The purposes of this study are to 1) examine how well the legislative systems developed or used by the U

Since the mid-1990s many legislative bodies increasingly have used the Internet to make their activities and their documents accessible to their Members, their staff, and the general public. This use of the Internet is part of the larger evolution of e-government, which is intended, among other things, to facilitate communication between governments and citizens. There is evidence that citizens are satisfied with many of the basic e-government services, such as renewing driving licenses or applying for passports. Research has suggested that there also is a growing use of the web by citizens seeking information about political issues, about the policies of their representatives, and about the work of their legislature. What is not yet evident is the quality of e-government web sources that citizens encounter when seeking this type of information. It is an underlying premise of this study that to achieve a meaningful level of transparency and to be effective in meeting the needs of citizens who want public policy information, it is no longer sufficient for legislatures simply to make their documents accessible through the Internet. The information and documents available on legislative websites must also meet the highest possible standards in five key areas: 1) accuracy 2) timeliness 3) completeness 4) clarity and 5) context. The purposes of this study are to 1) examine how well the legislative systems developed or used by the U.S. Congress and European Parliament are meeting these criteria 2) review the goals these legislative bodies have set for their websites and the mechanisms they have established for assigning both authority and responsibility for achieving these goals and 3) identify best practices that appear useful or promising enough to share with others. To accomplish these goals, the author undertook a review of the legislative information systems of the European Parliament (EP) and the U.S. Congress from January-May 2006. Additional brief visits to the House of Commons in London and the Tweede Kamer in The Hague provided further input to the analysis.