The Law Society site relaunched on 28 June. Needless to say, all deep links to the previous site are redundant. The site is not for the faint-hearted, featuring a multiplicity of confusing menus. When we’ve got to grips with these we’ll update infolaw links. Law Society
The DCA has launched what it bills as a website to assist the public authorities preparing for the Freedom of Information Act. In fact the URL currently points to the FOI pages on the DCA site. The Act comes into operation on 1 January 2005 when the public will be able to request a wide […]
The SSCSC website was relaunched 23 June. Using the site you can find out how to appeal and download the necessary forms; check up on recent cases and other developments; search for decisions; and consult basic cases and directions on practice and procedure. Social Security and Child Support Commissioners The site uses a template which […]
Further to the last post, according to the DCA: our replacement [editorial] system went live … last week and we are busy converting in excess of 27,000 documents to XML format. We are also working with a supplier [TSO] to develop the enquiry service database that we expect to be able to pilot, within the […]
Recent reports emanating from a KableNET.com news story suggest that “the Department for Constitutional Affairs is planning a new online database of UK primary and secondary legislation”. Informed observers will know that the Statute Law Database has been just around the corner since at least 1998. In fact the news is that TSO (formerly The […]
The establishment professes to be quite happy with Tesco’s new Legal Store which supplies LawPack self-help books and book/CD kits for common legal issues, providing quick Q&A advice and a jargon buster online and referring users on to the Law Society’s Solicitors Online site for further advice. Tesco ‘wants to demystify the law by offering […]
The government is to offer a one-stop shop on the internet for all the services it offers citizens, aiming to put all its service online by 2005 with one central site for people to interact electronically with officials. The current UK Online serice has been deliberately designed to get citizens in and out as quickly […]
The UK Parliament’s website needs a radical overhaul as there is widespread dissatisfaction among users, a select committee of MPs said on 16 June 2004. While the site has received praise as an example of open and accessible government, the committee found that people often had difficulty finding the answers even to simple questions: the […]
Lund University Libraries last week launched phase 2 of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The new version of DOAJ now includes records at article level and a search functionality allowing users to search articles in potentially all Open Access Journals. The Directory aims to increase the visibility and ease of use of open […]
A new website that allows voters to search and annotate the text of parliamentary debates has been launched by a team of volunteer programmers. TheyWorkForYou.com is the fruit of nine months’ work by a loose group of e-democracy activists whose aim is to breathe new life into Hansard. It does this by “scraping” the content […]
Punctuation is a touchy subject for some lawyers of the old school; indeed good legal drafting was based on the premise that one should not use puntuation at all. Thankfully, most have deserted that position and would agree that punctuation “has always been offered in a spirit of helpfulness, to underline meaning and prevent awkward […]
On 3 June the Office of the e-Envoy metamorphosed into the e-Government Unit of the Cabinet Office (with some functions transferred to the Treasury Office of Government Commerce) in preparation for Ian Watmore taking up the headship of the unit in September. Andrew Pinder, the former e-Envoy, exited with the job done: “96% of the […]
The 10 new Member States of the EU have had to implement radical reforms to their laws, administrations and judiciaries to show that they can apply the European Union rule book. Throughout this period inward investment, largely by multinationals, has helped drive the process of reform. Eversheds has presented roadshows across the US and EU […]
You’ll notice in the sidebar is a “Feed” button. This links to a standard format RSS file that allows you to view the latest headlines from the blog in a desktop reader or other web application that supports RSS. There’s an increasing number of other useful feeds you can access, enabling you to review headlines […]
The popular Emplaw portal, now under the management of the ‘serial Scottish entrepreneur’ Russell Shepherd, went live with a fresh site without any fanfare on 1 May. At this stage the changes are largely presentational and ‘positional’; the underlying content and functions remain the same. The site now has 3 entry points, for Employee, Employer […]
