Purpose of this talk. The role of standards and legislative standards. Summary. Network effect (1) Good network effect. Network effect (2)

Transcription

1 Purpose of this talk The role of standards and legislative standards Prof. Fabio Vitali University of Bologna Since modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are instrumental to the best access of citizens to legislation I claim that only through standards for data, processes and identification of legislation document we can exploit the advantages of ICT and therefore I will introduce the main issues of standards and the main aspects of standardization activities with particular attention to legislative and parliamentary documents Next: Summary 2/28 Network effect Summary - Good network effect: increased common good - Bad network effect: lock-in and monopolies Standards - Types of standards: s. de iure, s. de facto - Standard bodies - Phases of a standard What does standardizing actually mean? - Standardizing what - Standardizing for whom - Lifecycle of standards Standards in legislative processes Network effect (1) We call network effect the increase in the customers' value of a good or service that depends on the number of other customers who use the good or the service. In other words, the value given by the number of prior adopters independently of the intrinsic value of the good or service itself. - E.g. a telephone is as useful as the number of people that own a telephone whom I may want to call. - A video recording technology is only as useful as the number of movies I am able to find based that technology, and the number (and price) of devices that can use that technology. Early phases of the introduction of a new product are slow because the network effect is still perceived as low. But If and when a critical mass is reached, the perceived value given by the network effect suddenly increases sufficiently and the success of the product is guaranteed. Next: Network effect (1) 3/28 Next: Network effect (2) 4/28 Network effect (2) Especially in technologies, products do not exist in isolation. For a product or service to reach the critical mass that kicks in the network effect, other products and services need to be made available that make the first one useful and desirable. These products succeed together or fail together: - Screwdrivers and screws - Tapes and tape recorders - Disks and disk players - Operating systems and software applications We call these interlocked products: if one fails, all fail; the success of one leads the success of the others. Good network effect If all the interlocked products are freely produced in a thriving competitive market, the deficiency of one product does not affect the eventual success of the whole. A bad product is replaced by a better one produced by a competitor without harming the overall network effect. Price competition starts and the overall value for the end user increase, thereby further improving on the network effect - screws and screwdrivers - VHS and VHS players Next: Good network effect 5/28 Next: Bad network effect 6/28 1

2 Bad network effect If all the interlocked products are produced by a single company, or by a tight group of companies preventing newcomers to enter the market, The impact of a bad product can be disastrous on the whole, and no price competition starts, therefore the network effect is more limited A successful network effect on proprietary products can lead to customer lock-in and eventually to monopolies. - Operating systems and software applications - Cell phone and cell phone chargers Standards Standards are shared parts, procedures, processes, products that are instrumental to guarantee that interlocked products work together correctly. The correct adoption of a standard technology ensures one's product to flow with the rest of the interlocked products and succeed and fail together. Adoption of a standard can be encouraged or prevented if the competitive marketplace is felt to require widening or trimming Next: Standards 7/28 Next: Types of standards 8/28 Acceptable solutions manual conversions converters Standards de facto Single source standards Industry consortia standards Types of standards Silent Practices public API Standards de iure Competing and overlapping standards Ambiguous standards Government mandates Proprietary solutions Non-ambiguous and undisputed standards Connectivity islands Lifecycle of Standards Standards pass through three phases: - Invention: one or more interested parties discuss some interoperability requirements. - Formalization: a common document is generated that is formally approved in all its parts by the interested parties and (ideally) promulgated by a standard body - Proliferation: participating parties, and all other parties that are interested in it, generate or fix products and procedures to fit to the provisions of the standard. Obviously, proliferation is the most important phases in that it is the only one that guarantees any actual impact of the standard on real life. Next: Lifecycle of Standards 9/28 Next: Standard bodies 10/28 Standard bodies Ad hoc industrial consortia - E.g.: Bluetooth, GSM, etc. General purpose industrial consortia - E.g.: OASIS, ECMA, etc. Non official international organizations - E.g., W3C (onerous participation of organizations), IETF (free participation of individuals) National SDOs (standard development organizations) - E.g.: UNI in Italy, DIN in Germany, ANSI in USA, BSI in UK, etc. International SDOs - Regional: CEN in Europe, ARSO in Africa, COPANT in America, or International such as ISO, IEC and ITU. Next: Sharing the goal 11/28 Sharing the goal What are we standardizing exactly? - Vocabulary - Data - Metadata - Processes - Functions - Tools - etc. And for whom? - Product developers - Content developers - Publishers - End users - Etc. Identifying the actors 12/28 2

