[Open-Legislation] openlaws.eu EU Project starting today

Wed Apr 2 20:34:22 UTC 2014

I am not sure what the aims of your project is/are, but some thoughts:

[1]

At the moment the UK statute law database represents an excellent example
of what can be done. The data model is well thought out and considerable
care has been taken in design (eg for URL's).

However, because of the lack of any existing comprehensive definitive and
up to date legislative database for UK statute law (it is really true that
none exists), the database itself is not up to date _yet_. They tell me
(and I believe them - they tend to be good at this sort of thing) that all
will be up to date by 2015.

This lack of up to date legislation has, I think, deterred quite a few
potential app developers. This in turn has made it harder to demonstrate
all the useful things that may be done with open data. I realise that data
does not need to be perfect (the best is often the enemy of the good) but
in this case nearly is often the same thing as not at all.

A *great* push for better data quality would be some really good apps based
on open legal information. Do we have a directory of such things and, if
not, could one be created if there are any?

Are there national legal databases that have complete up-to-date statutory
law? The EU sadly doesn't - at least as far as I can see not consistently.
But I assume that code based countries like France will do. Is that right,
or am I being overly optimistic?

It might be worth seeing what could be done there.

The more examples of good apps, the easier it is for me to try to prize
other legal materials out of our ministry of justice.

[2]

If we are aiming for open and linked legal data across jurisdictions it
would be great if any schema design took into account the fact that the way
in which legislation is structured differs across jurisdictions.

As I have noted before some projects seem to be written by naive XML
inspired developers who think that the best way to structure legislation is
by some kind of simplistic tree-view. That isn't helpful and I don't relish
the thought of legislation that doesn't fit that straight-jacket being
squeezed in.

In my view (based on experience with UK law) the best way to structure
legislative material is to use the text of the legislation but segment it
with multiple overlapping segmentation systems that have arbitrary,
jurisdiction defined, labels. Nothing else seems to work.

[3]

This also relates to another issue which is that the way in which people
think about and consume legislation does differ jurisdictionally.

Anyway, I've been waiting a long time for all this to be done sensibly, so
I look forward to seeing what happens.

Francis

2014-04-02 21:20 GMT+01:00 Clemens Wass <clemens at wass.at>:

> Thank you for your comments!
>
> @Eric: We have our internal kick-off meeting in two weeks at the
> University of Amsterdam. We will set up the project management there. I am
> sure we will have a github link soon. Looking forward to your support!
>
> @Jörn: Agree - this is certainly a problem with preliminary solutions and
> we also had controversial internal discussions on this Google custom
> search. But then we ended up at the users' point of view and they are
> really happy to use this solution right now as an alternative to national
> database interfaces. This is not to praise Google, it simply shows that a
> lot can be done on a member state level when it comes to legal databases. I
> have worked as a legal in-house counsel but are still sometimes struggling
> with the national databases (in my case Austria, and this should not be the
> worst system, since it has won some awards in the past years). So let's try
> to come up with a solution that is open and much better than Google. I will
> be happy to shut this preliminary tool down as soon as possible when we
> have an alternative! The more we work together, the sooner this will be!
>
> All the best,
>
> Clemens
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 2014-04-02 22:04 GMT+02:00 Jörn Erbguth <joern at erbguth.net>:
>
>> Dear Clemens,
>>
>> I tend to agree - criticizing that not everything is based on open
>> standards since day 1 seems a bit hypercritic.
>>
>> However preliminary solutions tend to persist and I know more than one
>> project that claimed to be open but in fact stuck to at first preliminary
>> proprietary solutions till the end. I think that Eriks mail could serve you
>> as a good reminder not to do that.
>>
>>
>>
>> Good luck with your project!
>>
>>
>>
>> Best regards
>>
>>
>>
>> Jörn
>>
>>
>>
>> *Von:* open-legislation [mailto:open-legislation-bounces at lists.okfn.org] *Im
>> Auftrag von *Clemens Wass
>> *Gesendet:* Mittwoch, 2. April 2014 21:59
>> *An:* JOSEFSSON Erik
>> *Cc:* open-legislation
>> *Betreff:* Re: [Open-Legislation] openlaws.eu EU Project starting today
>>
>>
>>
>> Dear Erik,
>>
>>
>>
>> what is your point?
>>
>>
>>
>> I understand that you get angry by reading the word Google. I agree that
>> Google is NOT the solution. What we do is to provide a Google Custom Search
>> for a few selected legal domains as a quick and - in your eyes VERY - dirty
>> solution FOR THE BEGINNING. I would prefer to have a solar/lucene/nutch
>> solution running by today that has built a huge index already. But this is
>> day 2.
>>
>> I know many legal experts who are using Google because the search
>> capabilities of the national database are not sufficient. They teach that
>> even at university in legal research courses. Is your suggestion to take
>> that search down immediately?
>>
>>
>>
>> Regarding licenses: Again, this is day 2. We have no software yet. We
>> have not defined yet which tools we will use for building the platform. The
>> software will be licensed accordingly under an open source license. I am
>> sorry I cannot say more at the moment, but why do you doubt that?
>>
>>
>>
>> We are trying to build a system based on open source software, open
>> innovation and open data. What is wrong with that?
>>
>>
>>
>> There has not a lot been going on on this mailing list since quite a
>> while and I think this a positive signal for open legislation. I hope that
>> there will be a productive discussion and all suggestions are highly
>> welcome.
>>
>>
>>
>> So Eric, what are your suggestions?
>>
>>
>>
>> Best, Clemens
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 2014-04-02 21:17 GMT+02:00 JOSEFSSON Erik <
>> erik.josefsson at europarl.europa.eu>:
>>
>> Congratulations to a dead born baby*.
>>
>>
>>
>> There is no information **whatsoever** on the website on which licence
>> you release source code under, if at all.
>>
>>
>>
>> There is a confident reference to the Commission's "Open Innovation 2.0"
>> which according to its own website is " "a mash-up of ideas into action to
>> make things happen".
>>
>>
>>
>> Good luck.
>>
>>
>>
>> //Erik
>>
>>
>>
>> * Please note that during our start-up phase we are currently using a
>> Google Custom Search engine for the meta search. As the project evolves, we
>> will integrate more "open" solutions.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* open-legislation [mailto:open-legislation-bounces at lists.okfn.org]
>> *On Behalf Of *Clemens Wass
>> *Sent:* 01 April 2014 15:10
>> *To:* open-legislation
>> *Subject:* [Open-Legislation] openlaws.eu EU Project starting today
>>
>>
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>>
>>
>> today is the official starting date for the openlaws.eu project, an EU
>> Project funded by DG Justice.
>>
>>
>>
>> The project is about making legislation and case law more accessible for
>> citizens, businesses, legal experts and also public bodies and legal
>> publishers. The project is built on open data, open innovation principles
>> and open source software.
>>
>> The initial term for the project is 24 months. It was ranked #1 by DG
>> Justice, so expectations are certainly high! Hopefully we will see the
>> first results soon!
>>
>>
>>
>> Have a look at the openlaws.eu website for more details (www.openlaws.eu)
>> and follow the project on twitter (https://twitter.com/openlaws,
>> @openlaws). Comments and ideas are highly welcome!
>>
>>
>>
>> Best,
>>
>>
>>
>> Clemens
>>
>>
>>
>> PS: This is not an April Fools' Day joke - law IS finally opening up!
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> open-legislation mailing list
> open-legislation at lists.okfn.org
> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-legislation
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/open-legislation
>
>

-- 
Francis Davey
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-legislation/attachments/20140402/96c07c42/attachment-0002.html>