Legislation as data

John Sheridan Open Data Institute Friday Lunchtime Lectures, 25 January 2012

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

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

An old slide (from 2005)

Legislation as data
Three considerations for legislation as data
o Typographic layout o Versioning / changes over time o Semantics

Semantic representation using RDF and Linked Data

o URIs for things o RDF data model o subject - property - object

Requires granular URIs to name things

o Identifier o Document o Representation

Foundations - naming things

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

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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Domestic
New

Amending

European
New Temporary Amending

Regulations

Rules

Regulations Orders

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

Domestic

European
New

New

Amending

Amending

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

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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.xml o /data.rdf o /data.xht

For lists
o /data.feed

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Linked Data

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Henry Maudslay

(17711831)

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

Documents of the Semantic Web Ever since the start

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

Data

Unstructured text HTML web pages, PDF documents

Structured data CSV files, RDF Linked Data

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Documents of the Semantic WebFacts in legislation as Ever since the start

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

structured data

Data

Unstructured text HTML web pages, PDF documents

Structured data CSV files, RDF Linked Data

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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

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

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Bringing into force the Act

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

But what about Section 12???

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So, A changes B when C says so

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

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

Coming into force on 1st January 2011

Section 12 (4)
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A changes B when C says so

Academies Act 2010 Section 19 (2) Confers power Secretary of State

Makes Academies Act 2010 Section 12 (4) Commences

SI 2010/1937 Schedule 3

Inserts text into Charities Act 1993 Schedule 2 (ca)

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Location

Time

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Location

Concepts

Time

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Location

Concepts
Many of these are defined in legislation

Time

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Data, data, everywhere

Data in legislation o Definitions o Changes o Duties o Powers o Offences o Transpositions o Designations Data about legislation o Economic - Impact Assessments o 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

Linked Data Standards

Conviction rates statistics

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Legislation URIs link everything together

Identifier
o 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

Document
o 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

Representations
o /data.xml o /data.xht o /data.pdf o /data.rdf o 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 peoples 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 creation o 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 creation o 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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Thank you
John Sheridan Head of Legislation Services at The National Archives Twitter: @johnlsheridan

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