The Organisational Context of the LSP

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The organisational context of the LSP was the core government processes of enacting and drafting legislation and associated work processes, roles, authority structures, and culture.

Wider Context

Tasmania is the smallest state of Australia, with a population of approximately half a million. The Australian state governments broadly have the same functions as the Canadian provinces and operate according to the principles of the Westminster system. The production of legislation is a highly complex and iterative process in Tasmania and is similar to other Australian jurisdictions.

For Acts of Parliament, processes of enactment are basic parliamentary processes, where new legislation is presented, debated and passed. Most people are aware of the basic workings of parliament, at least in their own jurisdiction. In a democracy based on the Westminster model, new legislation (called Principal Bills) or amendments to existing legislation (termed Amending Bills) are presented to one house of Parliament by an elected member of that house. The Bill is then debated and perhaps amended before being either accepted or rejected. In the two-house, bicameral system, both houses must agree to the contents of the legislation before it becomes an Act and can be enforced. Most legislation is signed by the formal head of state (the governor or governor general) before it becomes part of the formal body of statute law. This is the model followed by all the states of Australia and the federal Commonwealth government, the federal and provincial governments of Canada and other governments based on the Westminster model.

The OPC (Office of Parliamentary Counsel) is a centralised body of expertise on legislation, providing services to other government and judicial bodies and the public. The Office aims to produce accurate, readable, and understandable legislation which incorporates agencies' instructions and meets legal requirements and access to consolidated legislation in an affordable and timely manner. It also provides advice to members of the general public, judiciary or other government agency personnel about the statute book. Most of the changes associated with the LSP were in or around the OPC, and so this unit features strongly in the analysis below.

Technical and Process Infrastructure

The background drafting processes and access to legislation once it passes into law are the administrative functions associated with the broader enactment processes. As in other states of Australia, legislation is written by lawyers who specialise in the drafting of legislation, called Parliamentary Counsel or, less formally, drafters. Formally, members of parliament initiate legislation, usually through the Cabinet. It is further developed through consultation between the agency responsible for the area of policy covered by the legislation and the OPC, before it is reviewed by the Legislative Review Committee, printed by the Government Printing Office and debated in Parliament. The division between policy creation and drafting is not always clear, but generally the instructing department is responsible for the policy articulated in a bill while drafters are responsible for its legal effectiveness (Mason, 1988). Amendments made on the floor of either house of Parliament also must be included in the legislation.

Within the OPC, the creation of legislation was, and is, an iterative process between the drafter, the instructing officer and the support staff. The drafters obtain instructions which they attempt to write in a logical and legally binding manner. Before the LSP, drafters generally wrote handwritten drafts, which the administrative assistants typed and returned to the drafters for amendments and corrections. Other support staff tracked cross-references to other legislation and coordinated the administrative side of producing legislation.

Roles

The OPC can be divided into two broad categories of roles: drafters and their support staff. The roles are complementary but quite different in nature. The drafters were all specialised lawyers, most with many years of experience in the field. The work of a drafter involved a great deal of concentration as the requirements of the clients and existing legal requirements were incorporated into the structure of new legislation or amendments. The drafters had a further consultative role as they supported parliamentary amendment, or amendments made on the floor of parliament.

The roles of the support staff were more varied than the drafters' and included an executive officer, a records clerk, three administrative assistants, and generally two part-time proofreaders, though this changed during the course of the project. They all had considerable technical knowledge about the format and structure of legislation and the logistics of producing it.

Authority Structures and Culture

While the OPC could be classed in some ways as bureaucratic, with a strong emphasis on hierarchical relationships, there was also a strong, and sometimes conflicting, emphasis on supporting the individual approaches of the drafters, who saw themselves as experts in their field. As one drafter commented: "We're all one-man bands. Put us together and you get a hell of a cacophony".

Anyone who believed in consensus would not have entered the field of legislative drafting. We're all egomaniacs. We are the type of people who argue over the position of commas in a sentence (transcripts 23/8/1995).

In many ways, the culture of the OPC, and the drafters in particular, can be likened to an academic community, which also comprises individuals who tend to respond critically to issues and work independently. This, combined with the hierarchical legal culture of the unit, meant that managing the OPC was no easy task.

Although on a personal level, many of the drafters and support staff related well to each other, there were perceived divisions between drafters and the administrative staff. Drafters sometimes felt their expertise differentiated them from their support staff, and some of the support staff commented they sometimes felt their contributions were undervalued.



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Advanced Topics in Global Information Management (Vol. 3)
Trust in Knowledge Management and Systems in Organizations
ISBN: 1591402204
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 207

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