Building European Legislation Identifier

Pillars Thomas Francart – ELI Taskforce

« Access to and reuse of EU Legal Information » Brussels – 21 march 2016

1. Identifiers Identify legislation

Browse legislation

2. Metadata Describe legislation

Link legislation

3. Content structure ? Not in scope of ELI !

Design ELI URIs Create ELI metadata Publish ELI metadata

URIs are « barcodes » for every piece of data on the web

http://mydomain.org/mypath/myresource

URL Identify something on the web

http://my.website.eu

URI Identify, on the web, anything (from the real world)

http://animals.eu/my-zebra

Fabien Gandon : http://fr.slideshare.net/fabien_gandon

ELI proposes URI components that can be selected and arranged in any order to define your own URI structure.

Guidelines to

Design ELI URIs

Stay close to how legislation is cited

Guideline #1

“the 2001 Directive” means Directive 2001/83/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Community code relating to medicinal products for human use;” (*) “ LOV nr 925 af 18/09/2012 ” http://retsinformation.dk/eli/regel/lov/2012/09/18/925

(*) : http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2016/190/schedule/1/paragraph/1/made

http://data.europa.eu/eli/dir/2001/83

Use components stable over time

• « Cool URIs don’t change » • Typically avoid names of ministries in the URI

Guideline #2

Define user behavior to browse the ELI hierarchy http://data.europa.eu... User behavior…

/eli/dir/2001 Lists all the directives of 2001

/eli/dir/2001/83

Get Directive 2001/83/EC in its current state : latest consolidated version, plus modifiers not yet consolidated

/eli/dir/2001/83/corrigendum Get the corrigenda of Directive 2001/83/EC

/eli/dir/2001/83/2009-12-31 Get Directive 2001/83/EC as it was at the requested date

Guideline #3

Address layers of the ELI description A specific legislation, independently of one of its « version » or language

Directive 80/181/CEE

A specific (temporal) version of this legislation, independently of its language

OJ version or consolidated version

A specific linguistic variant of this version of the legislation

An english translation

A specific file format for given language of given version of this legislation

Signed PDF vs. HTML

Guideline #4

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32011D1219

1 Legal Resource in its original OJ version

23 Legal Expressions

3 Formats for each expressions

LegalResource

LegalExpression

Format

Can be expressed in various

Can be published in various

Is expressed in concrete

files

Has multiple versions in

(Abstract) LegalResource

Each conceptual level is identified with a URI using extra components.

Why are ELI URIs foundations for ELI metadata ?

Subject Verb Complement

<ELI URI> <Metadata> <Value> http://...

/eli/dir/1980/181/oj

eli:date_publication

1979-12-20

ELI Metadata are expressed on ELI URI in the form of triples.

ELI metadata model

~ 35 fields (+ inverse properties)

Generic description of legislation

A publishing model – to share – not to replace internal metadata

schemas (if any)

Describe legal texts (Luxembourg)

uri: .../loi/2014/21/19/n11 type_document: Law title: Pondération de l'indice des prix à la consommation date_document: 25/10/2014 date_publication: 30/10/2014 in_force: yes publisher: Bureau de la Législation du Luxembourg

Official Journal A 255/2014

published_in Parliament passed_by

Ministry of Finance

responsibility_of

is_about

Finance, Tax

Luxembourg

relevant_for

Different levels of description

LegalResource

LegalExpression

Format

Can be expressed in various

Can be published in various

Each level of abstraction will be associated with specific metadata.

ELI Metadata : links

• Based on / basis for – Secondary legislation to primary legislation

• Changes / changed by – Amendment, replacement

• Cites / cited by – In the text of the legislation

• Consolidated / consolidated by – Consolidated version to previous consolidated version or base

act, plus legislation making the change • Transposes / transposed by (implements / implemented by)

– From national legislation to EU directives (transposes : formal link, implements : more generic, for consolidated versions)

Link legal texts (Luxembourg)

Law /loi/2014/21/19/n11

SEQ:A

related_to

Law /loi/2010/12/17/n2

Law /loi/2009/05/05/n8

Project 20140166

idParlement:60720

Directive 1991/0440

changes

Reglementation /rgd/2015/07/24/n3

basis_for

Law /loi/1988/12/13/n1

cites

changes

changes

Law /loi/2015/05/31/n1

changed_by

Law ../loi/1860/12/04/n1

cites

cited_by Law

/loi/2015/07/30/n1

Creating a graph of legislation.

Guidelines to

Create ELI metadata

Map your description metadata to ELI

Guideline #1

• Map Xpath inside XML, or database columns • Map what you have, some fields will be « not applicable »

ELI Property Italy

date_document Corresponds to the date of the legal act (data atto)

date_publication Corresponds to the date of the Official Gazzette that contains the legal act

first_date_entry_in_force It maps to the "inizioVigenza" date.

date_no_longer_in_force It maps to the "fineVig" date.

related_to Not applicable

changes emendamenti, errata corrige, avvisi di rettifica

changed_by Not applicable

Publish the 4 mandatory fields

• Type of document : eli:type_document • Title : eli:title • Language : eli:language • File format : eli:format

Guideline #2

Define necessary controlled lists (use SKOS)

• type of document • keywords • administrative areas • agents (ministries, publishers, etc.) • …

Guideline #3

How can ELI metadata be published into web pages ?

What you see as a human

What the HTML code looks like <div id="content"> <h2 class="title"> <span about="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/eli/loi/2015/12/2/DEVP1507712L/jo/texte/fr" property="eli:title" typeof="eli:LegalExpression"> LOI n° 2015-1567 du 2 décembre 2015 portant diverses dispositions d'adaptation au droit de l'Union européenne dans le domaine de la prévention des risques </span> </h2> ... <strong>LOI n° 2015-1567 du <span property="eli:date_document" datatype="xsd:date" content="2015-12-02">2 décembre 2015</span> portant ... </strong> ... </div>

RDFa syntax allows to embed semantic markup in an HTML web page with extra attributes.

What the machine sees

Applications can parse RDFa markup and turn it into (RDF) structured data.

Guidelines to

Publish ELI metadata

Use RDFa to add semantic markup to existing webpages. Either inline…

Guideline #1

<strong>LOI n° 2015-1567 du <span property="eli:date_document" datatype="xsd:date" content="2015-12-02">2 décembre 2015</span> portant ...

… or in a header

Guideline #2

<head> … <meta about="http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/1969/2596/oj" typeof="eli:LegalResource"/> <meta about="http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/1969/2596/oj" property="eli:id_local" content="31969R2596" /> <meta about="http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/1969/2596/oj" property="eli:type_document" resource="http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/resource-type/REG"/> <meta about="http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/1969/2596/oj" property="eli:passed_by" resource="http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/corporate-body/CONSIL"/> <meta about="http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/1969/2596/oj" property="eli:is_about" resource="http://eurovoc.europa.eu/2591"/> … </head>

Take away

ELI URIs = Technical identifiers + User browsing in legislation

ELI Metadata = Clear levels of abstraction + Generic legislation description

ELI Publishing = Low impact on publishing workflow + No visual impact in webpages

ELI is an easy first step for building a web of legal data. Once deployed it can be improved iteratively.

Questions ? Thank you !