Compiling, processing and accessing the collection of legal regulations of the Republic of Croatia T. Didak Prekpalaj, T. Horvat, D. Miletić, D. Mokriš Croatian Information Documentation Referral Agency INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” 4-6 November 2009

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” Croatian Information Documentation Referral Agency (HIDRA) Main goal: enabling simple user’s access to official documentation from a single point HIDRA offers: The Collection of official documentation of the Republic of Croatia - complete Croatian legislation, including that enacted prior to 1990 is for the very first time available on-line on

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” The importance of information systems provided by government administration General benefit: high service quality comprehensive, official data stimulating e-democracy strengthening confidence in democratic processes Benefit for final user: clear and simple use easily accessible for everyone free of charge

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” The importance of information systems provided by government administration User-friendly environment: coherent and long-term formats intelligible documentation tools simple, fast navigation

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” Creating the collection of legal regulations of the Republic of Croatia The Official Gazette Selection of documents Data processing Collection available on

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” Creating the collection of legal regulations of the Republic of Croatia Selection of documents respecting legal theory and practice immediately upon an e-version of Official Gazette is published primary criterion → addressee  to select → general acts (enforceable against all citizens or a particular group of citizens of the Republic of Croatia)  to left out → singular acts (enforceable against an individual or a group of individuals and bylaws passed by bodies of local and regional self-government )

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” Creating the collection of legal regulations of the Republic of Croatia Data processing access to information administrative transparency right to information State secret confidentiality disclosure of information

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” Creating the collection of legal regulations of the Republic of Croatia Eurovoc Thesaurus multi-disciplinary, multi-language documentation tool 21 fields 127 microthesauri more than 7000 descriptors and approximately the same number of non-descriptors

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” Creating the collection of legal regulations of the Republic of Croatia Eurovoc – Croatian appendix State institutions Diplomatic relations Local and regional self-government Geography Political parties Institutions …of the Republic of Croatia total of 3500 normative records

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” Creating the collection of legal regulations of the Republic of Croatia Data processing all documents are processed in the same place applying international recommendations and standards for bibliographic description and HIDRA‘s normative infrastructure automating this process ensures reliable and durable access to legislative and sources for efficient retrieval of legislative documents from a database the application of manual and/or (semi)automatic document indexing is necessary implementation of Eurovoc Thesaurus into AIDE (Automatic Indexing using Eurovoc Descriptors)

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” Creating the collection of legal regulations of the Republic of Croatia Data processing AIDE – Automatic Indexing using Eurovoc Descriptors software system for indexing official texts in Croatian language by using Eurovoc descriptors project launched by HIDRA in 2004 intelligent software learns from examples and is based on the principles of machine learning today AIDE software efficiently proposes ways of indexing texts of legal regulations which are still unindexed, while the team of experts revises the accuracy and completeness of recommended drafts the database of indexed official documents is a part of the information infrastructure of the public authority bodies of the Republic of Croatia

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” Data search and display Searching for legal regulations through an E-catalogue Direct full text search through CADIAL search engine

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” Data search and display E-catalogue of official documentation of the Republic of Croatia

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” Data search and display E-catalogue of official documentation of the Republic of Croatia Data display on chosen regulation black font: annotation blue font: links

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” Data search and display CADIAL – Computer Aided Document Indexing for Accessing Legislation Department of Computer Science, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (FER), University of Zagreb, Croatia Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (FFZG), University of Zagreb, Croatia Croatian Information Documentation Referral Agency (HIDRA), Croatia

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” Data search and display CADIAL search engine search by full- search by full- text, title and text, title and Eurovoc Eurovoc descriptors descriptors morphological morphological normalization normalization procedures procedures display of display of Thesaurus tree Thesaurus tree exact and fuzzy exact and fuzzy phrase phrase matching matching cross-language cross-language retrieval retrieval

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” Data search and display Cadial – data display

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” Conclusion accessibility of legal regulations is an important aspect of e-democracy creating the collection of legal regulations that offers high- quality information and makes it easily and quickly accessible to the user is very important CADIAL search engine offers simple access to a complex legislation content bilingual Eurovoc overcoming language barriers while searching Croatian text further development objectives – to insure the infrastructure for durable public access to Croatian legislative documents in national and multilingual European context

INFuture2009: “Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing” Compiling, processing and accessing the collection of legal regulations of the Republic of Croatia Thank you! More information on Croatian Information Documentation Referral Agency – HIDRA Zagreb, Siget 18c, P.O. Box 327