is based in Canberra (Phone 2421982). It works from the Canberra Business Centre in the old Downer Primary School and has 17 employees. The Canberra Business Centre is an incubation centre for small business. The SoftLaw eggs is cracking open and the bird hopes to leave the nest before too long.
The Industrial Relations Act, is one of its smaller project. It is in the business of electronic publishing, and has done work for Social Security, Vets Affairs, the ANU, National Parks, Immigration and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
It specialises in large interlinking documents that are being constantly updated _ turning bureaucratic nightmares into public-service dreams.
In Social Security it got the Social Security Act, the Regulations, the departmental manual, the procedure book and the policy statement and bundled them together electronically.
Users (and there will 20,000 of them Australia-wide) can search for a topic or word across all six documents. Words defined elsewhere or used elsewhere come up in different colours and one click takes you across to the right place in the other document.
SoftLaw does not hang round like a mainframe producer, bleeding the organisation. It trains people to update and look after the software and then bows out. You do not need computer specialists to run it.
Updating is just like updating a Word for Windows document.
The advantages of the electronic version are: are users are using the same documents and they are up to date; updating can be done the same day the changes are made by Parliament, the department head or manual writer; links between and within documents are obvious so user do not miss things; text and be copied and pasted into other documents like staff memos, letters etc.
It adds up to huge cost savings. No more shuffling about with out-of-date manuals or regional offices not knowing what is going on. No more huge printing and distribution costs.
SoftLaw won Australian Product of the Year (awarded by PC Week) at the recent PC94 exhibition in Sydney for its base software.
The base software is called Statute E-Publish and Statute Corporate. Any large organisation can buy the base software and put their own documents into it. It is ideal for medium to large organisations with one or more procedure documents that are often being updated.
It is ideal in the legal, administrative world, and I wish they would hurry up and do broadcasting, tax and corporations law, for starters. Perhaps the Humpty Dumpties in parliamentary drafting office could launch a takeover bid.