MANAGING LEGAL RESOURCES IN OPEN GOVERNANCE & E-

DEMOCRACYEunomos: an AI*Law ResponseGuido Boellaa, Llio Humpreysb Robert Muthuric & Lendeert van

de Torred

a University of Turin. b University of Turin and University of Luxembourg. c University of Turin and University of Bologna muthuri.r@gmail.com d University of Luxembourg

Introduction

• PA want to enhance scope of governance & citizens want democratic participation

• Appreciation of the law significant for participation in democratic processes. • Open data and Open Governance-online legal repositories (1° Access)• Hyper-regulation (2° Access)

• Multilevel societies• Multilevel jurisdictions• Multilingual world

• Eunomos • Collection and Classification of norms into domains• Interpretation – coupling legislative text to authentic sources (provenance);• Syncronised evolution of laws

Methodology: challenges

• Paper-based laws and regulations unable to scale up to tech innovation• Diverse formats, structure and language of publishing the law-hinders semantic

web vision• Open Data access efforts don’t solve open-texture problems (polysemy,

homonymy, ambiguity)

• IT x Law Misalignment– rule-based methodologies for computational law• “regulators and industry can examine regulations as computational

artifacts put at disposal on the web not just as texts but as structured knowledge dynamically linked across jurisdictions. These artefacts can then be integrated with industry and organizational standards to become more easily comparable and addressable.” Gordon and Breaux (2011)

Methodology – reconstructing the problem

Methodology – way forward

• To provide a computable representation of norms we need: • Definition – ontological representation, concept holism, dynamics of norms, argumentation• Interpretation – cross-referencing, combining ordinary and legal concepts, decision making

• The methodology is prompted by developments in neighbouring fields of legislative drafting for parliaments: • Legislative XML - structured method for organising legislation to facilitate the management

and retrieval of norms• Legal ontologies - facilitate the semantic analysis of the information structured by XML to

aid understanding of relations between concepts

• We extrapolate these technologies in the context of applications for PA and citizens to provide cost-effective legal knowledge management.

Research Question

How to create a document and knowledge management system based on technologies from legal informatics to help PA and citizens access

and interpret the law for E-democracy?”

Legal Taxonomy Syllabus

• This ontology emphasises the distinction between notions of legal concepts and legal terms i.e. terms can call on concepts to articulate their meanings• Allows association of different taxonomies for different languages• Different national systems can organize the concepts in different ways based

on the same legislative XML standards.

• Currently integrates taxonomies of the EU and constituent countries

From : Terminological and ontological analysis of European directives: multilinguism in law. ICAIL 2007

Using legal ontology to improve classification

DPR 5 FEBBRAIO 1953 , n. 39 ART. 5. MODALITÀ DI PAGAMENTO DELLA TASSA PER GLI AUTOVEICOLILA TASSA DI CIRCOLAZIONE È STABILITA IN RAGIONE DI ANNO SOLARE.

Web spider

References

Concept extraction

DOCUMENTMANAGEMENT SYSTEM

XML STRUCTURED LEGISLATION

SYLLABUS’ TERMS AND CONCEPTS

CROSS-REFERENCES

XML Parser

ALERTS

CLASSIFICATION

USERS

The workflow

• Bottom-up approach: classification based on domains • surveying and scrutinizing the law on a given topic to determine its interpretation

• Top-down approach: from foundational concepts to terms as defined in legislative norms. • Concept fields: language, jurisdiction, domain, description in natural

language, references to relevant articles, notes and links to related concepts.• Search term – shows all related concepts and legislation. • Alert messaging system – keeps users up to date with new/modifying

laws.

DECRETO-LEGGE 8 OTTOBRE 1976 ,

n. 691 MODIFICAZIONI AL REGIME FISCALE DI ALCUNI PRODOTTI PETROLIFERI E DEL

GAS METANO PER AUTOTRAZIONE ART.9. LE MISURE DELLA TASSA DI CIRCOLAZIONE SULLE AUTOVETTURE PREVISTE DALLA TARIFFA ALLEGATA ALLA LEGGE 27 MAGGIO 1959, N.356 …

LEGGE 21 MAGGIO 1955, n. 463 PROVVEDIMENTI PER LA COSTRUZIONE DI AUTOSTRADE E STRADE E MODIFICHE ALLE TASSE AUTOMOBILISTICHE. ART. 11. LE TARIFFE A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H ED I DELL'ALLEGATO 1, AL TESTO UNICO DELLE LEGGI SULLE TASSE AUTOMOBILISTICHE, APPROVATO CON DECRETO DEL PRESIDENTE DELLA REPUBBLICA 5 FEBBRAIO 1953, N. 39 , SONO SOSTITUITE RISPETTIVAMENTE DALLE TARIFFE A, B, C, D, E, F,H …

Legge regionale 5 agosto 2002,

n. 20. Art. 2. (Esenzione pagamento tassa automobilistica regionale per autoveicoli …) 1. A decorrere dal 1° gennaio 2003 sono esenti dal pagamento della tassa automobilistica regionale gli autoveicoli alimentati a gas metano gia' dotati di dispositivo per la circolazione con gas metano all'atto dell'immatricolazione e gli autoveicoli elettrici.

