1. Alberta Queen’s Printer Queen’s Printer Association of Canada Federal, Provincial and Territorial Meeting June 2017

2. Alberta Queen’s Printer
The official source of Government of Alberta laws, the Alberta Gazette, and legislative publications since 1906
Offers more than 1,900 legislative products and official materials in a variety of formats
In addition to online purchasing, customers can access Alberta’s laws for free in HTML and PDF formats on the Queen’s Printer website
Efficiently delivers products and services to Albertans, Canadians, and international customers - orders are received online, by phone, by fax, by mail, and in person
Along with publishing the laws we also:
Publish the Alberta Gazette Bi-Weekly (26 issues per year)
Publish Orders in Council
Published an updated Specified Penalty Listing - changes made by An Act to Modernize Enforcement of Provincial Offences (SA 2016, c. 11) and the new Procedures Regulation (AR 63/2017)  both of which come into force on May 1, This edition of the Specified Penalty Listing also includes changes from the Off Highway Vehicle Regulation (72/2017) which comes in force on May 15, 2017.
Among other things, these changes require that any provincial or municipal bylaw offence committed on or after May 1, 2017 for which a specified penalty of $1,000 or less is prescribed, must be charged using a Part 3 violation ticket (Offence Notice), unless the public interest exception applies. The Specified Penalty Listing is a must have reference tool for the enforcement community.

3. Digital Publishing by Default
Alberta Queen’s Printer works continuously to provide our resources whenever and wherever they are needed
We manage four websites that support our business
Clients search, locate and download legislative items on our websites
We provide self-service options to manage their account
Professional users value the advanced access that QP Source Professional provides
Meeting our clients demands and expectations of gaining access to the laws in meaningful ways is continuous work for our team.
We listen to our client’s feedback and try to anticipate their requirements.
Clients have downloaded over 1.8M copies of legislative related materials from our website annually – which averages to over 5,500 downloads per day (365 days in a year)
We manage the Queen’s Printer Website which includes e-commerce functionality, QP Source Professional for professional users who require advanced access with search capabilities to current and historical legislative materials, Specified Penalty Listing database and the QPAC Website on behalf of the QPAC Association.
Clients can pay for invoices with their credit card in a secure environment with the Manage My Account feature
QP Source Professional offers professional users advanced access to the laws, point in time version of the laws and to legislative materials such as the Alberta Gazette, Orders in Council, Annual Volumes, and Legislative publications 3

4. Electronic Access To The Laws – 2016/17 Statistics
Queen’s Printer website
40% of our transactions are completed online
Over 1.8 million legislative retrievals
Alberta Gazette was referenced 121,635 times
Orders in Council were referenced 141,351 times
QP Source Professional
728 licensed permits
Accessed 43,000 times
142,023 searches and downloads were performed
Overall we see steady trends in free website retrievals for materials on our website (a decline of 8.8% in website retrievals as compared to the previous year.)
Alberta Gazette retrieval statistics are almost identical from last fiscal year with 100 less retrievals noted
We saw an increase of (over 24,600) or 19% more views of the Orders in Council as compared to last fiscal year
QP Source Professional gained 9% more users as compared to last year – potentially due to us offering legislative subscription themed access at a lower cost to users
Each subscriber on access the subscription 59 times and performs on average 195 legislative searches

5. How Citizens Gain Access to Legislative Materials 2016/17
We saw a slight change in access to legislative materials as compared to last fiscal year.
Shifts were 1% decrease in the number of paid for digital downloads;
2% increase in the number of print resources distributed
And 1% decrease in the number of free digital retreivals
These trends support that print resoures still have value to our clients and that while digital access remains important – print and physical copies continue to have a strong demand in our marketplace

6. Operational Statistics 2016/17
Service Delivery
Staff answered 12,328 calls
Responded to inquiries
Gross revenue $1.51M
231,297 legislative materials distributed
Published Legislative Changes
524 legislative changes were published
398 Orders in Council were published
Last Fiscal Year we saw some declines in revenue and some customer interactions via phone (3% reduction) and (11% reduction) declined slightly as compared to the previous fiscal year.
We saw a reduction of 13% in revenue as compared to $1.737M last fiscal year
We distributed 4% more resources – as we distributed free resources on behalf of Travel Alberta. Last fiscal year we distributed 221,692 physical items
We were able to achieve a 14% reduction in our publishing costs – managed through printing less volume for subscription items, printing more resources under contract, and internally through the SA Print Centre as well as moving items to print on demand.
We published 29% more Orders in Council as compared to last fiscal year which was 279 OCs.
We published 35% more legislative changes as compared to last fiscal year
Overall Operationally – Customer Service delivery saw a slight decline in operations while our publishing unit increased growth and increased work loads.