3 Standardizing the legislative domain Identifying the actors Content authors (e.g. legislators) - Complete access to competing drafts, - Clear presentation tools for comparison of amendments, - Direct access to supporting documentation. Back office (e.g., drafting offices) - Fast and effective action on approved amendments, - Reliable and usable tools for consolidation, - Monitoring of drafting process Content publishers (e.g., private publishers) - Fast and reliable publication cycle (both print and online) - Inclusion of value adding content (e.g. commentaries) Professional end users (e.g. judges, lawyers, etc.) - Direct and effective access to relevant (i.e., up-to-date) norms (legislative and non legislative) General end-users (general citizens) - Access to clear and unambiguous current governing norms Identifying the processes 13/28 Standardizing the legislative domain Identifying the processes Publication - Web publication - Paper publication - Publication for special users (e.g., blind users) Workflow management - Both during drafting and in the active lifecycle of the act Consolidation Content analysis - Textual analysis - Provision analysis - Historical analysis Identifying the guiding principles 14/28 Standardizing the legislative domain Identifying the guiding principles A good document standard should - Convey faithfully the content as delivered - Allow for multiple applications, way beyond mere presentation (even currently unforeseeable ones) - Cater to the needs of the data consumers, and not only of the data producers - Be technology independent (long term vision) - Widen the scope (types of documents, participating countries, uses, etc.) e.g. : - Lay good, solid foundations (e.g. patterns) - Clearly separate presentation and content - Allow for additional (editorial) content, both structured (metadata) and unstructured (comments and annotations) - Allow for multiple, independent, competing additional (editorial) content - Allow for custom annotations and metadata Next: Tools or data formats? 15/28 Tools Tools or data formats? - Are technology-dependent - impose a single view on processes, results, data - Associate the usefulness and freshness of their output data to their own Formats - Are technology independent - May allow different tools both at the same time (competing marketplca) both thoughout time (tools contantly up to date with technology) - Data usefulness and freshness is independent of the tools' own usefulness and freshness. If a standard is needed, it is more appropriate to standardize formats than tools. Next: Existing legislative standards 16/28 Existing legislative standards NormeInRete NL Metalex LexDania Akoma Ntoso CEN Metalex Norme In Rete (1999-present) Norms on the Net Italian standard sponsored by the Ministry of Justice ( present) first, then AIPA, now CNIPA, to develop - An XML-based data format for national, regional and local norms - A naming schema to identify all relevant documents, both available and unavailable, both existing and potential - A distributed, federated architecture allowing for multiple storage centers with overlapping competencies, official and not official, unified by a single search engine National standard, adopted by a large number of institutions both at the national and local level. Next: Norme In Rete (1999-present) 17/28 Next: Norme In Rete - Document Schema 18/28 3

