1. MANAGING LEGAL RESOURCES IN
OPEN GOVERNANCE & E-DEMOCRACY
Eunomos: an AI*Law Response
Guido Boellaa, Llio Humpreysb Robert Muthuric & Lendeert
van de Torred
a University of Turin.
b University of Turin and University of Luxembourg.
c University of Turin and University of Bologna muthuri.r@gmail.com
d University of Luxembourg

2. Introduction
• PA want to enhance scope of governance & citizens want democratic
participation
• Appreciation of the law significant for participation in democratic processes.
• Open data and Open Governance-online legal repositories (1° Access)
• Hyper-regulation (2° Access)
• Multilevel societies
• Multilevel jurisdictions
• Multilingual world
• Eunomos
• Collection and Classification of norms into domains
• Interpretation – coupling legislative text to authentic sources (provenance);
• Syncronised evolution of laws

3. Methodology: challenges
• Paper-based laws and regulations unable to scale up to tech innovation
• Diverse formats, structure and language of publishing the law-hinders semantic web
vision
• Open Data access efforts don’t solve open-texture problems (polysemy, homonymy,
ambiguity)
• IT x Law Misalignment– rule-based methodologies for computational law
• “regulators and industry can examine regulations as computational
artifacts put at disposal on the web not just as texts but as structured
knowledge dynamically linked across jurisdictions. These artefacts can then
be integrated with industry and organizational standards to become more
easily comparable and addressable.” Gordon and Breaux (2011)

4. Methodology – reconstructing the problem

5. Methodology – way forward
• To provide a computable representation of norms we need:
• Definition – ontological representation, concept holism, dynamics of norms,
argumentation
• Interpretation – cross-referencing, combining ordinary and legal concepts, decision
making
• The methodology is prompted by developments in neighbouring fields of
legislative drafting for parliaments:
• Legislative XML - structured method for organising legislation to facilitate the
management and retrieval of norms
• Legal ontologies - facilitate the semantic analysis of the information structured by
XML to aid understanding of relations between concepts
• We extrapolate these technologies in the context of applications for PA and
citizens to provide cost-effective legal knowledge management.

6. Research Question
How to create a document and knowledge management system based
on technologies from legal informatics to help PA and citizens access
and interpret the law for E-democracy?”

7. Legal Taxonomy Syllabus
• This ontology emphasises the distinction between notions of legal
concepts and legal terms i.e. terms can call on concepts to articulate
their meanings
• Allows association of different taxonomies for different languages
• Different national systems can organize the concepts in different ways based
on the same legislative XML standards.
• Currently integrates taxonomies of the EU and constituent countries

8. From : Terminological and ontological analysis of European directives:
multilinguism in law. ICAIL 2007
Using legal ontology to improve classification

9. DPR 5 FEBBRAIO 1953 , n. 39
ART. 5.
MODALITÀ DI PAGAMENTO DELLA TASSA PER GLI
AUTOVEICOLI
LA TASSA DI CIRCOLAZIONE È STABILITA IN RAGIONE DI
ANNO SOLARE.
Web spider
References
Concept extraction
DOCUMENT
MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
XML STRUCTURED
LEGISLATION
SYLLABUS’ TERMS
AND CONCEPTS
CROSS-
REFERENCES
XML Parser
ALERTS
CLASSIFICATION
USERS

11. The workflow
• Bottom-up approach: classification based on domains
• surveying and scrutinizing the law on a given topic to determine its
interpretation
• Top-down approach: from foundational concepts to terms as defined
in legislative norms.
• Concept fields: language, jurisdiction, domain, description in natural
language, references to relevant articles, notes and links to related
concepts.
• Search term – shows all related concepts and legislation.
• Alert messaging system – keeps users up to date with new/modifying
laws.