7. Volume of Legislative Changes Published Each Year
This graph shows how the number of published laws changes from year to year.
We experience a spike in 2010/11 – The Revised Rules of Court is enacted November 1, 2010 which impacted many laws
For the next 2 years changing laws stabalized
In 2013/14 we experience a spike – which may be contributed to the experienced Government of the day swiftly making legislative changes
In 2015/16 we have a new Government and the law making process slows down
In 2016/17 we see an increase of 35% more laws being changed.
For the past 7 years the average number of laws changed is 628 which is on average 59% of Alberta’s laws being changed each year.

8. 2016/17 At A Glance Technology Upgrades
PCI compliance upgrade for telephone transactions
Database Enhancements and Website improvements
High level legislative descriptions project
Catalogued and added meta data to all laws
Digitize Historical Orders in Council
Digitized OC’s from 1917 onwards
>121,000 files
Use of Highway and Rules of the Road Regulation
This Regulation governs the utilization of highways and the use and operation of vehicles in respect of speeding, signalling, passing, turning, yielding, stopping, parking and other matters. Rules regarding the driving and operation of school buses, emergency and maintenance vehicles and motor cycles and other cycles are established.
Last fiscal year we accomplished many things including strategic advancements, technology upgrades and improvements and recruited two staff members to join our team. We hired law librarian to join our team – and I would highly recommend that should you find yourself with a vacancy to consider to hire a member with that skill set as they bring many strengths with them as knowledge experts including legislative awareness.
We were able to complete a highly successful project that reached out to all legislative planners in the Province to have them give us a high level legislative description for all of their laws.
Staff utilize this while assisting clients over the phone and these descriptions assist citizens to have a better understanding of the intent of the law. Legislative planners repurpose this content to assist them with their internal projects.
Around 130 ARC boxes containing historical OCs were digitized. Secured a vendor that scanned these documents many being on onion skin paper. Project cost $40,000 and was efficiently completed in about 3 months from start to finish. 8

9. Digital Publishing 2.0 Initiative – Open Laws Accessible in the Open Government Portal
Making laws accessible via Open Government Portal in addition to the Queen’s Printer website
Phase II - completed February 2017
Enables Citizens to search for laws, publications and data sets in a centralized location
Additional fields were added into our CASS database to accommodate for additional cataloguing features that will enhance and enable citizens to include searching for laws within the Open Government Portal. When they perform a search they can see data, laws and publications that may meet their searching criteria.
Additional meta data for each record was also captured - Keywords, Topics and Descriptions. This will help with the searching capabilities for the laws in the Open Government Portal. 9

10. Laws and social responsibilities
I was ed this slide last year and I saved it for this years QPAC presentation. I found it to be interesting and maybe relevant to me as I am in the sandwich years – taking care of children and aging active parents.
As society changes laws change along with them. Our role is delivering the messages that our policy makers mandate. Even if we agree or disagree we must remain neutral in the deliverance of the policy that has been drawn.
Laws can be controversial or just seem like the “right thing to do”.
The work at we all do is relevant to ensure that our citizens have access to the content that they need when they need it.

