Working Documents - CIRCA - Europa

European Forum of Official Gazettes
7 th meeting
Rome
23-24 September 2010
Working Documents
1
Rome 2010

Contents
Programme. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pag.. 5
List.of.expected.participants. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ». 9
Forum.Activity.Report.2009/2010. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ». 13
“Normattiva”.Italian.Parliament.and.Government.project . . . . . . . . . . . . ». 17
The.“Tender.Identification.Code”.(CIG).in.the.Italian.Public.Procurement.. ». 33
Final.report.of.the.Working.group.on.Consolidation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ». 41
Progress.Report.from.the.Working.group.on.Indexing.and.Search . . . . . . ». 71
Final.Report.from.the.Working.group.on.Access.to.Legislation.and..
Financing.models. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ». 101
Standardization.of.Metadata. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ». 107
Legal.XML.standard.for.managing.Official.Gazette.Resources. . . . . . . . . ». 119
Presentation.of.new.Working.group.proposals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ». 133
Information.on.the.8 th .Meeting.in.Latvia.-.Riga.2011. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ». 147
3

These documents will be published on the European Forum of Official Gazettes
website: http://circa.europa.eu/irc/opoce/ojf/info/data/prod/html/index.htm

European Forum of Official Gazettes
7 th meeting
Rome
23-24 September 2010
“Roma Eventi - Fontana di Trevi”
(Piazza della Pilotta, 4)
Programme
5
Rome 2010

Thursday 23 September 2010
15.00-15.30 Registration, coffee and light refreshments
15.30-15.45 Official handover of the Chair
Carol Tullo, Director of the Office of Public Sector Information, UK
15.45-16.00 Opening remarks and introduction to the Programme – Chair of the Forum
Alfonso Andriani, Editor in Chief of Gazzetta Ufficiale della
Repubblica Italiana – Ministry of Justice
16.00-16.30 Welcome address
Giuseppe Chinè, Capo Ufficio Legislativo del Ministro
della semplificazione normativa
16.30-16.45 Forum Activity Report 2009/2010
Carol Tullo
16.45-17.00 Forum Publications
Andrea Bartolini, Secretary to the Forum
17.00-17.30 “Normattiva” - Italian Parliament and Government project
Claudio Zucchelli, Capo Ufficio Legislativo della Presidenza del Consiglio
dei Ministri
Daniele Ravenna, Representative of the “Normattiva” Steering Committee
18.00-20.00 Visit to “Musei Capitolini”
20.00-23.00 Dinner at Terrazza Caffarelli - Campidoglio
Welcome address by Mauro Cutrufo, Vicesindaco del Comune di Roma
Friday 24 September 2010
9.30-9.45 Coffee
9.45-9.50 Alfonso Andriani – welcome to 2nd day
9.50-10.10 The “Tender Identification Code” (CIG) in the Italian Public
Procurement
Alberto Cucchiarelli Head of Financial Services Office of Authority
for the Supervision of Public Contracts for Works, Services and Supplies
10.10-10.40 Final Report from the Working Group on Consolidation
Marika Seppius, Deputy Head of Government Secretariat,
Government Office, Estonia
10.40-11.10 Progress Report from the Working Group on Indexing and Search
Aleš Gola, Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic
11.10-11.40 Final Report from the Working Group on Access to Legislation
and Financing models
Petra Škodlar, Editor in chief of the Official Journal, Ljubljana
6

11.40-12.00 Coffee break
12.00-12.30 Standardization of metadata
Madeleine Kiss and Marc Küster, Publications Office of the
European Union
12.30-13.00 Legal XML standard for managing Official Gazette Resources
Monica Palmirani, Associate Professor with CIRSFID, University of
Bologna in Computer Science and Law.
13.00-14.30 Lunch
14.30-15.15 Presentation of new Working Group proposals
1. “Sharing experiences and best practices in the dissemination of
information to citizens”
2. “Provision of information about economic issues”
Karl Schiessl, Director of Wiener Zeitung, Austria
3. “Sustainable development”
Didier François, Deputy Director of Direction de l’information légale
et administrative, France
15.30-15.30 Registration for the workshops
15.30-17.00 Workshop sessions on the new Working Group proposals and on
the future of the Working Group «Access to Legislation»
Facilitators: Karl Schiessl, Didier François,
Aki Hietanen, Director of Information Services, Ministry of Justice, Finland
John Dann, Central Legislative Service, Ministry of State, Luxembourg
17.00-18.00 Presentation of workshop results by Facilitators
18.00-18.15 Information on the 8th meeting in Latvia - Riga 2011
Artis Trops, Project Manager VSIA “Latvijas Vēstnesis”, Latvia
18.15-18.30 Closing remarks – Alfonso Andriani
Saturday 25 September 2010
10.00-12.30 Guided visit of Rome for delegates staying in Rome on Saturday –
Boarding coaches in via Teatro Marcello, 100 m to the right of the
staircase of the Campidoglio.
7

