1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

23
1 Legal Information Legal Information Retrieval on the Web Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi Costantino Ciampi

Transcript of 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

Page 1: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

1

Legal Information Legal Information Retrieval on the WebRetrieval on the Web

The Experience of the NiR PortalThe Experience of the NiR Portal

Costantino Costantino CiampiCiampi

Page 2: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

Legal Information Retrieval on the Web

The Experience of the NiR Portal(http://www.nir.it)

Costantino CiampiCostantino Ciampi e-mail: [email protected]

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

ContentsContents

Normeinrete (NIR) – “Access to Law on the Net”: an e-Government project

Project description (goals, technology, results) Standardization in the legal domain:

XML representation of Italian norms URN adoption to automate hyperlinking among norms in a

distributed environment

Rome, 26 April 2004

Clip video

Page 3: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

3

NiR Project "Access to Law on the Net"

• Improving accessibility to legislation by providing a unique point of access to Italian and EU legal documents published on different web sites– ICT to allow rights fulfillment

• Supporting PA in managing legislative documentation life cycle and law consolidation by providing standardization, software tools and methodologies – ICT to improve PA efficiency

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

Project goals

A system prototype (third version) is available at the Url:http://www.normeinrete.it

Page 4: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

4

• Main Actors:– Minister of Justice (beginner) (www.giustizia.it)

– AIPA -> CNIPA - (Authority ->) National Center for Information Technology in the Public Administration (founder and technical coordinator) (now CNIPA) (www.cnipa.it)

• Scientific and Technical Partners:– Institute of Legal Information Theory and Technologies of

the CNR, Florence (www.ittig.cnr.it)

– CINECA Consortium, Bologna (www.cineca.it)

• Public Administrations participating at the Project

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

NiR Actors

Page 5: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

5

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

• Phase I (May 1999 - May 2000)First Study of feasibility and realization of the Portal prototype

• Phase II (December 2000 - November 2001)Second Study of feasibility, extension of the documentary base and qualitative evolution of the Portal prototype

• Phase III (years 2002/2003)Definition of standards (URN and XML) and preparation of the software for the dissemination of the standards (parser of references and parser of structures, NIREditor XML)

• Phase IV (years 2004/2005)Commitment to external managers and full operation of the NIR Portal (with economic resources from the e-Government programme and Italian financial laws)

Steps and Resources of the NiR Project

Page 6: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

6

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

• Implementation of a specialized portal, delivering search and retrieval functions of legislative documents published on various Public Administration's web sites;

• Definition of standards, consistent with Internet technologies, to represent data and metadata meaningful in the legal domain;

• Development and distribution of open source software to support legislative document management and publishing;

• Training and knowledge sharing among Public Administrations.

NiR Project Strategy

Page 7: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

7

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

•www.normeinrete.it: provides unified access to Italian and European Union legislation published on different institutional web sites

So far– more than 50 public institutions have taken part in the Project;

– more than 140,000 documents have been indexed;

– about 160,000 search sessions are held monthly on the site;

– creation and updating of the NiR Legal Database ("Norm Catalogue") including metadata;

– definition of the NiR Standards.

• Two standards issued by AIPA/CNIPA as technical norms – DTDs definition for Italian legislation;

– URN definition for any kind of legal document;

– Editors and other software tools developed and distributed to PA to support standard implementation.

Present Results

Page 8: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

8

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

•The system is based on co-operative technological architecture, resulting in a federation of legislative data bases

developed on different platforms.

•Co-operation is achieved by means of suitable application gateways which provide "loose" integration by adopting two

standards:

– one for identifying legal resources (URNs), and

– one for representing document structures and metadata by XML mark-up language according to ad hoc DTDs.

NiR Features

Page 9: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

9

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

Searching Tools and Architecture of the NIR System (1)

The NIR System consists of:

• NiR nodes: components belonging to administration domains

containing legal database systems and related application

gateways. Documents can be stored in the file system or

within database/full text management systems: they are all

accessible through the Internet

• Central registries: components in the co-operative layer

publishing information, needed to allow effective co-operation

Page 10: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

10

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

Searching Tools and Architecture of the NIR System (2)

• Central registries include:– Standards repository (XML DTD and URN grammar

definitions and tools);

– Registry of official Authority names, needed to standardise URN adoption;

– Registry of NiR nodes, containing information needed to allow interaction between NiR agents and domain application gateways;

– Norm Catalogue, containing, for each norm: title, basic classification, URN and the list of known physical addresses (URL) where it is published.

