On November 12th, 2025, Bússola Tech convened a panel discussion titled “Introducing Legislative Information Management Systems,” bringing together parliamentary officials and technology leaders to examine how legislatures design, implement, and modernise the digital infrastructures that sustain the legislative process.

Moderated by Luís Kimaid from Bússola Tech, the panel brought together Gergely Kónya and Gábor Molnár of the National Assembly of Hungary; Juliano Bringer of Ágape Consulting (Brazil); Kirsten Gullickson of the U.S. House of Representatives; and Neemias Muachendo of the Assembleia Nacional of Angola.

The discussion focused on how Legislative Information Management Systems (LIMS) are structured to support the full lifecycle of lawmaking — from drafting and amendment to plenary deliberation, voting, publication, and archival preservation. Rather than treating digitalisation as a mere substitution of paper, participants framed LIMS as institutional infrastructures that embed legislative rules, procedural safeguards, and data governance into structured digital environments.

A central theme of the debate was architecture. The Hungarian National Assembly presented Parlex, a web-based drafting and workflow system integrating document editing, codification checks, amendment generation, and legislative process management within a unified platform. Parlex operates as part of a broader Integrated Legislative System, connecting parliamentary, governmental, and local government drafting environments through shared modules and structured transmission pipelines to the official gazette and national legal database. Interoperability, in this model, is achieved through common drafting surfaces, central authentication, and standardized data exchange between subsystems.

From the Brazilian subnational context, Ágape Consulting presented NoPaper, a cloud-based legislative platform designed to digitise the entire lifecycle of parliamentary initiatives. Emphasis was placed on secure digital signatures, citizen-facing transparency, API-based interoperability with external portals, and adaptive integration with other public institutions. The system illustrated how legislative modernisation in federated environments requires flexibility: interoperability is not static, but tailored to institutional ecosystems and regulatory frameworks.

The U.S. House of Representatives described an ecosystem model rather than a single system. Multiple interconnected applications manage drafting, workflow, status tracking, publication, and archiving across a bicameral environment. Interoperability was presented as both a technical and governance question, grounded in shared data standards, authoritative identifiers, and formal coordination among legislative branch institutions. XML-based schemas — including the United States Legislative Markup (USLM), incorporating elements of Akoma Ntoso — serve as the backbone for structured legislative data exchange across legacy and modern systems.

The Assembleia Nacional of Angola presented a modular legislative information environment, including digital plenary management, speech timing systems, electronic voting, automated report generation, and online publication. While legal constraints still require physical signatures for final enactment, the architecture has been designed with APIs and structured data outputs to support future integration with governmental and publication entities. The emphasis was on gradual but deliberate modernization aligned with institutional realities.

Data standards emerged as a foundational variable across all interventions. Whether through custom XML schemas aligned with national drafting decrees, hybrid standards incorporating international models, or structured publication pipelines, the panel underscored that legislative information must be machine-readable, interoperable, and consistently governed to enable long-term sustainability.

Artificial intelligence was addressed within this structural context. Participants highlighted that AI integration — including speech recognition, comparative print automation, and natural-language search interfaces — depends on prior investments in structured data and coherent workflow systems. AI was framed not as a starting point, but as an additional layer built upon disciplined information architecture and legislative governance.

In conclusion, the panel reaffirmed that introducing a Legislative Information Management System is not a technological upgrade, but an institutional reform. When drafting tools, workflow engines, publication mechanisms, and data standards are aligned within a coherent architecture, parliaments create durable foundations for transparency, interoperability, and future AI integration. Legislative modernisation, the panel concluded, begins with information discipline — and only then can innovation be responsibly sustained.