On 04/01/2011 20:31, Francis Davey wrote:
On 4 January 2011 20:11, Mark Goodge<[email protected]> wrote:
Has this contact been since the election, or mostly before?
Entirely before. Since the election I haven't got particularly
involved in political campaigning. I'm not sure I'm particularly good
at it, though I'm willing to learn how.
Effective campaigning is often very much a case of finding a door that's
already ajar and then pushing it. That may not necessarily be precisely
the door you'd prefer to open, but if it's close enough then it will do.
In this particular case, I'm wondering whether an approach to the
relevent ministers that starts with "The previous administration was
totally unhelpful about this..." might provide a useful nudge.
Can you explain, in fairly simple terms, why it isn't sufficient? I mean, I
don't have all that much use for law reports most of the time, but I am a
web author and I think that Bailii is pretty badly presented from a
technical point of view. But lots of official or semi-official websites are
pretty badly presented, and "I reckon I could do better" isn't necessarily a
particularly strong argument :-)
* It makes difficult any kind of useful meta-analysis of judgments
(the sort of thing Nick is trying to do).
* Google won't search it (though it can pick up pages linked from
elsewhere), so you have to use its own search engine. That makes
finding cases that match any particular criterion very difficult and
means members of the public (who won't know to look there) won't find
relevant material because its hidden behind the bailii wall.
Or, in terms that politicians will understand:
"It's a closed shop. Bailii is run by lawyers, and the court service
grants it a monopoly. And, because it's run by lawyers, they have a
vested interest in ensuring that it's impossible for outsiders to use
the information to see how effectively our courts are working. or not,
as the case may be."
* Any attempt to build a system that does present it better is not
going to work.
"Despite the fact that Bailii get the information for free, they are
unwilling to share it with anyone else. So there's no opportunity for
anyone to create a more effective system".
OK. Not the strongest arguments in the world. But there's no *good*
reason for information to be given solely to bailii anyway (there are
numerous specious ones).
Maybe I notice this more because I'm a lawyer and I often find myself
searching bailii and having to use their appalling search engine.
"Even lawyers themselves are often left frustrated by Bailii's poor
interface and unresponsiveness to customer demand".
But exactly the same thing is true of (say) theyworkforyou. After all
you can read Hansard on the web. "All" it does is present it a bit
better 8-).
"By contrast, other branches of government are much more open with their
data and encourage community-based groups to help make it available to
the public. Just look at the excellent work done by TheyWorkForYou.com
in conjunction with parliament, for example."
OK, so my paraphrases are a little tongue in cheek. But I do think that
the change of government has created a window of opportunity that didn't
exist before.
Mark
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