Preparation and Research Tasks

From Legislation Community Editorial Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

The preparation and research stages of the editorial process are made up of several tasks which taken together prepare new legislation and its effects on existing legislation for publication on legislation.gov.uk.

Preparation Tasks

Identify Effects

The first thing we do is analyse new legislation carefully to identify its impact on other legislation, such as amendments to the text of existing legislation and any effects that, while not actually changing the text, expressly alter its scope or application, etc. such as when provisions are said to be “applied”, “extended” or “modified”. The new legislation may also bring the existing legislation, or part of it, into force.

Record Effects

The effects on other legislation are then recorded using an MS Excel template. This is then added to the “Changes to Legislation” facility on the website. The recorded information also forms the starting point for the revision of legislation in later stages of the editorial process.

Recording effects for Commencement Orders.


Please see the Issues section below for details of issues with allocating duplicate preparation tasks.

Research Tasks

Initial Edit

Certain other information about new legislation, such as when it comes into force, its geographical extent and whether it contains powers to make subordinate legislation, is also recorded within the legislation data. This information is used in setting up the timeline, in force annotations and extent facilities for the legislation and its provisions on the website. Once this information has been entered the new legislation is deployed to the website as the “Latest Available (Revised)” version.

Secondary Effects Research

The secondary effects research task involves recording effects on secondary legislation that have not previously been captured in TOES so that we can use them to update secondary legislation.

Secondary effects research is almost identical to the record effects and record effects review tasks and the Record Effects Wiki guidance also applies to it.

Identify Effects, Record Effects and Initial Edit Workflow

Although not part of the Preparation Tasks, the Initial Edit task uses information captured during the Preparation Tasks in the Identify Effects stage, as shown in the following workflow:


Workflow Oct 2023.png

Issues

Duplicate preparation tasks

WARNING: Before allocating any preparation tasks to yourself, please be wary of SIs in the preparation task lists that have earlier numbers than similar documents in the the list as they may well be reissues or duplicates. You can check to see if any task is a reissue/duplicate by searching for the document on the editorial system and checking its list of preparation tasks: the prep tasks will be duplicated, one set of tasks above the other with two issue dates, e.g.

https://editorial.legislation.gov.uk/task/prepare/uksi/2020/90. If an SI has been reissued, please let Richard or Simon know and don't allocate the preparation task to yourself.

The first two documents on the list of preparation tasks below are examples of documents with reissued or duplicate preparation tasks. We can tell this by the fact that the affecting document column is populated with the symbols S and P in circles, indicating that the system knows that these documents have primary effects only (the S is under erasure) and that therefore they have already had their effects entered into TOES. They also have pdf icons indicating that mark up has already been done on them. If there were other SSIs in the list below, another clue that these two were duplicate or reissued tasks might be that they had earlier legislation numbers than their peers:


Duplicate prep tasks.png


If you select one of these documents, you will see that it has duplicate preparation tasks:

https://editorial.legislation.gov.uk/task/prepare/ssi/2021/384

Why duplicate preparation tasks occur

  1. Dummy daily list (e.g. Coronavirus SIs): where TSO have helped us to create prep tasks urgently by making a "dummy daily list", when the real daily list for those documents is produced by TSO, it will then recreate new prep tasks for the same documents.
  2. Approved affirmative SIs: some SIs are made under the affirmative procedure, whereby they must be approved by Parliament within a certain period of time from their made date or they will expire. Where they are approved TSO have to add a note at the top of the SI and republish them. When this happens they appear on the daily list and recreate prep tasks for those documents.
  3. Genuinely reissued SIs: where an SI is genuinely reissued to correct mistakes in the original text, these also reappear on the daily list and legitimately kick off prep tasks again on the editorial system.

What to do with duplicate preparation tasks

Genuinely reissued SIs should be checked to see if changes to the text mean that our TOES data needs to be corrected. Rosie usually allocates these when she’s been notified by TSO.

Instructions for dealing with illegitimate duplicates (types 1 and 2 above):

  1. Search for the document on the Editorial System under preparation tasks and allocate all the preparation tasks to yourself.

  2. Then, using the following URL, download the TOES effects which are currently in the database (this is important as it contains their latest applied statuses):
    https://editorial.legislation.gov.uk/changes/affecting/<type>/<year>/<number>/data.xls?extended=full-with-co&sort=affecting-year-number
    Note: replace <type>, <year> and <number> with the relevant legislation details for your document.

  3. Save the spreadsheet ready to upload into the task later.

  4. Go through the identify effects and review tasks and put in the affecting status (it helps if you look at the spreadsheet when you download it to see what it effects, otherwise you can check the original identify effects review task) and then skip the pdf upload to complete.

  5. Then upload the saved spreadsheet into the record effects and review tasks and then skip the pdf upload to complete.

  6. Remember you can navigate between all these tasks in the tasks themselves without having to go back to your dashboard each time.

  7. Please note that if the document is (a) a Commencement Order or (b) has undergone online initial edit since the prep tasks were originally done, it will contain coming into force effects. The upload of a spreadsheet containing coming into force effects kicks off the primary and secondary commencing effects research tasks and these tasks will also need to be skipped in order to complete the duplicate prep tasks. The CER data originally imported into the effects made by the commenced Act will not be affected by this process of dealing with the duplicate prep task.

Non-amending SIs

If an SI is non-amending, the Identify Effects task should then be reviewed to complete the Preparation Task stage and the Record Effects step will then be automatically disabled as the SI doesn’t have any effects to record.

Retrieved from ‘http://community.legislation.gov.uk/mediawiki/index.php?title=Preparation_and_Research_Tasks&oldid=13874’