European Forum of Official Gazettes
7 th meeting
Rome
23-24 September 2010
9
Rome 2010
List of expected participants

European Union
Austria
Schiessl Karl
Irresberger Karl
Belgium
Van Damme Bert
Cyprus
Demetriades Christos
Czech Republic
Vavera František
Kaucký Jirí
Gola Aleš
Denmark
Koch Nina
Broberg Nielsen Søren
Estonia
Seppius Marika
Heinla Jüri
Finland
Hietanen Aki
Linhala Jari
France
François Didier
Kauffmann Joëlle
Germany
Heinig Sascha
Busse Hannah
Hungary
Kovács Mónika
Ireland
Caffrey Richard
Clissmann Alma
Italy
Andriani Alfonso
Quattrociocchi Maurizio
Orsini Nando
Latvia
Trops Artis
Luste Inese
Markus Matìss
10
Luxembourg
Dann John
Malta
Bugelli Martin
Netherlands
Flier Hans
Poland
Deminet Jarosław
Portugal
Garcia Cardoso Pedro
Barreiros Ricardo
Romania
Popa Gabriel
Slovak Republic
Svák Ján
Makara Roman
Slovenia
Munih Staniĉ Špela
Škodlar Petra
Samotorĉan Mojca
Spain
Herrero-Botas Vigil Ana
United Kingdom
Tullo Carol
Publications Office of the E.U.
Reicherts Martine
Bartolini Andrea
Manguin Sylvie
Kuester Marc Wilhelm
Kiss Madeleine

European Free Trade
Association (EFTA) Countries
Liechtenstein
Puhar-Kranz Claudia
Switzerland
Moret Michel
Tanner Markus
EU Candidate Countries
Croatia
Perič Sanjac
Sila Nikola
Former Yugoslav Republic
of Macedonia
Trajanov Toni
Cvetanovska Biljana
Turkey
Özcan Nadir
Yildiz Muhammed Emin
11
EU Potential Candidate
Countries
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Prusina Dragan
Montenegro
Vujoševic’ Momčilo
Serbia
Jovicic Sanja
Petrovic Boris

European Forum of Official Gazettes
7 th meeting
Rome
23 September 2010
13
Rome 2010
Forum Activity Report 2009/2010
presented.by
Carol Tullo
Director of the Office of Public Sector Information, UK

Carol Tullo
Chair
European Forum of Official Gazettes
Forum Activity Report 2009/2010
Working groups
Consolidation:
Draft final report
Access to legislation:
Two groups - Financing models
- Communities of practice
Indexing and Search:
Focus is on metadata and indexing practices
Questionnaire to examine current status and how to share best
practice (completed 11 June 2010)

Proposed working groups for 2010 / 2011
Sharing experiences and best practice in the
dissemination of information to citizens
Provision of information about economic issues
Sustainable development
Making the Forum more effective
Communities of practice = informal communities for
sharing best practice rather than official working
groups
Better ways of working –
evaluating methods
Introducing timescales for delivery of projects?

