[Open-Legislation] Re: Open Legislation for all of us!

Sat Oct 5 13:43:37 UTC 2013

Hi,

great to see a group being formed within the OKF to study open legislation
standards and practices.

You may have heard of it, but I haven't seen this relevant project
mentioned on this list. CEN Metalex is an XML standard for representing
sources of law and references to sources of law [1] in Europe. There are
similar projects around the world, such as Akoma Ntoso [2] in Africa, which
is sponsored by the UN, and LexML in Brazil [3].

Apologies for not attending to OKCon as well. The Ministry of Planning
aborted our trip to Switzerland at the last minute and there was nothing we
could do.

Best regards,
Augusto Herrmann

[1] http://metalex.eu/
[2] http://www.akomantoso.org/
[3] http://www.lexml.gov.br/

On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 11:52 AM, Francis Davey <fjmd1a at gmail.com> wrote:

> Most of the most important judgments in England and Wales are not
> published as open data. I am using what influence I have to try to change
> that but without someone with serious political clout taking an interest it
> may take time. There is considerable resistance to the idea in various
> quarters, some of it quite senior within the judiciary.
>
> The senior president of my tribunal is right behind the idea and there is
> a project in train to make tribunal decisions available in a reasonably
> open form, which is very positive. But sociologically the tribunals are
> only recently part of the court system having been administered separately
> in the past. They have for the most part been more institutionally positive
> about release of decisions in a systematic way via the internet.
>
> (all tribunal service tribunals' decisions were scrapable - although one
> sometimes had to write horrid contortions in the code, including
> re-implementing javascript :-).
>
> My apologies for not attending OKFCon. I realise that as a practising open
> data lawyer, qualified computer scientist and part-time judge, I could be
> very useful to any project aimed at opening up law. I am afraid I had
> business elsewhere.
>
> I will keep an eye on what is being done. I don't always have time to
> respond to, or read, everything going on and I tend to be stuck in London
> in the UK, but I am very keen to see legislation opened up.
>
> I do sometimes worry at some of the work I see being done (not by this
> list I expect). Eg something recently passed my eye which suggested a
> project in world legislation that would use date on which legislation was
> passed as a primary key - clearly influenced by French and similar
> legislative traditions. That is a bad idea and could only have been thought
> of without talking to informed lawyers in other jurisdictions.
>
> So, if anyone wants to ask about England and Wales and wants the ear of a
> lawyer, emailing me directly with specific questions may be more useful
> than my being on a mailing list (I've signed up) since sometimes I'm too
> busy to read it through.
>
> All the best with this.
>
> Francis
>
>
> 2013/9/26 Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>
>
>> This is fantastic Clemens - very excited!
>>
>> To add: info on my in-progress scraping and processing of UK court
>> judgments at https://github.com/okfn/ideas/issues/57
>>
>> Rufus
>>
>>
>> On 26 September 2013 10:39, Clemens Wass <clemens at wass.at> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> the Law Mining Hackathon 2013 in Geneva during the OKCon was a huge
>>> success and led to the re-activation of this OKFN working group and mailing
>>> list.
>>>
>>> Everybody is taking about open data, open innovation and open source
>>> software today. Why shouldn't the legal community benefit from these
>>> concepts as well? We would like you to become active in this forum! What
>>> are your thoughts?
>>>
>>> Sometimes it does not take a huge effort to drive innovation, as we have
>>> seen in Geneva. A few projects have been launched in only three days:
>>>
>>> - Case Law as a Service (CLaaS)
>>> - Open Laws Search (http://www.openlaws.eu/)
>>> - Open This Data (http://button.datalets.ch)
>>> - Open Privacy Legislation (http://cdb.io/19dvTYx)
>>>
>>> Special thanks to the team in Switzerland: Christian, Oleg and
>>> Jean-Henry. You were great!
>>> Read more about the hackathon projects here:
>>> http://make.opendata.ch/?page_id=541
>>>
>>> What can you do?
>>>
>>> - Spread the word to your colleagues and friends.
>>> - Ask them to join our mailing list: http://legislation.okfn.org
>>> - Become active in our mailing list and start discussions!
>>>
>>> To get the ball rolling:
>>>
>>> - What do you think about the hackathon projects?
>>> - How much would you share with others? How open are you?
>>> - What do you think about Open Access Journals in the legal field?
>>> - How will future legal services look like in an open environment?
>>>
>>> Just as a reminder, the OKFN Open Legislation Working Group exists to:
>>>
>>>    1.
>>>
>>>    *Define the area of Open Legislation – what it means and what it
>>>    involves.* In our view there are at least three facets: availabilty
>>>    of legal documents, information on law-making processes and the
>>>    collaborative work on legal documents.
>>>    2.
>>>
>>>    *Act as a central point of reference and support for people who are
>>>    interested in open legislation*
>>>    3.
>>>
>>>    *Identify practices of early adopters, collecting data and
>>>    developing guides.*
>>>    4.
>>>
>>>    *Act as a hub for the development of low cost, community driven
>>>    projects related to open legislation*
>>>
>>>
>>> Best, Clemens
>>>
>>> About me: I am a legal professional with a good understanding of
>>> technology. I am based in Salzburg, Austria but I also teach at the Vienna
>>> University of Economics and Business. You can find my profile here:
>>> at.linkedin.com/pub/clemens-wass/1/945/aa2/. I have volunteered to
>>> handle the administrative work around this mailing list, so please, give me
>>> something to do ;-)
>>>
>>> *
>>> JOIN: http://legislation.okfn.org
>>> *
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> *
>>
>>  Rufus Pollock
>>
>> Founder and Executive Director | skype: rufuspollock | @rufuspollock<https://twitter.com/rufuspollock>
>>
>> The Open Knowledge Foundation <http://okfn.org/>
>>
>> Empowering through Open Knowledge
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>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> Francis Davey
>
>
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