Akoma Ntoso as a standard for the lifecycle and the transparency of legal and legislative documents
10th International "Law via the Internet" Conference, Durban, South Africa
26 - 27 November 2009
prof. Fabio VitaliDepartment of Computer Science
University of Bologna prof. Monica Palmirani
CIRSFID Interdepartmental Centre of ICT & Law
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Summary
Akoma Ntoso
The main structure of the document
The deep structure of the document
Basic metadata
Advanced metadata
Applications of metadata
Conclusions: benefits of the adoption
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AKOMA NTOSO
It is an open legal XML standard for parliamentary, legislative and judiciary documents
Promoted by the UNITED NATIONS Department for Economics and Social Affairs (UN/DESA) in 2004 from the Kenya Unit
It means “Linked Hearts” – a symbol used by the Akan people of West Africa to represent understanding and agreement – but it is now promoted also in Latin America, Asia and European regions
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AKOMA NTOSO
Architecture for Knowledge-Oriented Management of Any Normative Text using Open Standards and Ontologies:
Describes structures for legal documents in XML References documents across countries using a common
naming convention - URIs Adds systematic metadata to documents using ontologically
sound approaches Aims to
Be extensible for the individual needs of any country Preserve the legal digital resources over time Guarantee legal principles Favour trust (authoritative versions, legal copies, etc.)
Learning to swim: the structure of documents
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Managing the structure of the document - 1 An Akoma Ntoso
document is either an act or a bill (legislative documents), or a report or a debateRecord (debate documents) or a judgment, or a generic document.
All Akoma Ntoso documents start with a metadata section, followed by an initial part (e.g., a preface, cover page, preamble, etc.) followed by the body of the document, and then a conclusion and possibly one or more attachments.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><akomaNtoso> <act contains="originalVersion"> <meta> … </meta> <preface> … </preface> <preamble> … </preamble> <body> …. </body> <conclusions> … </conclusions> </act></akomaNtoso>
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Managing the structure of the document - 2 Within the main body of
the document, each document type has its own structure.
A hierarchy of parts for legislation E.g.: section, part,
paragraph,chapter, title, book, tome, article, clause, etc.
Any of a list named sections for debates E.g.: questions, answers,
notices of motions, procedural motions, etc.
A sequence of named sections for judgements Introduction, background,
motivation, decision
<preamble id="preamble"> <p>An Act of Parliament to amend the Retirement Benefits Act, 1997 <eol />ENACTED by the Parliament of Kenya, as follows: -</p> </preamble> <body> <section id="sec1"> <num>1.</num> <heading>Short title.</heading> <clause id="art1-cla1"> <content> <p>This Act may be cited as the Retirement Benefits (Amendment) Act, 2003.</p> </content> </clause> </section>
Swimming in the pool: the semantics of content
fragments
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Managing the semantics of the text
Text fragments describing and contextualizing the documents In all documents: docType,
docTitle, docNumber, etc. In judgements, also: courtType,
neutralCitation, party, judge, etc. References
Definitions References (individual,
multiple, ranges) Quotations (individual,
multiple, ranges) Mention of relevant concepts
Times, dates, relevant entities More later.
<section id="art2"> <num>2.</num> <heading>Amendment of <ref href="/ke/act/1997-08-22/3/eng/main#art2">section 2 of No 3 of 1997</ref></heading> <clause id="art2-cla1"> <content> <p>The Retirement Benefits Act, 1997, is amended -</p> <list id="art2-cla1-lst1"> <item id="art2-cla1-itma"><num>(a)</num> <p>by deleting the definition of "financial year" and <mod id="mod6"><ref id="ref2" href="/ke/act/1997-08-22/3/eng/main">substituting</ref> therefore the following new definition - "<quotedText id="mod6-qtd1">financial year" -<eol /> (a) in relation to the Authority, has the meaning assigned to it in section 19'<eol /> (b) in relation to a scheme, means such accounting period as may be prescribed in the scheme rules;</quotedText></mod></p>
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Swimming: organizing the content in XML So far, we have organized in XML a legal document
identifying its parts and providing a semantic description of the main structure and the most relevant inline fragments, including references and quotations.
This is enough to provide for Display on screen Print on paper Hypertextual links
It can be taken care of by a lower secretary in a back office with limited knowledge of legal documents, no knowledge of XML and a modified text editor (e.g. Bungeni).