Thank you and do give us your
feedback

European Forum of Official Gazettes
7 th meeting
Rome
23 September 2010
17
Rome 2010
“Normattiva”
Italian Parliament and Government
project
presented.by
Claudio Zucchelli
Capo Ufficio Legislativo della Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, Italy
Daniele Ravenna
Head of the Senate Study Service
Representative of the “Normattiva” Steering Committee, Italy

The development of the “Normattiva” project
I should like to illustrate to you – also on behalf of my colleagues in the Chamber of Deputies
who sit on the Technical-Scientific Committee – the development of the “Normattiva” project from the
legislative measure which introduced it to the results that have been obtained.
Article 107 of the 2001 budget laid down:
· its purpose: to digitise and classify current legislation, in order
– to enable the general public to search and consult the database free of charge
– and to facilitate the consolidation of Italian legislation;
· its funding: through an appropriation with the Prime Minister’s Office;
· its institutional architecture: the programme and the organisational details were to be set out in
a Prime Ministerial Decree to be issued following consultation with the Presiding Officers of the
Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.
This latter provision – which was certainly unusual – aimed to ensure that, from the very outset, the
programme would be designed on an equal basis by the Prime Minister’s Office and the two Houses of
Parliament, leaving the operational management to the Office of the Prime Minister. The Prime Ministerial
decree was not issued until over two years later, in January 2003, partly because of the general election
in 2001.
The decree set out the substance of the programme:
(a) a collection of all central government statutes and other legal instruments and documents,
as amended or repealed;
(b) cost-free availability, through ICT technologies, of the actual instruments of each individual
piece of legislation, and any explanatory memorandums attached to them;
(c) classification of current legislation using criteria facilitating the retrieval of the information
through ICT technologies, and the provision of commentaries identifying incompatibilities
between instruments and any implicit repealing;
(d) study and application of targeted instruments and procedures to consult legislation in force,
and of advanced digitised systems to process, mark up and classify legal instruments, also
with a view to consolidate legislation;
(e) the creation of specific portals and Internet sites, equipped with appropriate search engines
to conduct all of the above.
The decree also included measures to coordinate other existing procedures to digitise public
legal documentation developed by Italy’s major public institutions and Regional governments, with the
possibility of including private stakeholders in parts of the programme.
A Steering Committee, made up of the Secretaries-General of the Chamber of Deputies, the
Senate and the Prime Minister’s Office, was set up in order to develop the general policies needed to
implement the programme, set out its objectives, establish a timetable, and provide progress reports
on all this to the Presiding Officers of Parliament and the Prime Minister.
The groundwork for the Steering Committee was laid by the Department for Legal and Legislative
Affairs of the Prime Minister’s Office and by a Working Group set up with the General Secretariat
of the Prime Minister’s Office, which included members appointed by the Prime Minister’s Office, the
Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. This confirmed the architecture under which the project was
to be managed, based on unprecedented – but highly productive – inter-institutional cooperation
between the two Houses of Parliament and the Prime Minister’s Office.
The intense preparatory work and research, which was mainly undertaken by the Working Group
following the instructions of the Steering Committee, took several years – with long intervals owing to
changes of government. This alone demonstrates how difficult it was to achieve the purposes set out
in the law, owing in part to certain drawbacks specific to the Italian system, namely:
19

