R. Winkels Recent developments in the Netherlands Alexander Boer Leibniz Center for Law University of Amsterdam

Leibniz Center for Law Leibniz was a legislative drafter, scientist, and ontologist Institute for Computational Legal Theory & Legal Knowledge Management Part of Faculty of Law of University of Amsterdam But almost completely funded by external parties Maintainer of MetaLex XML standard

Overview Situation in the Netherlands New MetaLex XML version (v1.3) Results from Furore Workshop experiments Work in Progress RDF Semantic Layer Legal-Geospatial information Representation of legal content Newton

Situation in the Netherlands Legacy XML database for central legislation ( Ministry of Internal Affairs New RDF Metadata Server for decentral legislation ( Ministry of Internal Affairs Aduna Metadata Server/Aduna Spectacle

Situation in the Netherlands Parliament server (PARLIS) MetaLex standard for EU initiative briefs? for civil servants and politicians Brief contains: Description of initiative and relevant consequences for the Netherlands Procedural information Description of bargaining position Text fields are filtered on user type

Situation in the Netherlands Spatial Planning eServices delayed (2007) Most successful service: pollution and disaster risks map service ( To be taken offline because of terrorism

New MetaLex XML version META Lex is An open interchange standard for legal sources A minimal provision for tagging regulations Extensible for any conceivable purpose Jurisdiction-independent Language-independent Compliant with the newest W3C standards and proposals Partly developed within E-POWER project (IST )

XML vs. RDF Equivalent XML and XML/RDF Schema RDF (Resource Description Framework) Concept/Object-oriented Identity & meaning not linked to serialization Bridging standard format for databases en CASE tools Elegant solution for self-reference in legal sources

XML vocabularies

XML vs. RDF

Summary Local XML: Global XML: XML extensions apply here RDF: Metadata extensions apply here Representation of and reasoning about content

Existing tools Word plugin Validation and storage in RDF Automatic generation of amending acts based on editing MetaLex sources Automatic resolution of references in and to (MetaLex) legal sources

New Metalex version New Website New RDF serialization + OWL DL schema Other namespace Versioning information changes In direction of ideas of Monica Palmirani Event-based model Geospatial (GML) extension

Results from Furore Workshop experiments Student without previous exposure to XML created XML and RDF source, and temporal model Problems: Namespace, base, URI (identity), URL (import) No suitable editor (Protégé/SemanticWorks bugs) Which date??? Latest archive on See BSCW invitation (password required)

Work in Progress RDF Semantic Layer Dutch Tax Administration Legal-Geospatial information Ministry of Spatial Planning Representation of legal content

Semantic Layer Data StoreKnowledge Store L1 MetaLex PDF Word XML P1 A1 L Identity/concept Manifestation Reference Typed reference

Legal-Geospatial Information Reported on in Furore Ministry of Spatial Planning Legal Atlas: relating norms to geospatial objects where they apply Mapping: Legal Source X Legal Concept X Geospatial extension European project proposal: standardized disaster procedures E.g. competence of civil services across jurisdictional borders (bilateral and supranational)

De op de kaart voor woondoeleinden aangewezen gronden zijn bestemd voor: a.woonhuizen al dan niet in combinatie met ruimte voor een aan-huis-verbonden beroep; b.bijgebouwen; met daaraan ondergeschikt: c. wegen, woonstraten en paden; d. parkeervoorzieningen; e. groenvoorzieningen; f. speelvoorzieningen; g. water; h. tuinen en erven; met de daarbijbehorende: i. bouwwerken, geen gebouwen zijnde. …. Geospatial Objects Concept ‘Residential Zone’ Regulation

Legal Atlas

Height norms

Plan

Legal Assessment

Representation of Legal Content ESTRELLA project LKIF: Legal Knowledge Interchange Format Legal Service Counter (LSC) If.. Then rules in XML to JavaScript ‘expert system’ If.. Then rules to be changed to OWL DLP BeInformed Studio (BeValue) To be based on Metalex and OWL

ESTRELLA Standard for Legal Knowledge Representation Legal Expert Systems Semantic Web Applications Why? Public Administrations demand continuity of service to essential systems Change in Law = change in systems Open standard makes changing from supplier possible

U.K.  University of Liverpool  RuleBurst Europe Ltd.  Interaction Design Ltd. U.K.  University of Liverpool  RuleBurst Europe Ltd.  Interaction Design Ltd. Italy  University of Bologna  SOGEI Societa Generale d'Informatica  CNIPA Centro Nazionale per l'Informatica nella Pubblica Amministrazione  Ministero dell'Economia e delle Finanze  Consorzio Pisa Ricerche SCARL Italy  University of Bologna  SOGEI Societa Generale d'Informatica  CNIPA Centro Nazionale per l'Informatica nella Pubblica Amministrazione  Ministero dell'Economia e delle Finanze  Consorzio Pisa Ricerche SCARL Netherlands  University of Amsterdam  RuleWise Netherlands  University of Amsterdam  RuleWise Hungary  APEH Tax and Financial Control Administration  Corvinus University of Budapest Hungary  APEH Tax and Financial Control Administration  Corvinus University of Budapest ESTRELLA Consortium Germany  Fraunhofer Fokus  KnowledgeTools Int.  Bundesministerium der Finanzen Germany  Fraunhofer Fokus  KnowledgeTools Int.  Bundesministerium der Finanzen

LSC and BeInformed Very similar functionality for generating small online expert systems Entity-Relation (RDF triple) modeling Prolog-like expressiveness and reasoning Standardization of linking sources to knowledge model RDF/OWL, Metalex, and LKIF

BeInformed Studio

BeInformed Knowledge Base

Uses of knowledge base

Newton Complete Metalex and LKIF-based open source (GPL) workbench for managing Legislation, legal processes, and legal systems Based on ransom financing Partners i.a. RuleWise, BeInformed, Tax Administration No progress due to personnel shortages at Leibniz Center and commercial partners