The legislative activity of Parliaments is one of its fundamental activities. Keeping track of the parliamentary activities related to the life of a bill is a very strategic feature.

Bills have/should have an history that lists the dates and legislative actions affecting the proposal from its introduction to final disposition/approval or rejection. This history should be associated with the debates, votes, and documents that accompany the bill in its parliamentary process.

Some parliament have also introduced a "notification service" that allows citizens to track legislative activities on proposals, committees, authors and subjects by receiving notification emails so that citizens can follow their progress through the legislative process.

Below you find a list of data that are used to "track" bill process. Most if not all (apart the bill actual text and its versions) are very short data and most of the time in form of standardised parameter or sourced out of other data table.

The best example that I could find, needless to say, does not come from a parliament but from a very smart NGO in USA.

See this bill for instance ... it makes things very clear: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-h3162/show

Bill tracking data set (tenative)

• Bill Number:
• Short Title:
• Primary Sponsor:
• Additional Sponsor(s):
• CoSponsors:
• Introduced on:
• Current Status: (see Actions below)
• Long Title:
• Synopsis:
• Full text:
• Fiscal Note:
• Actions History: (Actions have an Actor, Date, Description of the Action, To whom it might refer to, Referent to Debates and related documents.

Sample of "Actions":

• Introduction and first reading
• Referred to
• Author added
• Withdrawn and re-referred to
• Comm rpt: To pass as amend & re-ref to
• Committee report: To pass as amended
• Second reading
• General Orders: To pass as amended
• Calendar: Third reading Passed
• Passed

• Bill versions: show the different versions of the bill through the different stages.

Bill tracking search options:

Search by:

• Bill Number:
• Bill Title:
• Sponsor/CoSponsor: of the Bill (the Ministry or MPs who tabled the bill), search ca be by Last Name: (Smith) or Last Name, First Name (Smith, John) or First Name Last Name (John Smith) or Ministry
• Actions/Phase:
• Key word search in: Text, Bills Summaries, Amendments, Fiscal Notes, Committee Reports, Courtesy Resolutions and also Debate Records
• Full: text search in: Text, Bills Summaries, Amendments, Fiscal Notes, Committee Reports, Courtesy Resolutions and also Debate Records
• Statute: Citation (law that may be referred or affected by ... )
• Committees: (where the bill has been referred, debated)