– regulatory overproduction (in September 2008, a private survey counted 434,000 measures
published in the Official Gazette);
– a hazy boundary between statutes strictly defined and administrative measures, which creates
uncertainty over which texts were to be included in the database;
– the difficulties of identifying which instruments are actually in force, following the disorderly
overlapping of measures throughout the years, the vast amount of implicit cases of
incompatibility of different legal provisions and implicit repealing.
The Working Group also explored various possibilities and tested advanced software. In this phase,
in which AIPA (the Civil Service Computerisation Authority, now called DigitPA), was heavily involved,
the Group focussed on the definition of standards to mark up and structure legislative instruments (XML)
and route them to the Net under a uniform locator (URN). AIPA issued two important circulars, which
still remain the benchmark for the creation of a legal database (AIPAr/CR/No. 40 in 2002, on XML,
and AIPA/CR/No. 35 in 2001, on the URN standard).
The adoption of open standards as a methodological basis for the whole project facilitates progress
towards a single information platform gathering legislative measures developed by a wide range of
authorities: first and foremost Italy’s 20 Regions, many of which have their own legal databases based
on the standards produced by the Normattiva Working Group. Once common standards have been
adopted by all the Italian institutions, which we trust should be quite soon, a certified workflow of
legislative instruments will be possible, thus overcoming any duplications.
One of the main challenges faced – whose solution had to be considered a priority – had to do
with the retrieval of the immense stock of past legislation. It was necessary to ensure simultaneously:
– thorough information, namely the storage of all important instruments;
– certainty that the stored documents were wholly identical to the instruments originally published
in the Official Gazette;
– compatibility with the standards laid down for the new database.
A special survey was made of all the existing public and private legal and statutory databases,
some of outstanding prestige and widely tested for decades by the public. But none of them were fully
fit for the purpose.
Meanwhile a Legal Committee was set up to address the notion of “instrument currently in force”.
Following a wide-ranging debate between rigorists, i.e. those more keen on the centrality of the legal
measure, and pragmatists, i.e. those more sensitive to the need to create a database, the following
conclusions were drawn:
Ø the database would only contain the numbered instruments enacted by the central government
and published in the Official Gazette. The group realised that this decision, though leaving out
some instruments (those unnumbered and/or issued by independent authorities, which are difficult to
identify), would ensure that the database would contain a very clearly and rigorously defined corpus
of instruments;
Ø the term “instrument currently in force” would mean only the latest amended instruments. In
other words, no account could be taken of any implicit amendments or repealings, which essentially
entailed interpretation that would leave ample scope for subjective judgements that could not be left to
the database compilers, whose judgment could not take precedence over that of the government and
the courts;
Ø for each instrument, the database would contain both a text of the law as enacted (that is
to say, the text as originally published in the Official Gazette), and all the subsequent versions as
amended through time.
In 2008, Parliament again addressed this issue by approving Decree Law no. 200 confirming
the purposes and the inter-institutional structure of the project, vesting project coordination with the
Minister for Legislative Simplification, and requiring the Department of Legal and Legislative Affairs of
the Prime Minister’s Office to pool “all the ongoing efforts of government departments to digitise and
20

classify central and regional government legislation”. To place greater emphasis on, and boost the
incisiveness of, the coordination of all the public stakeholders, the decree strictly banned any public
funding of projects aimed at classifying or providing access to any instruments currently in force falling
outside the scope of the work being coordinated by the Minister.
Following this fresh impetus given to the project, the opportunity emerged to cooperate with IPZS
(Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato) – the Government Stationery Office and Mint – whose exclusive
institutional remit is to print, manage and disseminate the Italian Official Gazette, also through the
Internet, including the processing and digitisation of printed papers. Since the Stationery Office (IPZS)
had independently begun to implement a legal database directly derived from the Official Gazette,
and was therefore able to ensure the consistency of texts, cooperation with this authority came as
a matter of course. An agreement was therefore concluded on 8 October 2009 between the Prime
Minister’s Office and the IPZS to build the “Normattiva” database. Under this agreement, the IPZS
would implement the “Normattiva” database, reaffirming the standards set for the project and setting
down a timetable for the successive steps illustrated below.
Step 1 (beginning February 2010): the website www.normattiva.it went online for a selected
group of government and parliamentary officials, magistrates and judges, lawyers and university
professors, who would sign in with a user name and a password.
Step 2 (beginning March 2010): the site was opened to all Internet users. In these start-up
phases, historical versions of all legal instruments published on or since 1 January 1981 were made
available for consultation. Older instruments enacted during the Republic (from 2 June 1946 to 31
December 1980) could only be viewed in the original text without the later amendments.
Step 3 (beginning May 2010): historical versions of instruments enacted from 1 January
1970 to 31 December 1980 were added to the database.
Step 4 (beginning October 2010): the entire corpus of all legislative instruments, including
historical versions, of the Republic (since 1946) was made available online.
Step 5 (beginning October 2011): hyperlink navigation in the entire database from an older
amended provision to its later amendment in any successive amending or repealing legislation. Full
accessibility to the website will be ensured for disabled users as required by Italian law (though not for
all PDF file). XML downloads will comply with the AIPA directive.
Step 5 (beginning October 2013): introduction of “conceptual” and semantic class
searchability (using the EUROVOC classification system adopted by the European Union).
In a later phase, provided that funding is available, all legislation enacted since the Kingdom of
Italy (1861-1946) will be retrieved and made available online.
The www.normattiva.it website will form the ‘hub’ around which a single service/portal providing
public access to legislative information will be built in the coming years, as a result of ever-closer
coordination and convergence of all institutions.
The first step will be to enhance the site with links to all other public legislative databases, starting
with Regional and EU legislation, and conversely to direct all legal databases managed by public
agencies towards central government legislation stored in “Normattiva” under the XML and URN
standards defined in the project, thus removing once and for all overlapping and useless duplications.
In this connection, the coordination powers vested in the Minister will prove invaluable.
The ultimate aim is to establish a portal offering a single user-friendly one stop shop to retrieve
all legislative measures enacted by each and every source, on all aspects of social life. Only after
“Normattiva”, which is the outcome of cooperation between Parliament and the Government, has
successfully passed the test of prolonged use by an increasingly broader public, will it be possible to
say that it is a readily accepted and agreed comprehensive source of current Italian legislation.
21