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Swimming: organizing the content in XML So far, we have organized in XML a legal document identifying its
parts and providing a semantic description of the main structure and the most relevant inline fragments, including references and quotations.
The basic structures of Akoma Ntoso provide support for Different law systems (civil law, common law) Different legal traditions Descriptive contexts (in which the markup can only observe whatever structure
was used in the document - legacy documents) Prescriptive contexts (in which the markup can be used to force desired
structures and require the presence or abcence of some elements). The only requirements are:
Blind obedience, i.e., strict adherence to the wording of the document (a tome is a tome if it is called a tome)
No lie, i.e., no confusion between content and interpretation (e.g., missing document information that should be found in the preface but aren't, are added in the metadata section, and not in the preface).
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Swimming: organizing the content in XML The main structural and semantic elements for the
content of legislative and legal documents in Akoma Ntoso are enough to provide for Display on screen Print on paper Hypertextual links
The identification of the right constructs for the organization of the document can be taken care of by a lower secretary in a back office with limited knowledge of legal documents, no knowledge of XML and a modified text editor (e.g. Bungeni).
This is appropriate with the settings of many legal drafting offices around the world.
First dives: basic metadata
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Basic metadata The structure of metadata in
Akoma Ntoso is complex but can be studied piecemeal.
Publication, keywords and notes are easy to deal with.
They require some higher grasp of legal aspects, and probably cannot be drafted by a lower secretary.
They help in contextualizing the document and searching for it according to themes and theasuri.
<publication date="2003-09-04" name="Government Gazette 25437" showAs="Government Gazette # 25437" />
Scuba diving: FRBR
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FRBR: the problems
We would like a language that allows references: To be either static or dynamic, according to need and legal
nature of the text and of the reference itself And thus when crossing a hypertext links brings the reader to the right
version of the right document To be independent of the technological choices of the
repository of the documents And thus allows documents containing references to be moved to
different machines, different server organizations, different server technologies, etc. guaranteeing the survival of the document collection in time.
Idea: the problem is NOT in the reference, but in the concept of documents itself.
The Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), a conceptual model for bibliographic items by the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), provides an answer
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W
EE
MM
II
The FRBR modelEvery document has four different aspects:
The Work represents the abstract concept of a document, across all its versions, languages, representations. The South African Act #12 of 2005 is a Work.
Each Work is realized in one or many Expressions, which are concrete selection of textual content. Each expression defines a specific version of the content, in time and language. The English version as of the 1/12/2009 of the South African Act #12 of 2005 is an Expression.
Each Expression is embodied in one or more Manifestations, actual representations of an Expression. Each manifestation chooses a computer format with its set of metadata for the expression. The Akoma Ntoso 1.0 version, with metadata by John Smith, of the English version as of the 1/12/2009 of the South African Act #12 of 2005 is a Manifestation.
Each manifestation is exemplified in one or more Items, physical copies of a Manifestation. Each item is a specific file stored on a computer. The copy on my computer of the Akoma Ntoso 1.0 version, with metadata created by John Smith, of the English version as of the 1/12/2009 of the South African Act #12 of 2005 is an Item.
W
EE
MM
II
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Using FRBR
Each level of FRBR has its own address (URI). Higher levels refer to abstract concepts, and are used in document. The
item level is a physical URL and is never used in document, but only in resolving an abstract reference.
Thus changes in the physical organization and technology of the document repository does not require changes to the documents
Dynamic references are references to works, static references are references to expressions When the document changes, a new expression exists, and the resolver
will identify the expression that is most appropriate to a work reference Even when the document change, a static reference needs to be able to
point to the old version of the document. Expressions never change, but are only added.
Addresses (URI) of FRBR levels are similar URI of lower levels of the FRBR chain are a composition of the higher
level addresses + metadata specific of the level. It is easy, given an address of a Manifestation, to identify its Expression,
and viceversa.
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Things we get for free from FRBR
Automatic support for multilinguism If legislation exists in multiple language, links allow you to traverse
references always in the same language without being asked. Multiple repositories of the same documents
Some authoritative, some not. Some complete, some selected. Some commented, some not.
Non-authoritative consolidation of texts Especially useful in those countries (e.g., Italy) where only a selected few
acts are authoritatively consolidated. Point-in-time versions and change tracking are immediate derived
functionalities of consolidated texts. Multiple metadata and comments of the same documents
Different scholars and editors could add different sets of metadata elements and provide different views of the document
Different selections of content E.g., private publishers could be interested in printing only a relevant
fragment fo the act, omitting the rest (element <omissis/> )
Deeper and deeper: TLC
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Top Level Classes (TLC)
Top Level Classes is the Akoma Ntoso mechanism to provide unambiguous references to concepts, roles, organizations, individuals.