12. DECRETO-LEGGE
8 OTTOBRE 1976 ,
n. 691
MODIFICAZIONI AL REGIME FISCALE DI
ALCUNI PRODOTTI PETROLIFERI E DEL
GAS METANO PER AUTOTRAZIONE
ART.9. LE MISURE DELLA TASSA DI
CIRCOLAZIONE SULLE AUTOVETTURE
PREVISTE DALLA TARIFFA ALLEGATA ALLA
LEGGE 27 MAGGIO 1959, N.356 …
LEGGE
21 MAGGIO 1955,
n. 463
PROVVEDIMENTI PER LA COSTRUZIONE
DI AUTOSTRADE E STRADE E MODIFICHE
ALLE TASSE AUTOMOBILISTICHE.
ART. 11.
LE TARIFFE A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H ED I
DELL'ALLEGATO 1, AL TESTO UNICO DELLE
LEGGI SULLE TASSE AUTOMOBILISTICHE,
APPROVATO CON DECRETO DEL
PRESIDENTE DELLA REPUBBLICA 5
FEBBRAIO 1953, N. 39 , SONO
SOSTITUITE RISPETTIVAMENTE DALLE
TARIFFE A, B, C, D, E, F,H …
Legge regionale
5 agosto 2002,
n. 20.
Art. 2. (Esenzione pagamento
tassa automobilistica regionale
per autoveicoli …)
1. A decorrere dal 1°
gennaio 2003 sono esenti dal
pagamento della tassa
automobilistica regionale gli
autoveicoli alimentati a gas
metano gia' dotati di dispositivo
per la circolazione con gas
metano all'atto
dell'immatricolazione e gli
autoveicoli elettrici.
DECRETO DEL PRESIDENTE
DELLA REPUBBLICA
5 FEBBRAIO 1953 , n. 39
TESTO UNICO DELLE LEGGI SULLE TASSE
AUTOMOBILISTICHE
ART. 5.
MODALITÀ DI PAGAMENTO DELLA TASSA
PER GLI AUTOVEICOLI
LA TASSA DI CIRCOLAZIONE È STABILITA
IN RAGIONE DI ANNO SOLARE. SALVO
QUANTO DISPOSTO DALL'ARTICOLO
SEGUENTE, IL RELATIVO PAGAMENTO
DEVE ESSERE ESEGUITO IN UNA DELLE
SEGUENTI FORME:
a) PER L'INTERO ANNO SOLARE, CON
DIRITTO ALLA RIDUZIONE DI UN
VENTESIMO DELL'AMMONTARE DEL
TRIBUTO DOVUTO; LEGGE 27 MAGGIO 1959,
n. 356
MODIFICHE ALLE VIGENTI ALIQUOTE
DELLA TASSA DI CIRCOLAZIONE SULLE
AUTOVETTURE. ART. 1. LA TARIFFA C
ALLEGATA ALLA LEGGE 21 MAGGIO
1955, N. 463, È SOSTITUITA DALLA
TARIFFA ANNESSA ALLA PRESENTE
LEGGE.
ART. 2. L’ART 5 DEL TESTO UNICO DELLE
LEGGI SULLE TASSE AUTOMOBILISTICHE,
APPROVATO CON CON DECRETO DEL
PRESIDENTE DELLA REPUBBLICA 5
FEBBRAIO 1953, N. 39 , …
Laws that implicitly override previous legislation requires
manual annotation

13. The Core System
• online document and knowledge management system
• ICT4Law Project to help legal researches and practitioners manage and
monitor legislative information
• Two modes:
• In-house software – search, classify, annotate, build legal knowledge and
remain appraised with changes
• Online service – effective outsourcing of legal monitoring services.
•Eunomos system is the foundation of Menslegis, the commercial
version for compliance distributed by Nomotika S.r.l. a University of
Torino spinoff.

14. Applications: PA
• Access to consolidated and comprehensible norms across domains
and jurisdictions promotes ordered design and co-creation of
democracy both from a policy and technical perspective.
Foreign Customs
Declaration
Intermediaries
alter tariff
classification
Local Customs

15. Applications: PA
Local
Customs
UAE
taxonomy
Japan
Taxonomy
German
Taxonomy
Foreign Customs
Declaration
Intermediaries alter
tariff classification

16. Applications
• Promote collaboration and data sharing through merger of potentially
synergistic PAs
• Structural and ontological system to integrate the taxonomies of different
institutions to share diverse experiences.
• Intuitive lightweight ontologies user-friendly non-technical staff and
this helps to promote the adoption of ontologies in practice.
• Advances beyond current PA use of thesauri and taxonomies

17. The Citizenry
• Web 2.0 extensions e.g. citizens forum
• PA transparency: to aid impact analysis from user comments
• PA Open Innovation: support tool for eParticipations & eConsultations
• Intelligible access to the law ensuring meaningful democratic
participation
• Public funding could help develop Eunomos to facilitate direct
democracy initiatives and regulatory impact assessments of legislative
bills.

18. The Citizenry
Kenyan example: a $10 billion Euro flagship railway project to link Nairobi-Mombasa
to entire EAC
Controversial single sourcing to Chinese entity
Exemption for negotiated contracts in PPDA
Eunomos visualisation - conceptual view giving rationale

19. Towards an Internet of Things
• The broader vision is to illustrate advances towards an IoT
• Open access and Interpretation of laws enhance Open Innovation
• PA’s presented with significant opportunity to breathe life to laws by
using legal knowledge management systems to:
• Implementing linked data;
• Multi-level ontologies;
• Advanced classification and search facilities;
• Realise connected smart cities and connected smart worlds

20. Conclusion
• Eunomos software: state of the art in legal informatics
• Applications for PA and citizens for eDemocracy and Open
Governance
• Classification of the law into domains
• May facilitate integration of PA taxonomies hence co-creation of
democracy
• Practical translation of AI and Law Research as module of Nomotika
S.r.l. a spinoff of University of Turin.