The document discusses Akoma Ntoso (AKN), an open XML standard for parliamentary and legal documents. It provides an overview of AKN's features for supporting transparency, quality, and efficiency in legislative processes. Examples are given of several parliaments that have implemented AKN successfully, including the Parliament of Uruguay. The document also describes AKN's standardization through OASIS and availability of open source tools.

1. standard for Parliaments
The use case of Parliament of Uruguay
Sylvia Tosar
General Director, Member of CTIP
Parliament of Uruguay, Uruguay
Monica Palmirani
Professor of Legal Informatics
Law School, CIRSFID,
University of Bologna, Italy
Fabio Vitali
Professor of Computer Science
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Bologna, Italy

4. Legal XML standards in the world
n
n
n
n
n
n
n
n
n
n
n
1999
1997
2001
2003
2002
2003
2004
2006
2008
2012
2008

5. Akoma Ntoso (AKN) in OASIS
n An open XML standard for all the legal documents
used in Parliamentary processes and judgments
n Started in 2005 in the project “Strengthening
Parliaments’ Information Systems in Africa”,
promoted by the UNITED NATIONS Department
for Economics and Social Affairs (UNDESA)
n Akoma Ntoso means “Linked Hearts” and it is a
symbol used by the Akan people of West Africa to
represent understanding and agreement

6. AKN document types
BILL
AMENDMENTS
ACT
ORDER
of the Day
Motions
Questions
Petitions
Speeches
Voting
Reports
Hansards
Official
Gazette
Committee
Report
Judgement
Jurisprudence
Books
Journals

7. Parliament Legislative process
• Document Drafting
• Simulation
• Consolidation of documents
• Consolidation of amendments
• Ordering of amendments
• Debates record
• Printing in the official Internal Journal
• Final Drafting
• Formal Check
• Metadata
• Consolidation
• Metadata
• Extraction
• Annotation
• Jurisprudence
• Metadata

8. Success stories of AKN
n Senate of Brazil (AKN in Portuguese, acts, bills, point-in-time)
n European Parliament (bill and amendments)
n Library of Congress of Chile (bill and debates)
n Senate of Italy (bill publication in open data)
n Parliament of Uruguay (bill workflow)
n US Code Consolidation service (code management)
n State of California (xml standard for document management)
n
n
n
n
n

9. AKN: Transparency, Quality, & Efficiency
XML by itself is not a guarantee for transparency.
Yet, AKN has explicit features that support it:
q Clear division of metadata from official content
q Explicit lifecycle of the document and tracking of
workflow events
q Systematic connection of separate pieces of
information to extract new legal knowledge
q Long-term preservation of legal validity (authentic
document)
q Management of multiple linguistic expressions
q Data model for open government data and Linked
Open Data (LOD)
q Preservation of privacy/liability issues (e.g. in judiciary
document)

10. AKN support for parliamentary activities
n Support for generation of new documents: drafting
activities, record keeping, translation into national
languages, etc.
n Support for workflow and lifecycle of documents:
management of documents across lifecycle,
storage, security, timely involvement of relevant
individuals and offices
n Support for citizens’ access to the legal global
information: multi-channel (on paper and on the
web) publication, search, classification,
identification
n Further activities: consolidation, comparison,
language synchronization, etc.

11. AKN Open Source Tools
n Editors: Lime, Bungeni, AT4AM
n URI/IRI Resolvers
n Textual Parser
n XML Validator
n Converters
n Presentation
n Sub-schema extractor
n Parliament SW Platform

12. Parliament of Uruguay AKN project
n 2013-ongoing
n Goals
q Use of AKN for the legislative process of bills
q Comparative visualization of two versions
q LIME Web Editor used for the mark-up of the bills
n Methodology
q Group of technical and legal experts
q 4 pilot cases
q Support from the University of Bologna
n Future steps
q Deploy the system in-place for managing bill legislative process
q Extend the project to debates connected with the bills
q AKN resolver
q Ontology for legislative process

16. Portal for the citizens

17. Navigation of the structure

18. Comparative visualization

19. OASIS: international standardization
body
n Not-for-profit consortium founded in 1993
n Open to all: companies, government agencies, academic
and research institutions, individuals
n International community
q 5,000+ participants including 600+ organizations
in 100+ countries; 33% in Europe; 13% in Asia
n Technical agenda set by members
n Board and Committee chairs elected by members
n About 65 Technical Committees active in many domains

20. LegalDocML TC members
n 36 members in the TC
Chile Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional – European
Parliament – Ghana Parliament – Georgia State
University College of Law Library - University of
‐Bologna CIRSFID – Uruguay Parliament – LexisNexis,
a Division of Reed Elsevier – Wells Fargo – Library of
Congress – M.I.T. – Aubay S.A. – Xcential – JPMorgan
Chase Bank, N.A. - National Center for State Courts –
MTG Management Consultants, LLC. – Mitre
Corporation - ….

21. Working DraftFIRST STEP
Committee
Specification
Draft
Full Majority Vote
Full Majority Vote
Public Review
Open for 30 days
Committee
Specification
Special Majority Vote.
Statements of Use Three use cases
Candidate standard
Public Review Open for 60 days
Balloting 15% of the OASIS
OASIS TC Workflow

22. Conclusions
n AKN is a robust legal XML standard for legal open
document in parliament
n It is fit for open government data and semantic web (LOD)
n It is extendable and customizable
n Each organization can select just the needed parts
n Open source tools are now available
n Several pilot cases and end-user projects are substantial
proofs-of-concept for many legal systems and scenarios
n Several Parliaments use AKN in-place implementations
n OASIS standard process makes AKN an international
standard stable with a good governance

23. Thank you
for your attention
Sylvia Tosar – stosar@parlamento.gub.uy
Monica Palmirani – monica.palmirani@unibo.it
Fabio Vitali – fabio.vitali@unibo.it