akoma ntoso 2

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

Law via Internet - 2009 2

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


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


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


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>


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


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>


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).


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).


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


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


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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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.

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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.


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


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>


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


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>


Classification in judgments

Conclusions: Benefits and fishes


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.


BungeniEditor- open source Open Office markup editor


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 –

[email protected]

akoma ntoso 2

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