DECRETO DEL PRESIDENTE DELLA REPUBBLICA 5 FEBBRAIO 1953 , n. 39 TESTO UNICO DELLE LEGGI SULLE TASSE AUTOMOBILISTICHE ART. 5. MODALITÀ DI PAGAMENTO DELLA TASSA PER GLI AUTOVEICOLILA TASSA DI CIRCOLAZIONE È STABILITA IN RAGIONE DI ANNO SOLARE. SALVO QUANTO DISPOSTO DALL'ARTICOLO SEGUENTE, IL RELATIVO PAGAMENTO DEVE ESSERE ESEGUITO IN UNA DELLE SEGUENTI FORME:a) PER L'INTERO ANNO SOLARE, CON DIRITTO ALLA RIDUZIONE DI UN VENTESIMO DELL'AMMONTARE DEL TRIBUTO DOVUTO; LEGGE 27 MAGGIO 1959, n.

356 MODIFICHE ALLE VIGENTI ALIQUOTE DELLA TASSA DI CIRCOLAZIONE SULLE AUTOVETTURE. ART. 1. LA TARIFFA C ALLEGATA ALLA LEGGE 21 MAGGIO 1955, N. 463, È SOSTITUITA DALLA TARIFFA ANNESSA ALLA PRESENTE LEGGE.ART. 2. L’ART 5 DEL TESTO UNICO DELLE LEGGI SULLE TASSE AUTOMOBILISTICHE, APPROVATO CON CON DECRETO DEL PRESIDENTE DELLA REPUBBLICA 5 FEBBRAIO 1953, N. 39 , …

Laws that implicitly override previous legislation requires manual annotation

The Core System

• online document and knowledge management system• ICT4Law Project to help legal researches and practitioners manage and

monitor legislative information

• Two modes: • In-house software – search, classify, annotate, build legal knowledge and

remain appraised with changes• Online service – effective outsourcing of legal monitoring services.

•Eunomos system is the foundation of Menslegis, the commercial version for compliance distributed by Nomotika S.r.l. a University of Torino spinoff.

Applications: PA

• Access to consolidated and comprehensible norms across domains and jurisdictions promotes ordered design and co-creation of democracy both from a policy and technical perspective.

Foreign Customs Declaration

Intermediaries alter tariff

classificationLocal Customs

Applications: PA

Local Customs

UAEtaxonomy

JapanTaxonomy

German Taxonomy

Foreign Customs Declaration

Intermediaries alter tariff classification

Applications

• Promote collaboration and data sharing through merger of potentially synergistic PAs• Structural and ontological system to integrate the taxonomies of different

institutions to share diverse experiences.

• Intuitive lightweight ontologies user-friendly non-technical staff and this helps to promote the adoption of ontologies in practice.

• Advances beyond current PA use of thesauri and taxonomies

The Citizenry

• Web 2.0 extensions e.g. citizens forum• PA transparency: to aid impact analysis from user comments • PA Open Innovation: support tool for eParticipations & eConsultations

• Intelligible access to the law ensuring meaningful democratic participation

• Public funding could help develop Eunomos to facilitate direct democracy initiatives and regulatory impact assessments of legislative bills.

The Citizenry

Kenyan example: a $10 billion Euro flagship railway project to link Nairobi-Mombasa to entire EAC

Controversial single sourcing to Chinese entityExemption for negotiated contracts in PPDAEunomos visualisation - conceptual view giving rationale

Towards an Internet of Things

• The broader vision is to illustrate advances towards an IoT • Open access and Interpretation of laws enhance Open Innovation• PA’s presented with significant opportunity to breathe life to laws by

using legal knowledge management systems to: • Implementing linked data; • Multi-level ontologies; • Advanced classification and search facilities;

• Realise connected smart cities and connected smart worlds

Conclusion

• Eunomos software: state of the art in legal informatics• Applications for PA and citizens for eDemocracy and Open

Governance• Classification of the law into domains• May facilitate integration of PA taxonomies hence co-creation of

democracy• Practical translation of AI and Law Research as module of Nomotika

S.r.l. a spinoff of University of Turin.