The document discusses legislation as data and linked data. It notes that legislation contains structured data like definitions, changes, duties, and offenses that can be represented semantically using URIs, RDF, and linked data principles. This allows different pieces of legislation and related concepts and facts to be linked together to enable new types of analyses. For example, it could link changes to legislation to conviction rate statistics. Representing legislation as linked open data follows the model of open source software and could create a new "impossible public good" by openly sharing high-quality legal information.

1. Legislation as data
John Sheridan
25 January 2012

2. • “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
2

3. The web has changed who is accessing legislation and
why, just as much as it has changed access to healthcare
information
3

4. 4

5. An old slide (from 2005)
5

6. 6

7. 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
7

8. 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”
8

9. 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
9

10. 10

11. European Legislation Identifier
11

12. Domestic
New
Amending
European Regulations
Rules
New
Temporary
Amending
Regulations
Orders
New Statutory Instruments 2000-2012 (by size of the legislation)

13. Domestic
New
European
New
Amending
Amending
New Regulations 2000-2012 (by size of the legislation)
13

14. 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
14

15. 15

16. 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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17. 17

18. Linked Data
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19. 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

20. Documents of the Semantic Web
Ever since the start Data
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
Unstructured text Structured data
HTML web pages, CSV files, RDF
PDF documents Linked Data
20

21. Documents of the Semantic WebFacts in legislation as
Ever since the start Data
developments, one of the issues was how to make structured data
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
Unstructured text Structured data
HTML web pages, CSV files, RDF
PDF documents Linked Data
21

22. Linked Data
• URIs to name things
• Graph based data model
22

23. So how does Linked Data help?
23

24. Amending legislation
Section 12 (4) amends the Charities Act 1993,
inserting some words into this Act.
24

25. Bringing into force the Act
Sections 15 to 20 come into force
immediately when the Act is passed
But what about Section 12???
25

26. 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…
26

27. Section 12 (4) came into force 1/1/2011
Coming into force on 1st January 2011
Section 12 (4)
27

28. “A” changes “B” when “C” says so
Academies Confers power Secretary of
Act 2010
State
Section 19 (2)
Makes
Academies Commences SI 2010/1937
Act 2010
Schedule 3
Section 12 (4)
Inserts text into
Charities Act
1993 Schedule
2 (ca)
28

29. 29

30. 30

31. 31

32. Location
Time
32

33. Location
Concepts
Time
33

34. Location
Concepts
Many of these are
defined in legislation
Time
34

35. 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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36. Concepts are defined in legislation
• What does it mean to be a company
• What does it mean to be a school
• and so on…
36

37. 37

38. Designation
38

39. Economic data
39

40. 40

41. Transposition
41

42. What changes to the law improve the
conviction rates?
42

43. What changes to the law improve the
conviction rates?
Changes
to
legislation
43

44. What changes to the law improve the
conviction rates?
Changes Conviction
to rates
legislation statistics
44

45. What changes to the law improve the
conviction rates?
Changes Conviction
to Linked Data Standards rates
legislation statistics
45

46. 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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47. 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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48. 48

49. Open Data as Operating Model
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50. Inspirations: Open Source Software
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51. Why does Open Source Software work?
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52. “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)
52

53. Can we apply the same logic to data?
53

54. 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
54

55. 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

56. Challenges
• Governance
• Process
• Quality
• Technology
• Culture
• Guarantees

57. 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

58. Final thoughts
“We shape our tools and they in turn shape us”
– Marshall McLuhan
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