The Database of the legislative acts
updated in "multivigenza"
Search and presentation of the acts
"Normattiva" is a textual database that stores all legislative acts published in the
Official Gazette from 1946 to today.
The database has been designed with the aim of presenting acts:
• with the text originally published in Official Gazette
• with the text in force on a date,
• but expecially in the text so-called "multivigente"
Introduction
The term "multivigente" stands for the reconstruction of the life cycle of a legislative
act with the explicit changes it has undergone over time .
The textual part of documents is often associated with parts of the act in PDF graphic
format; the "multivigenza", properly marked, applies to this format too.

The database contains about:
• n. 75,000 legislative acts (published from 1946 to present) for a total
of n. 328,000 articles
• n. 12,000 acts with at least one change, for a total of n. 82,000
amended articles and approximately n. 110,000 changes.
In summary:
number of acts
number of articles
published in O.G.
75,000
328,000
The system allows to search acts in several ways:
a "form" for the
"simple search",
immediate and
intuitive
changes
12,000
82,000
Database
Search

and three "forms" for
the "advanced search",
which allow to set
more complex
searches with several
parameters in
combination
Search
Search
The difference between one "form" and the others doesn’t refer to the research
settings but, above all, to the result; infact:
• selecting "original act with updates“, the "multivigente" version of the
act is displayed
• selecting the “act in force on a date“, the act in force at the date indicated
or at the date of consultation is displayed
• selecting "original act“, the system presents the document with the text
originally published in the Official Gazette

The search for
"Original act with
updates”, for
example, presents the
act as in the figure.
The system proposes:
At the top of the screen:
• The kind, the number
and the identification
date of the act
• the title
• the references to
Official Gazette in wich
it was published
Presentation of the act
Presentation of the act

§ On the right side of
the screen:
§ the text of one article
of the original or
updated version
On the left site of
the screen:
§ the structure of the
act
Presentation of the act
Presentation of the act

The structure of the act consists in the list of
its articles and in a graphical warning showing
the articles that have undergone at least one
change.
§ the on the left of the article number
indicates that the article itself was changed
and gives the possibility to verify the number
of changes it has had ( = change n. 2)
and to select the version of the text
corresponding to the change.
The updates (changes,
additions or repeals of
text) are highlighted,
conventionally, in bold
font enclosed between
round brackets (( ))
Presentation of the act
Presentation of the act

The system, for any
changed act,
dynamically displays
the list of acts that have
changed it.
It can also generate the
same list for each article
changed, limited to acts
that have changed the
selected article.
From this list,
it’s then
possible to
select and view
the amending
act.
Presentation of the act
Presentation of the act

With the help of the
key "attiva
riferimenti
normativi", the
system permits,
within the displayed
text, to dynamically
activate the link to all
the acts mentioned in
the text and, then, to
select and display
them.
With the help of the
key "attiva
riferimenti
normativi", the
system permits,
within the display
text, to activate
dynamically the link
to all the acts
mentioned in the text
and, then, to select
and display them.
Presentation of the act
Presentation of the act

The system provides
a few buttons to
activate additional
features for
consultation support
Among them, the
button "versione
stampabile" takes on
particular importance
as it allows to rebuild
the act (in part or
completely) with the
text of the articles in
force at the wished
date
Presentation of the act
Presentation of the act

