Error on Currency Date on E-Laws Website (Ontario)
Are there any concerns from a risk management / liability perspective over the following warning/error message on the e-Laws website I noticed just now:
NOTICE OF ERROR
From December 18, 2009 to December 29, 2009, the e-Laws currency date should have been December 14, 2009.
See the screenshot here:
Do you review all of your legislative research from December 2009 within this time period?
Part of me says “no” since the Legislative Assembly adjourned on December 10, 2009, (to resume on February 16, 2010) and there appears to have been only 2 proclamations gazetted during the time period in question. However, there were a number of regulations promulgated during the dated period the error was in place.
Should the government list out those statutes or regulations that may have been affected during the period of the error?
Thoughts?
A colleague has pointed out the irony that the omnibus bill called the Good Government Act, 2009, S.O. 2009, c. 33, received Royal Assent December 15, 2009, around the time of this “currency error.”
Perhaps the good government can also publish further information on what legislation may have been impacted by their date of currency error or at least let us know what the mistaken date of currency was during the time in question . . . .
On an unrelated note: has anyone ever stopped to think:
If it takes 5 minutes to load and scroll through a Detailed Legislative History on e-Laws – today – after the site has been live for a couple of years – what the heck is it going to look like in 10 years? 20 ? 50? That’s the problem with making them one continuously updated document!!
I still think it is a major mistake not to publish the tables at the end of the S.O.’s each year…. Could we petition them to put the tables back in?
I see your point, but these sites aren’t in “error”. They specify a date and they’re correct as of that date. The information isn’t wrong, it’s just dated.
If these sources were print, we’d know the dates they covered, and we’d know to consult the pocket parts, and we’d know the dates the pocket parts covered, too.
There’s no lesson here that’s any different from the lessons with using books. Sources aren’t updated in real time; check the dates they cover and be aware of the dates they don’t.