Susskind predicts transformation of legislative process by technology

The legislative process will likely be subject to technological “automation” in the short term and “innovation” in the long term, an academic has said in a submission to a House of Lords committee.

In a submission to the Constitution Committee’s Legislative Process Inquiry published last month, Professor Richard Susskind, argues that “It is highly unlikely that the legislative process will somehow be immune from technological change”.

Professor Susskind notes that the computerisation of the legislative process lags behind other areas of law but that “There are existing and emerging systems that could greatly improve the legislative process.”

He writes: “Technology (by which I mean information technology) can be used in two quite different ways. The first is ‘automation’, when systems are introduced to streamline and improve existing ways of working. The second can be called ‘innovation,’ when technology fundamentally changes past practices or allows us to work in ways that simply were not possible before. The cash dispenser, for example, did not substitute or replace a bank teller sitting behind a hole in a wall, 24 hours a day. Instead, the technology enabled an entirely new way of providing a basic domestic banking service.”

The committee is conducting a large-scale inquiry into the legislative process to follow its 2004 report on Parliament and the Legislative Process.