The database of "Normattiva" is updated in n. 3 days from the
date of publication in the Official Gazette of acts that make
changes and can be accessed through the site:
www.normattiva.it
The service is completly free of charge
Thank you for attention
Web site
Web site

European Forum of Official Gazettes
7 th meeting
Rome
24 September 2010
33
Rome 2010
The “Tender Identification Code” (CIG)
in the Italian Public Procurement
presented.by
Alberto Cucchiarelli
Head of Financial Services
Office of Authority for the Supervision of Public Contracts for Works,
Services and Supplies, Italy

Authority for the Supervision of Public Contracts
for Works, Services and Supplies
The “Tender Tender Identification Code” Code (CIG) in
the Italian Public Procurement
European Forum of Official Gazettes
Rome 23–24 23 24 September 2010
Dr. Alberto Cucchiarelli – Head of Financial Services Office
1.
Why the CIG?
INDEX
2. How does it work?
3. The agreement with Ministry of Justice
and Istituto stituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato
2

Why the CIG?
Law 266/2005 (budget law) has provided that
most of the independent authorities must obtain
part of own financial resources from the market.
Accordingly to this law, the Italian Authority for
the Supervision of Public Contracts (Authority)
charges economic operators and contracting
authorities with a contribution fee calculated
having regard to the amount of the contract.
Why the CIG?
To verify payment of fees the Authority has
established that the contracting authorities must
ask for an identification code to it to be reported
in the call for tender, in the letter of invitation or
solicitation of an offer, however named (see
Deliberation 26.01.2006).
3
4

Why the CIG?
Currently are required to pay the contribution:
a) the contracting authorities as in the articles 32
and 207 of the Italian Code of Public Contracts;
b) the economic operators wishing to participate to
award procedures activated by the above
mentioned subjects;
c) the SOA (Società ( Società Organismo Attestazione -
private firms with public functions, entitled to
produce quality certification after checking the
fulfilment of the requirements).
Why the CIG?
The entity of the contribution is equal to:
Estimated value of a public
contract
(thousand s of euro)
Fee for contract ing
authorities
(euro)
Fee for economic
operators
(euro)
Up to 150 0,00 0,00
More than 1 50 up to 500 150,00 20,00
More than 500 up to 1.000 250,00 40,00
More than 1.000 up to 5.000 400,00 70,00
More than 5.000 500,00 100,00
In the first year there was not a lower threshold for
payment of contribution.
5
6

Why the CIG?
The following cases are excluded from payment
of contribution and from application of CIG:
• Tenders to purchase electricity, gas or water;
• the selection of a private partner for a public-
private entity;
• contracts ex-Articles 16, 17 and 18 of the Code.
How does it work?
The contracting authorities before starting a
public procurement procedure must be recorded
to SIMOG (Sistema ( Sistema Informativo di Monitoraggio
delle Gare). Gare).
They must then communicate any new
procedure to SIMOG.
SIMOG generates the CIG and calculates the
amount of the eventual contribution.
7
8

How does it work?
The economic operators wishing to participate to
call for tender should pay the contribution
provided for each lot.
To this end they should connect to SIMOG and
enter the CIG of the tender.
The system allows the direct payment by credit
card or produce a model to be presented for
alternative payments.
Foreign operators can also pay by bank transfer.
How does it work?
CIG has become in the time an instrument to
enable to follow the various stages of tendering
as well a tool to increase the degree of
transparency.
This role was explicitly recognized in the recent
law against organized crime infiltration in the
public contracts.
This role will be expanded in the future following
the adoption of several bills aimed to fight
against corruption in the sector.
9
10

How does it work?
The payment of the contribution to the Authority
represents an indispensable condition for the
validity of an offer in the tender.
The recent jurisprudence stated that an incorrect
payment (i.e. no indication of the CIG or the tax
code) by the economic operator can be
remedied during the proceeding; it is not
possible for missing contributions (see also
Deliberation 12.07.2007, n. 232).
How does it work?
The failure of the CIG by the contracting
authorities does not relieve the competitor from
the duty to pay it.
The contracting authority could correct the
advice with the indication of the CIG before the
end of the procedure and invite competitors to
regularize the payment; otherwise it risks the
cancellation of the awarding procedure by the
administrative court (see also Deliberation
08.07.2010, n. 42).
11
12