A formal conceptualization (technically, an ontology) has been realized for the concepts that are relevant to legislative and legal documents. It is composed of 10 independent classes (top level) Classes can be subclassed at will (e.g. Kenyan MP are the
subclass of TLCPerson whose nationality is Kenyan and whose role is MP).
Each individual is associated to a unique URI across time and documents (e.g., the same MP appearing in different parliamentary hansards may be shown with a different spelling for the name, but will have the same URI)
Each reference in the document to a precise concept, individual, organization, role, is marked up with an <entity> eleemnt referring to a TLC instance in the <references> section.
<references source="FV"> <TLCRole href="/ontology/role/political/MES" id="MES" showAs="Minister for Education and Sports" /> <TLCPerson href="/ontology/person/ken/MP/gha.John.Gidisu" id="per07" shortForm="Mr. J.K. Gidisu" showAs="Mr. Joe Kwashie Gidisu"/> <TLCPerson href="/ontology/person/ken/MP/gha.John.OsafoMaafo" id="per08" shortForm="Mr. Osafo-Maafo" showAs="Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo"/> </references> …<debate> <question by="per07" to="MES"> <from>Mr. J.K. Gidisu</from> <p>asked the Minister for Education and Sports the organic relations between …</p> </question> <answer by="per08" as="MES" > <from>Mr. Osafo-Maafo</from> <p>Mr. Speaker, … </p</answer>
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Advantages of Top Level Classes
We can now identify concretely persons, organizations, roles, concpets, places, across documents, spellings, languages.
Meaningful searches across documents (e.g., all speeches given by the Minister of Finance in 2009, or all acts mentioning company X) can be looked up with one simple query.
The actual position of the reference is also easily found (a problem if there are differences of spellings and a long text).
We have a solid foundation for more sophisticated inferences by exploiting the ontological framework underneath E.g., give me all documents in 2009 that contain a benefit (a
TLCconcept) for company X (a TLCOrganization), or any company owned by company X or recursively owned by a company that is owned by company X.
In the deep sea: consolidation, workflow and lifecycle
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Consolidation, workflow and lifecycle First assumption: each document is the output of a specific
step of a workflow and may change over time. each intermediate output is an FRBR expression of
the same FRBR work. We just need to associate each expression to a specific step in a workflow.
E.g.: bill draft as proposed by MPs, as approved after first reading, as approved after second reading, as ready to be promulgated as act.
Second assumption: each document undergoes modifications due to events characterizing its lifecycle. Each event is the product of a specific document containing relevant information for the lifecycle, including modifications in validity, efficacy, and content.
Each event that changes content creates a new FRBR Expression with the modified content.
If the new content is not authoritatively produced, then it is possible to automatically consolidate the content by applying all relevant modifications.
<lifecycle source="#cirfid"> <event id="e1" date="1997-08-22" source="#ro1" type="generation" /> <event id="e2" date="2003-12-19" source="#am1" type="amendment" /></lifecycle><references source="#cirfid"> <original id="ra1" href="/ke/act/1997-08-22/3/eng/main" showAs="Retirement Benefits Act" /> <passiveRef id="am1" href="/ke/act/2003-12-10/8/eng/main" showAs="Amending Act" /></references>
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Classification in judgments
Conclusions: Benefits and fishes
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Benefits of the adoption of Akoma Ntoso An Akoma Ntoso repository can mark up the text to the level it
feels appropriate. It is not necessary to understand, even less adopt, the more complex
parts of the language. Basic document structure, references to other documents and basic
metadata are enough for most repositories, both authoritative and not. But if the need arises, the tools are there.
it is not necessary to adopt a different standard and convert every document,but one can simply add the new information.
Even, added metadata can be provided in a separate document. Scholars, special interest groups, political or economical organization can
provide any missing information and metadata on top of the authoritatively produced Akoma Ntoso documents for their readers and constituency.
Since the underlying format is the same, the presence of new information is straightforward, smooth, transparent to the user.
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BungeniEditor- open source Open Office markup editor
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References
www.akomantoso.org www.parliaments.info, info at
[email protected] BungeniEditor on googlecode forum
thank you for your attention
Fabio Vitali – [email protected] Palmirani –