Page 11: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

11

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

The Norm Catalogue(> 45.000 documents)

– The Norm Catalogue is a relational database containing, for each norm:title, basic classification, URN and the list of known physical addresses (URL) where it is published

Page 12: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

12

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

NiR Standards

• Uniform Resource Name (URN) definition (based on IETF) to:

– identify each document regardless of its physical address (URL)

– allow automatic hyperlink through a resolution system (as DNS)

• Document Type Definition (DTD) for Italian legislative and regulatory acts (based on W3C XML Meta-language) to

represent documents structure, semantics and metadata

(*) The standards have been issued as AIPA/CNIPA technical standards and published as regulations in the Italian Official Journal

Page 13: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

13

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

URNs(1/3)

• Each law contains several references to other laws: the whole legislative corpus can be seen as a net, laws being nodes connected through references;

• Manual activity is required to build laws hypertext through URLs;

• The URN is a persistent, location-independent, resource identification mechanism;

• The URNs are defined as a combination of elements, according to a specific grammar, that are basically: name of the enacting Authority, type of norm, date, number and a some more detailed specifications when needed;

• URNs can be built regardless the availability of corresponding documents on-line.

Page 14: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

14

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

URNs(2/3)

• The adoption of a URN-based scheme allows to build an automated distributed hypertext, according to a model similar to the DNS (Domain Name System) used to resolve the self-explaining web sites' names into numerical HTTP addresses.

• This opportunity relies on the following considerations:– the natural language expressions used in law references usually

contain repetitive patterns, thus automatically detectable;

– the URN is built by combining data (almost) always included in the reference;

– cross references between each URN and the list of corresponding URLs, needed for the resolution service, can be built automatically.

Page 15: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

15

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

URNs: tools and examples(3/3)

• Parser

– Available on-line, automatically detects references within laws.

• Resolution service– Resolves URNs into URLs (when known).

Clip video

Page 16: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

16

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

XML Representationof Italian Legislative and Regulatory

Acts(1/5)

Documents with a well-defined structure– laws, constitutional laws, regional laws

Documents partially structured– regulation acts, decrees

Generic documents – any kind of non-structured acts, enclosures,..

Three categories

Page 17: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

17

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

• Basic DTD: well structured simple documents

• Strict DTD: well structured complex documents

• Loose DTD: documents with irregular structure, exceptions (suitable for historical documents)

Three DTDs

DTD definition approach(2/5)

Each DTD can represent several document types

Mark-up must be carried out using only relevant elements

Page 18: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

18

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

• Structural elements– heading, preamble, sections, articles, paragraphs...

• Special elements– references to other laws, formatted representation of

text-embedded relevant entities (institution, dates, places)

• Elements containing Metadata – subject-matter classification, publication data,

preparatory iter

• Semantic elements – obligation, prohibition, penalties, exceptions,

modifications, abrogations,...

XML Elements (categories)(3/5)

Page 19: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

19

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

• Example of an Italian Act, tagged with DTD Basic

• Examples of fragments of legal texts in different formats (XML vs Html)

Examples of Legal Texts in XML(4/5)

Clip video

Documento di Microsoft Word

• Navigating the document structure with a visual XML editor

Page 20: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

20

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

Considering the relevance of XML to NIR:

• an intense training activity has been carried out, also

with the aid of multimedia e-learning product

developed by ITTIG-CNR;

• an XML Editor, that will be distributed as open

source software, has been developed and enriched of

parsing functions by ITTIG-CNR .

Training on XML and Development of an XML NirEditor

(5/5)

Clip video

Clip video

Page 21: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

21

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

• Advanced search functions

• Supporting legislative documents life-cycle (law enacting workflow, "law in force" at any given date)

• Moving from a totally “free” approach to a more formally-defined organizational model in order to achieve completeness and to improve precision

Opportunities deriving from NIR standards

Page 22: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

22

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

• Software tools to support Administrations in the

adoption of NiR standards

• XML Schema definition

• Parsing services

• New metadata

• Implementation of distributed URN resolution

• Certification of the authenticity of acts through

digital signature technology

Conclusive Remarks:Current Developments and Future Initiatives

Page 23: 1 Legal Information Retrieval on the Web The Experience of the NiR Portal Costantino Ciampi.

23

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHEIstituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

h t

t p

: /

/ w

w w

. i

t t

i g

. c

n r

. i

t

... The End …