4 Norme In Rete - Document Schema The data format started as a DTD and is now in DTD and XML schema kept in sync Three schemas: - Complete: a fully expressive prescriptive schema to force documents to follow good drafting rules - Flexible: a fully expressive descriptive schema to cater for and describe non-compliant documents, such as legacy documents, non-national documents, badly formed documents, etc. - Base: a limited schema for simple and frequent cases of acts that have simpler requirements and are very regular. The DTDs are compatible WRT vocabulary and constraints. Currently for approved acts only (for all levels of legislation). Discussion on support for bills, and aborted judiciary support. Strong on metadata for consolidation and provision analysis. Next: NL Metalex 19/28 NL Metalex Developed as part of the E-POWER European project, aimed at using ICT to support citizens and governments with the increasing body of law. It allows for exchange and comparison of legal documents from different sources (such as publishers). Metalex makes only minimal requirements on the structure of documents. Currently, Metalex is used by the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration, Be Value, the Belgian Public Centers for Welfare and others Next: NL Metalex - Document Schema 20/28 NL Metalex - Document Schema Independent of jurisdiction, and language independent. Metalex XML can freely be mingled with other XML schemas, as Metalex does not interfere with other XML vocabulary such as those used by publishers. Strict division of containers (elements that contain other containers or blocks in a defined sequence), blocks (elements occurring within containers, containing mixed text and inline elements) and inline elements (elements that occur within text). This results in a clear structure with less chance of errors. Based on several existing standards of the W3C: XML, RDF, OWL, XLink, XHTML, Web naming and addressing, XSL, and XML Base. LexDania National Danish system for the creation and interchange of legislative documentation. Started by the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation then continued by the Retsinformation (Ministry of Justice) and the Folketinget (Danish Parliament). Development used the basic data model / methodology of the General Danish Public Information Online (OIO) XML strategy. - choosing a set of central types and elements (standards if possible), creating sets of building blocks for national use, (re-)using building blocks to create specific legislative schemas. - A structure of stratified layers is used to incrementally construct the schemas from functional features rather than document characteristics Development of a system of schemas for the systematic creation and maintenance of document types and application schemas. Next: LexDania 21/28 Next: Lex Dania - Document Schema 22/28 Lex Dania - Document Schema The framework is stratified, with each layer consisting of schemas. Currently 3 layers are used: a meta-schema in the first layer, omni-schemas in the second and application schemas in the third. The fundamental syntactic details are contained in a single schema defining data types that are used as templates for (i) the content (ii) structure of all legislative documentation (iii) common addressing (iv) referencing scheme There is also a metadata schema supported by a schema (initially envisaged to be written in RDF) for importing and defining metadata vocabularies. Akoma Ntoso (2004-present) Sponsored by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), born in 2004 and now being adopted by a increasing number of African countries. Architecture for Knowledge-Oriented Management of African Normative Texts using Open Standards and Ontologies. - Describing structures for legislative documents in XML - Referencing documents within and across countries using URIs - Adding systematic metadata to documents using ontologically sound approaches based on OWL, FRBR, etc. for describing and managing legislative documents and Parliamentary workflow documentation needs in Africa Easy to implement, easy to understand, easy to use, yet complete, precise and reliable Next: Akoma Ntoso (2004-present) 23/28 Next: Akoma Ntoso - Document Schema 24/28 4

5 Akoma Ntoso - Document Schema The data format started directly in both DTD and XML schema kept in sync. XML schema is authoritative, while DTDs are informative only. Strong emphasis on usage of patterns and controlled design methodologies. Strong on multilinguism, multiculture, etc. Since 2006 for approved acts, drafts and bills, debate records, hansards, etc. In 2009 initial support for judiciary (ongoing). Strong on metadata for consolidation and FRBR levels. Ongoing developments on metadata for interpretation and legal analysis. CEN Metalex (2006-present) CEN-sponsored initiative for an XML-based interchange format for European-wide legislative systems. - Born in Still ongoing - Output for ongoing European projects Basic ideas: to identify similar structures through roles rather than vocabulary: - an article is an article regardless of how it is called. Naming, workflow, references are also managed - to support functionality without giving up generality. Next: CEN Metalex (2006-present) 25/28 Next: CEN Metalex - Document Schema 26/28 CEN Metalex - Document Schema The data format is in both DTD and XML schema kept in sync Fairly complicated structure that provides qualification to any real vocabulary, rather than a new vocabulary. All considered vocabularies can be converted into CEN Metalex by simply adding appropriate attributes here and there. Being an interchange format, the purpose is NOT presentation or hypertext support. Rather, automatic and semi-automatic understanding of roles and structure of documents so as to facilitate conversion. No specific document type (but very generically for strongly hierarchical documents). Very abstract, Hard to explain, hard to use. Very powerful expressively. Conclusions Standards are an imperfect way, but the best so far, to provide fuel for network effect for the success of products and services without succumbing to lock-in and monopolies. Body standards and processes differ considerably, but share the final output of a written and detailed agreement of interoperability among interlocking products and services Standards in legislative documents vary considerably in terms of scope, actors, and focus. Akoma Ntoso is the only standard that has been planned on purpose to cater to normative documents of different countries and legal systems. CEN Metalex is aiming at providing the connectivity glue that allows all existing schema to keep on working by reaching compatibility and interoperability at a higher level. Next: Conclusions 27/28 Fine presentazione 28/28 5