friday lunchtime lecture - legislation as data

7/29/2019 Friday lunchtime lecture - Legislation as Data

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John Sheridan

Open Data Institute Friday Lunchtime

Lectures, 25 January 2012

Legislation as data


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The acceptance of the rule of law as a constitutional

principle requires that a citizen, before committing himself toany 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 andwhy, 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 takengreat 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


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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


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Legislation as data, legislation as code

Legislation as data the information contained in legislationcan be accessed and used by computer programs

Legislation as code legislation is (or becomes) a set ofprocessing instructions for a computer to follow

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Data

All the information on legislation.gov.uk is available as opendata 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 (17711831)

He also developed the first industriallypractical screw-cutting lathe in 1800, allowing

standardisation ofscrew thread sizes for thefirst time. This allowed the concept of

interchangeability (a idea that was alreadytaking hold) to be practically applied to nuts

and bolts. Before this, all nuts and bolts hadto be made as matching pairs only. Thismeant that when machines were

disassembled, careful account had to be kept

of the matching nuts and bolts ready for whenreassembly took place.

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


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Unstructured text

HTML web pages,PDF documents

Structured data

CSV files, RDFLinked 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 Webfor, 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


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Unstructured text

HTML web pages,PDF documents

Structured data

CSV files, RDFLinked 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 Webfor, 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 asstructured 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

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


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Bringing into force the Act

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But what about Section 12???

Sections 15 to 20 come into forceimmediately when the Act is passed


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So, A changes B when C says so

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


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

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Coming into force on 1stJanuary 2011

Section 12 (4)


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A changes B when C says so

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Academies

Act 2010

Section 19 (2)

AcademiesAct 2010

Section 12 (4)

SI 2010/1937Schedule 3

Charities Act1993 Schedule

2 (ca)

Secretary ofState

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


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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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Wh t h t th l i th


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What changes to the law improve the

conviction rates?

Wh t h t th l i th


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conviction rates?

Changes

to

legislation

Wh t h t th l i th


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conviction rates?

Changes

to

legislation

Conviction

rates

statistics

Wh t h t th l i th


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conviction rates?

Changes

to

legislation

Conviction

rates

statistics

Linked Data Standards


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Legislation URIs link everythingtogether

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 thecontent

The facts on which billions turn or that impact on peopleslives require different treatment from the ephemeral notleast to ensure the integrity of the public record

Who is making information available, by what right, whatprocesses 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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O S S f ?


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Why does Open Source Software work?

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Th i ibl bli d?


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The impossible public good?

Large and complex systems Enabled by the internet Two elements,

oa system of sustainable value creationoa system of governance

holds together a community of producers

Distributed property rights, eg the GNU PublicLicence (GPL)

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C l th l i t d t ?


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Can we apply the same logic to data?

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O G t D t i ibl


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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 OpenGovernment Licence

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E t P ti i ti


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Expert Participation

Make the data available maximise, encourage and supportre-use

Inside-out, transform internal processes, systems and toolsto 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

Ch ll


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Challenges

Governance Process Quality Technology Culture Guarantees

L i l ti d t bli d


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Legislation data as a public good

Old world: commercially licence the data to bring in theresources needed to create and maintain high qualityinformation that is easy to re-use

New world: open the data and enable participation, tobring in the resources needed to create and maintain high

quality information that is easy to re-use

Fi l th ht


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Final thoughts

We shape our tools and they in turn shape us

Marshall McLuhan

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Th k


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Thank you

John Sheridan

Head of Legislation Services at The National ArchivesTwitter: @johnlsheridan