Presentation Transcript

1. Using XML to enable the Semantic Web A Practical Insight into Kenya Law A Presentation by Martin Andago
2. Introduction Kenya Law is an award winning, semi-autonomous state corporation established under the National Council for Law Reporting Act. In the structure and organization of the affairs of government, Kenya Law’s parent institution is The Judiciary of Kenya. Our mandate is: - To monitor and report on the development of Kenyan jurisprudence through the publication of the Kenya Law Reports; - To revise, consolidate and publish the Laws of Kenya; and - To undertake such other related publications and perform such other functions as may be conferred by law. Kenya Law is led by a Council of Members chaired by the Chief Justice and has a secretariat with members of staff led by a Chief Executive/Editor.
3. Background For a long time, Kenyans relied heavily on paper based laws and the possibility of digitized laws had not been explored or envisioned. When Kenya Law started its work of publishing electronic judicial decisions of the High Court and the Court of Appeal, there was a realization that these law reports must go hand in hand with Acts of Parliament and Bills for ease reference to users. This led to the digitization of the Laws of Kenya. The same was also deployed on the internet to facilitate easier access. Currently, Kenya has over 600 statutes running into over 28,000 pages of legislative text including subsidiary legislation.
4. Law Revision in Kenya Law revision in Kenya is a statutory power conferred on the Attorney General by the Revision of Laws Act (Cap 1 Laws of Kenya). The powers of law revision given to the Attorney General are very wide. He has powers to alter numbering, consolidate laws, omit certain laws, supply marginal notes and alter their arrangement. But, he may not make any alteration or amendment in the substance of any law. The Attorney General can delegate this power to anybody to carry out the revision of laws. Due to capacity constraints, the Attorney-General delegated the power to revise the Laws of Kenya to Kenya Law through Legal Notice No. 29 of 2009. Parliament had earlier, in 2007, amended Section 6(3) of the Revision of Laws Act to give legislative recognition to electronically published laws in Kenya and make them official.
5. Challenges in Law Revision A complete revision of the Laws of Kenya had not been done for over 20 years. Every year, new legislation or amendments to existing legislation and regulations made under Acts of Parliament (subsidiary legislation) are passed by Parliament and added to the body of Kenyan Law, while some Acts and Regulations are amended or repealed altogether. The need for comprehensive revision and updating of the Laws of Kenya as contemplated under the Revision of the Laws Act had become critical in order to do away with a cut and paste culture that had been adopted in order to update hard copies of legislation. This archaic method of revising laws had proved both inaccurate and unreliable.
6. Archaic Law Revision
7. The Laws of Kenya in XML In order to provide legal information in an organized, timely and universally friendly manner, Kenya Law embarked on a project to digitize all the Laws of Kenya. This project sought to revise and update all the chapters of the Laws of Kenya, and to publish the laws in print form as well as electronic media and interactive CD-ROM format, whilst also ensuring sustainability with regards to the future updating of the Laws of Kenya. In the spirit of Open access, XML was chosen as the format of choice and AkomaNtoso as the schema to ensure compliance. The development phase of the project was handled in two streams, namely Editorial and Electronic Solutions development. This enabled parallel task execution in order to guarantee successfully delivered within the given time constraints.
8. AkomaNtoso Schema AkomaNtoso, which stands for “Architecture for Knowledge-Oriented Management of African Normative Texts using Open Standards and Ontologies” defines a set of simple, technology-neutral electronic representations of documents for e-services in a worldwide context and provides an enabling framework for the effective exchange of "machine readable" documents such as legislation, debate record, minutes, judgments, among others. AkomaNtoso is the result of the efforts of the Africa i-Parliaments Action Plan to realize a common standard for the interchange of legal documents among institutions and countries. Building on the opportunities offered by open standards, it aims at supporting the development of high-value parliamentary and legislative information services. Today, institutions are striving to leverage modern information and communications technologies to radically improve the quality of their services and to improve access to information as a strategic resource for the young and active democracies.
9. AkomaNtoso Schema
10. Key Features Point in Time Referencing Point in Time allows an individual to map out the development of legislation over time, which provides for a timeline reflection of the history of amendments to a particular Act.
11. Key Features Hyperlinking A hyperlink is formed when there is a reference to another section or another act in the text of the current legislation that you are reading.
12. Key Features Export to .PDF & .RTF The new Laws of Kenya database provides two ways to work with content once you have found it. You can quickly get a PDF version of the piece of legislation that you are viewing and you can also get a RTF version that will open in your word processor.
13. Key Features Multiple Search Criteria There are several ways to find content in the Laws of Kenya database. You can search by Act Name, Act Number/Cap Number or by Full Text Search. Alternatively you can browse through the Table of Contents of the Laws of Kenya which includes all acts ordered alphabetically.
14. Arising Issues Discrepancies between Hard & Soft Copies of Legislation The Laws of Kenya XML database contains legislation that has been converted from either hard copy or soft copy to XML. The workflow through which the content runs before being availed online is meticulous to ensure that no errors, whether typographical or otherwise, slip through the cracks. Parliament had earlier, in 2007, amended Section 6(3) of the Revision of Laws Act to give legislative recognition to electronically published laws in Kenya and make them official. Nonetheless, if a discrepancy exists between the written and electronic format, the written law shall always take precedence.
15. The Way Forward The Semantic Web aims to unify the way semantic information is stored and exchanged, making it possible for one system to not just read but also “understand” the data from another source. In the past, focus was primarily directed towards the electronic dissemination of documents online with little or no attention to more sophisticated services such as hyper-textual access, semantic search, cross-jurisdictional linking, among others. As a result, we have seen a lack of uniformity in the preparation and structuring documents online. it’s time to adopt a standardized technology platform to improve data exchange, document life-cycle automation and standardized representations of data and metadata.
16. Conclusion The Constitution of Kenya guarantees the right to access public information as a fundamental right for all citizens. Kenya Law, driven by its mandate to provide access to public legal information embarked on a mission to provide the revised, updated and accurate full text of Kenya’s national legislation in an Open Document Format known as Extensible Markup Language (XML). With a seamless workflow in place, XML documents are now created, uploaded, proof-read and published online for public consumption in a format that is readily exportable.