The effectiveness of parliamentary information services in the United Kingdom.

This paper describes the results of a pilot project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, which explored the effectiveness of the public information and communications policies of the UK Parliament in London and the new devolved legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The study consisted of two elements: a series of indepth interviews with service providers; and interactive, electronically assisted interviews with the general public conducted in a roadshow environment. The paper focuses primarily on the results of the first stage of the research, relating these where appropriate to what was learned about user information behavior in the second stage