Legal Software: Hershowitz: Legal Open Data and the Role of Government

vineri, 14 martie 2014

Hershowitz: Legal Open Data and the Role of Government

Ari Hershowitz, JD, MS, of Xcential Group LLC has posted Open Data and the Role of Government , at his Tabulaw Blog .

Here is an excerpt:

[...] My view is that government must go beyond publishing bulk structured data. I believe that government should provide an official online source for primary law that includes structured data (XML) presented with modern web features, including:

hyperlinked citations, with unique identifiers at the paragraph or section level

dynamic navigation of contents (e.g. navigation through tables of contents)

full text search

In addition, I believe that an accurate and navigable point-in-time view of the law — a kind of version control — should also be included where possible. This would allow us to see the law as it was in force at any date. It may be unrealistic for some data sources to create this kind of record for historical documents, but document drafting processes going forward should include some kind of version control.

What do you think government’s role is in publishing primary law? In particular, how important do you think web features such as navigation and search are for the official government version? [...]

For more details, please see the complete post.

HT @arihersh