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Success Story

Enhancing Public Access and Legislative Transparency

In 2011, the UK Parliament leveraged GraphDB to modernize its legislative and open data platform, delivering clearer public information, enabling easier access for citizens and MPs and ensuring compliance and performance at national scale

The Client

UK's legislative body providing accessible information and data services to Members of Parliament (MPs), parliamentary staff, and the public through digital platforms

The Challenge

UK Parliament needed to replace outdated, confusing data services with a modern platform that would provide clear, accessible information for citizens and efficient bill tracking for MPs

The Solution

Using GraphDB, UK Parliament built an enterprise-grade RDF graph database powering national-scale open data services that enable visual navigation and cross-enterprise publishing

Technical capabilities

  • Delivered enterprise-grade performance with proven uptime, scalability, and smooth backup/restore
  • Flexible integration with internal workflows and external-facing digital platforms

Business outcomes

  • Improved user experience and search ensuring faster, public access to clear legislative information
  • Increase staff effectiveness through faster and easier internal tracking of bill progress

The Challenge

The UK Parliament’s legacy website and data services (http://www.legislation.gov.uk and https://data.gov.uk/) were limiting transparency and operational efficiency. Key issues included:

  • Outdated technologies and non-responsive design
  • Complex and duplicated information
  • Poor search and navigation capabilities 
  • Limited support for cross-platform data publishing

This made it difficult for both the public and Members of Parliament (MPs) to find relevant legislative data.

As a representative institution open to public concerns, Parliament needed to ensure citizens and organizations could easily access information through their website. At the same time, MPs needed efficient ways to track bill progress to do their work effectively.

The challenge was finding an innovative approach to consuming and sharing parliamentary data that would provide quick, stable, and efficient access to the abundant facts and relationships within their datasets. 

To achieve this, the UK Parliament needed a scalable solution to unify data, streamline access, and enable seamless publishing and discovery.

The Solution

The UK Parliament implemented GraphDB as the foundation for their modernized data services.

The solution delivered:

  • Easy setup and proven scalability across production environments
  • Smooth data integration and visual graph navigation of stored parliamentary data
  • Cross-enterprise data publishing that meets government standards
  • High availability and stability with robust backup and restore procedures

This architecture enabled Parliament to remodel how they manage data, making information easily and quickly available for public engagement, analysis, and exploration.

The Impact

UK Parliament’s modernized data services delivered significant improvements:

  • Better user experience with more relevant and connected information accessible to the public
  • Increased staff effectiveness through streamlined access to bill progress and parliamentary information
  • Enhanced compliance with government standards and regulations through standards-compliant data publishing

The new platform successfully addresses the online needs of MPs and parliamentary staff while reaching a larger public audience with accessible, connected information that supports democratic engagement and transparency.

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Solution: GraphDB
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Facing Similar Challenges?

Struggling with outdated systems, fragmented data, or poor user experience limiting engagement and transparency? Whether you’re managing public data, complex legislation, or regulatory information,  Graphwise can help you:

  • Modernize legacy data systems with standards-compliant solutions 
  • Enable seamless data integration across departments and workflows
  • Improve public access with user-friendly, connected information 
  • Build scalable platforms that support democratic transparency

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