Legislation as Data

John Sheridan

25 January 2012

Legislation as data

• “The acceptance of the rule of law as a constitutional principle requires that a citizen, before committing himself to any course of action, should be able to know in advance what are the legal principles which flow from it”

– Lord Diplock, House of Lords, 1975

• “The law must be adequately accessible”

– European Court of Human Rights

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The web has changed who is accessing legislation and why, just as much as it has changed access to healthcare information

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An old slide (from 2005)

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Legislation as data

• Three considerations for legislation as datao Typographic layouto Versioning / changes over timeo Semantics

• Semantic representation using RDF and Linked Datao URIs for thingso RDF data modelo subject - property - object

• Requires granular URIs to name thingso Identifiero Documento Representation

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Foundations - naming things

• If you visit legislation.gov.uk you will see we have taken great care with naming things

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Returns an html document for United Kingdom Public General Act (ukpga), 2005, Chapter 14, Section 1

Returns an html document with a list from all legislation types where the title contains “wildlife”

Some of the names are quite sophisticated…

• UK Public General Act (ukpga)• 1981• Chapter 69• Section 5• As it extends to England• As it stood on 30th January 2001• Displayed as an HTML document with the timeline on

• Although URIs are opaque having this type of design changes how people use the service

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European Legislation Identifier

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New Statutory Instruments 2000-2012 (by size of the legislation)

Domestic

European

Regulations

Regulations

Orders

Rules

Temporary

Amending

Amending

New

New

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New Regulations 2000-2012 (by size of the legislation)

Domestic

European

Amending

New

Amending

New

Legislation as data, legislation as code

• Legislation as data – the information contained in legislation can be accessed and used by computer programs

• Legislation as code – legislation is (or becomes) a set of processing instructions for a computer to follow

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Data

• All the information on legislation.gov.uk is available as open data under the terms of the Open Government Licence

• To access the data, visit any page and add:o /data.xmlo /data.rdfo /data.xht

• For listso /data.feed

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Linked Data

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Henry Maudslay (1771–1831)

He also developed the first industrially practical screw-cutting lathe in 1800, allowing standardisation of screw thread sizes for the first time. This allowed the concept of interchangeability (a idea that was already taking hold) to be practically applied to nuts and bolts. Before this, all nuts and bolts had to be made as matching pairs only. This meant that when machines were disassembled, careful account had to be kept of the matching nuts and bolts ready for when reassembly took place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Maudslay

Unstructured text

HTML web pages, PDF documents

Structured data

CSV files, RDF Linked Data

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Ever since the start of the Semantic Web developments, one of the issues was how to make various types of data available on the Semantic Web for, eg, further integration. Technically, this means making the data available in RDF. One approach is to encode the RDF data in one of its serialization formats, ie, RDF/XML or Turtle, but that approach does not really scale. Interfaces to databases are being developed that can, for example, provide on-the-fly conversion of data into RDF, often via SPARQL endpoints. Automatic or semi-automatic conversions exist for a number of other formats. In general it has been recognized that one should not look for one specific approach; rather, different types of data on the Web require their own, data-specific way of expressing

Documents Data

Unstructured text

HTML web pages, PDF documents

Structured data

CSV files, RDF Linked Data

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Ever since the start of the Semantic Web developments, one of the issues was how to make various types of data available on the Semantic Web for, eg, further integration. Technically, this means making the data available in RDF. One approach is to encode the RDF data in one of its serialization formats, ie, RDF/XML or Turtle, but that approach does not really scale. Interfaces to databases are being developed that can, for example, provide on-the-fly conversion of data into RDF, often via SPARQL endpoints. Automatic or semi-automatic conversions exist for a number of other formats. In general it has been recognized that one should not look for one specific approach; rather, different types of data on the Web require their own, data-specific way of expressing

Documents DataFacts in legislation as structured data

Linked Data

• URIs to name things• Graph based data model

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So how does Linked Data help?

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Amending legislation

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Section 12 (4) amends the Charities Act 1993, inserting some words into this Act.

Bringing into force the Act

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But what about Section 12???

Sections 15 to 20 come into force immediately when the Act is passed

So, “A” changes “B” when “C” says so

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So the timing for the rest of the Act coming into force is left open for the Secretary of State to decide…

Section 12 (4) came into force 1/1/2011

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Coming into force on 1st January 2011

Section 12 (4)

“A” changes “B” when “C” says so

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Academies Act 2010

Section 19 (2)

Academies Act 2010

Section 12 (4)

SI 2010/1937 Schedule 3

Charities Act 1993 Schedule

2 (ca)

Secretary of State

Confers power

Makes

Commences

Inserts text into

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Location

Time

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Location

Time

Concepts

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Location

Time

Concepts

Many of these aredefined in legislation

Data, data, everywhere

• Data in legislationo Definitionso Changeso Dutieso Powerso Offenceso Transpositionso Designations

• Data about legislationo Economic - Impact Assessmentso Social – opinions on twitter

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Concepts are defined in legislation

• What does it mean to be a company• What does it mean to be a school• and so on…

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Designation

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Economic data

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Transposition

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What changes to the law improve the conviction rates?

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What changes to the law improve the conviction rates?

Changes to

legislation

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What changes to the law improve the conviction rates?

Changes to

legislation

Conviction rates

statistics

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What changes to the law improve the conviction rates?

Changes to

legislation

Conviction rates

statistics

Linked Data Standards

Legislation URIs link everything together

• Identifiero http://www.legislation.gov.uk/id/{type}/{year}/{number}/section/{number}o eg http://www.legislation.gov.uk/id/ukpga/2010/32/section/12/4

• Documento http://www.legislation.gov.uk/{type}/{year}/{number}/section/{number}o eg http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/32/section/12#section-12-4

• Representationso /data.xmlo /data.xhto /data.pdfo /data.rdfo and for any list, /data.feed

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Not all information is equal

• Publishing digital information changes the form of the content

• The facts on which £ billions turn or that impact on people’s lives require different treatment from the ephemeral – not least to ensure the integrity of the public record

• Who is making information available, by what right, what processes has it been subject to, become key questions

• Increasingly important to express provenance for high-end sources of information, such as legislation.gov.uk

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Open Data as Operating Model

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Inspirations: Open Source Software

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Why does Open Source Software work?

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“The impossible public good”?

• Large and complex systems• Enabled by the internet• Two elements,

o a system of sustainable value creationo a system of governance

holds together a community of producers• Distributed property rights, eg the GNU Public

Licence (GPL)

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Can we apply the same logic to data?

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Open Government Data: a new impossible public good?

• Large and complex data• Enabled by the internet• Two elements,

o a system of sustainable value creationo a system of governance

holds together a community of producers• Distributed property rights enabled by the Open

Government Licence

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Expert Participation

• Make the data available maximise, encourage and support re-use

• Inside-out, transform internal processes, systems and tools to external ones

• Retain what adds value – practice, process and control• Invite expert participation from other parts of government,

businesses, academics and individuals• Open data enables investment

Challenges

• Governance• Process• Quality• Technology• Culture• Guarantees

Legislation data as a public good

• Old world: commercially licence the data to bring in the resources needed to create and maintain high quality information that is easy to re-use

• New world: open the data and enable participation, to bring in the resources needed to create and maintain high quality information that is easy to re-use

Final thoughts

“We shape our tools and they in turn shape us”

– Marshall McLuhan

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