standard for ParliamentsThe use case of Parliament of Uruguay

Sylvia TosarGeneral Director, Member of CTIPParliament of Uruguay, UruguayMonica PalmiraniProfessor of Legal InformaticsLaw School, CIRSFID, University of Bologna, ItalyFabio VitaliProfessor of Computer ScienceDepartment of Computer Science and EngineeringUniversity of Bologna, Italy

Legal XML standards in the worldnnnnnnnnnnn

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Akoma Ntoso (AKN) in OASISn An open XML standard for all the legal documents

used in Parliamentary processes and judgmentsn Started in 2005 in the project “Strengthening

Parliaments’ Information Systems in Africa”, promoted by the UNITED NATIONS Department for Economics and Social Affairs (UNDESA)

n Akoma Ntoso means “Linked Hearts” and it is a symbol used by the Akan people of West Africa to represent understanding and agreement

AKN document types

BILL

AMENDMENTS

ACTORDER of the Day

MotionsQuestionsPetitionsSpeechesVotingReportsHansards

OfficialGazette

CommitteeReport Judgement

JurisprudenceBooksJournals

Parliament Legislative process

• Document Drafting• Simulation• Consolidation of documents• Consolidation of amendments• Ordering of amendments• Debates record• Printing in the official Internal Journal

• Final Drafting• Formal Check• Metadata • Consolidation• Metadata• Extraction • Annotation • Jurisprudence

• Metadata

Success stories of AKNn Senate of Brazil (AKN in Portuguese, acts, bills, point-in-time)n European Parliament (bill and amendments)n Library of Congress of Chile (bill and debates)n Senate of Italy (bill publication in open data)n Parliament of Uruguay (bill workflow)n US Code Consolidation service (code management)n State of California (xml standard for document management)n

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AKN: Transparency, Quality, & EfficiencyXML by itself is not a guarantee for transparency. Yet, AKN has explicit features that support it:

q Clear division of metadata from official contentq Explicit lifecycle of the document and tracking of workflow eventsq Systematic connection of separate pieces of information to extract new legal knowledgeq Long-term preservation of legal validity (authentic document)q Management of multiple linguistic expressions q Data model for open government data and Linked Open Data (LOD)q Preservation of privacy/liability issues (e.g. in judiciary document)

AKN support for parliamentary activitiesn Support for generation of new documents: drafting activities, record keeping, translation into national languages, etc. n Support for workflow and lifecycle of documents: management of documents across lifecycle, storage, security, timely involvement of relevant individuals and officesn Support for citizens’ access to the legal global

information: multi-channel (on paper and on the web) publication, search, classification, identificationn Further activities: consolidation, comparison, language synchronization, etc.

AKN Open Source Tools

n Editors: Lime, Bungeni, AT4AMn URI/IRI Resolversn Textual Parsern XML Validatorn Convertersn Presentationn Sub-schema extractorn Parliament SW Platform

Parliament of Uruguay AKN projectn 2013-ongoingn Goals

q Use of AKN for the legislative process of billsq Comparative visualization of two versionsq LIME Web Editor used for the mark-up of the bills

n Methodology q Group of technical and legal expertsq 4 pilot casesq Support from the University of Bologna

n Future stepsq Deploy the system in-place for managing bill legislative processq Extend the project to debates connected with the billsq AKN resolverq Ontology for legislative process

Portal for the citizens

Navigation of the structure

Comparative visualization

OASIS: international standardization bodyn Not-for-profit consortium founded in 1993n Open to all: companies, government agencies, academic

and research institutions, individualsn International community

q 5,000+ participants including 600+ organizations in 100+ countries; 33% in Europe; 13% in Asia

n Technical agenda set by membersn Board and Committee chairs elected by membersn About 65 Technical Committees active in many domains

LegalDocML TC membersn 36 members in the TC

Chile Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional – European Parliament – Ghana Parliament – Georgia State University College of Law Library - University of ‐Bologna CIRSFID – Uruguay Parliament – LexisNexis,

a Division of Reed Elsevier – Wells Fargo – Library of Congress – M.I.T. – Aubay S.A. – Xcential – JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. - National Center for State Courts –

MTG Management Consultants, LLC. – Mitre Corporation - ….

Working DraftFIRST STEPCommittee

Specification Draft Full Majority Vote

Full Majority Vote

Public Review Open for 30 daysCommittee

Specification Special Majority Vote.

Statements of Use Three use casesCandidate standard

Public Review Open for 60 daysBalloting 15% of the OASIS

OASIS TC Workflow

Conclusionsn AKN is a robust legal XML standard for legal open document in parliamentn It is fit for open government data and semantic web (LOD)n It is extendable and customizable n Each organization can select just the needed partsn Open source tools are now availablen Several pilot cases and end-user projects are substantial proofs-of-concept for many legal systems and scenariosn Several Parliaments use AKN in-place implementations n OASIS standard process makes AKN an international standard stable with a good governance

Thank youfor your attention

Sylvia Tosar – stosar@parlamento.gub.uyMonica Palmirani – monica.palmirani@unibo.it

Fabio Vitali – fabio.vitali@unibo.it