11. Operational Trends Experienced By Alberta Queen’s Printer
Client’s expectations
Shifting reliance to digital resources resulting in a reduction in print volume requirements
Technology deployments
Application upgrades
Enterprise wide technology platform upgrades
Balancing privacy and access to government documents
Slide 11
We continue to make our business decisions based on clients demands and expectations of gaining access to our legislative materials
We see a shift in the reduction of print subscriptions and steady reliance on digital access
Our clients are demanding advanced digital access to our resources
We continue to try to keep pace with technology upgrades and deployments
Clients are demanding access to resources and we have to balance privacy and access to government documents working with our legal and privacy teams as need be. 11

12. Modernization Projects – Centralizing And Enhancing Transparency In Government Documents
Publishing of Digitized Historical Orders in Council
Partnership with Legislative Counsel Office
OC’s from 1917 to 1995 complete with appendices
Policies in development regarding balancing transparency of government documents as well as protecting privacy
Centralized Publishing of Ministerial Orders Project
Environment and Parks
Alberta Labour
Other Ministries upon request
Here are the modernized solutions that we will be working on this year:
Working with Executive Council and Legislative Counsel to develop policies to publish historical OCs on the Queen’s Printer website and on QP Source Professional
Working on policies to determine which OCs are safe to publish – categorizing them into levels 1 to 4 level 1 being open with no issues up to level 4 where privacy concerns will likely be problematic in nature – unless the year timeline can be applied due to FOIP considerations. We are also in discussions with the Provincial Archives around their 75 year archival policy of releasing information.
Ministries have come forward to us to ask us to publish MOs on their behalf. Ideally we would be the centralized repository for all MOs but for now we will begin publishing MOs for the departments who would like us to do so on their behalf. The Ministry must maintain ownership of their content and provide us with content to publish that is open and free from privacy concerns. 12

13. Modernization Partnership with the Legislative Counsel Office
Partnership with the Legislative Counsel Office to modernize the drafting, consolidation and publishing of the laws
Modernizing business processes
Stabilizing platforms and data integrity minimizing errors
Quicker turnaround for production of bills and consolidations
Multiple output including open formats for published materials
Mobile friendly website with advanced search capabilities
Slide 13
This past year we worked together with a Business Analyst that was assigned from Alberta Justice to support the capital request to modernize the drafting, consolidation and publishing of the laws. Once the Business Case is finalized we can pull together the documents that would move forward to the selection committee that decides on who’s project can receive capital funds for their initiatives.
When socializing our request with folks it appears that we have a viable opportunity to gain support as we would deploy a solution that would be used by multiple Ministries and could also be deployed to the Legislative Assembly office as well. 13

14. Potential Modernized Solutions Reviewed
Propylon - Legislative Workbench - LWB
Dublin Ireland and US Offices
A comprehensive set of business applications that support the running of legislatures. LWB includes full document and workflow management, in context amending tools with amendment report generation, automated engrossment and true in-context and point-in-time archiving. LWB is highly customizable, and can be tailored to each legislatures own working practices.
Slide 14
When performing research for our Business Case we were able to locate a small handful of solution providers that facilitate and end to end path to draft, consolidate and publish the laws. One such solution is Propylon.
Propylon began it’s journey in Dublin Ireland and has expanded to two offices in the United States offering their modernized solution to law makers in these areas. 14

15. Potential Modernized Solutions Reviewed
Irosoft – Legislation Information Management System
Powerful tools that can be used to draft, consolidate and publish the laws using open data standards with a powerful content management environment.
The Irosoft solution is really the creame de la creame cadilac version of a 3 tiered drafting, consolidation and publishing suite that allows staff to seamlessly work on legislative files. All files are converted from the native source to XML then maintained and created in an XML environment to allow you to output accordingly. As you may be aware this is a Canadian software solution that allows point in time control versioning of legislation. LIMS is the worlds first and most complete legislative and regulatory content management system.
Provides the ability for others - particularly government departments - to add to their own websites stable links to legislation published on the legislative website in a very specific way (generally to the section level), thereby enabling their sites to provide a better service to their users
Maintains a historical repository of legislation that enables the website to provide point-in-time access to legislation
Ensures the structural consistency, the reliability, and the integrity of legislation; simplifies the exchange of data between different users of the system; and facilitates multimedia publishing of legislation
Improves the efficiency and effectiveness of drafting, consolidation, and publication and enables very timely access to up-to date consolidated legislation
Uses XML as its data format. This vendor-independent international standard future-proofs your legislative data and enables the implementation of many of the powerful features of LIMS
Can interface with an electronic document management system for version control, security, and other organizational needs 15

16. Questions? Thank you for your interest in Alberta Queen’s Printer.
Gisele Abt
Manager, Alberta Queen’s Printer