The agreement with Ministry of Justice and
Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato
The Authority, in order to increase transparency
in the market, the regularity of public
procurement and reduce evasion of
contributions, has reached an important
agreement with the Ministry of Justice and with
the Poligrafico (responsibles
( responsibles for the publication
in the Italian Gazette).
In consequence, in the models designed for the
publication of notices in the Official Gazette
there is a new binding field for typing the CIG or
to indicate the reasons for not do it.
13

European Forum of Official Gazettes
7 th meeting
Rome
24 September 2010
41
Rome 2010
Final report of the Working group
on Consolidation
presented.by
Marika Seppius
Chairman of the working group
Deputy Head of the Government Secretariat, Government Office, Estonia

1 Introduction
The mission of the official gazettes is to make legislation accessible. It is an important mission that
has to ensure the very principle of the rule of law. Rapid developments in technology are providing us
with new ways of fulfilling this mission. Legislation published on Internet is no longer an alternative to
laws printed on paper, but the other way round - laws printed on paper are an alternative. Users are
being better served, and publishing the law has become quicker and much more economical.
The objective of producing and publishing consolidated texts is to make law in force available
to subjects of law in an understandable and timely manner. The general objective is legal clarity –
individuals should be able to access and read valid legal texts at any time. Today legislation changes
rapidly, and Internet offers the best means of presenting complete and up-to-date information on
legislation. The old lawyer’s skill bringing and keeping legal texts up-to-date is no longer needed:
official Internet-based publication keeps all current law up-to-date. The savings made on consolidated
texts as a result, in both the public and private sectors, are remarkable.
This paper presents the final report of the Working Group on Consolidation, the formation of
which was agreed at the 2007 meeting of the Forum in Helsinki-Tallinn.
The objective of the working group was to identify the best practices to be used as an example
in preparing and publishing consolidated texts of the legal acts of Member States. In studying the
practices and problems in different countries, the working group concluded that the best practice
would be to use a particular ideal model to resolve problems and fulfil the objective of making the
consolidated texts available.
2.1. Terms of Reference and Membership of the Working Group
Following the establishment of the Working Group, detailed terms of reference were subsequently
proposed to the Extended Chair of the Forum and were agreed as follows:
· analysing the methods and the organisation of consolidation production and publication in
different countries;
· charting the different countries practices in producing and publishing consolidated texts;
· identifying the best practices and the problems/obstacles to successful consolidation procedures;
· studying the possibilities to attribute a legal value to consolidated texts.
The following individuals attended the meetings of the Working Group:
Chair: Marika Seppius (Estonia)
Secretary: Aija Bilzēna (Publications Office)
Members: Helga Stöger (Austria)
Karl Irresberger (Austria)
Members: Pavel Gardavsky (Czech Republic)
Jüri Heinla (Estonia)
Christoph Eckert (Germany)
Joelle Kaufmann (France)
Philippe Gibon (France)
Inese Luste (Latvia)
43

1.2. Meetings
Artis Trops (Latvia)
John Dann (Luxembourg)
Roman Makara (Slovakia)
Albrecht Berger (Publications Office)
Four meetings of the Working Group have taken place.
The minutes of the meetings are available on the Forum website.
http://circa.europa.eu/Members/irc/opoce/ojf/library?l=/10_consolidation&vm=detailed&sb
=Title
10th and 11th March 2008 in Luxembourg
The main items on the agenda of the first meeting were:
– presentation of the members
– introduction and presentation of the Forum website
– introduction of the publication project “Access to legislation in Europe”, carried out by the
secretariat of the Forum
– presentation and discussion of national projects and experiences:
o EU practice in consolidation of EU law
o Consolidation in Estonia
o Consolidation in Slovakia
o Consolidation in France
It was decided to concentrate on studying the following issues:
· analysing the methods and the organisation of consolidation production and
publication in different countries;
· charting the different countries practices in producing and publishing consolidated
texts;
· identifying the best practices and the problems/obstacles to successful
consolidation procedures;
· studying the possibilities to attribute a legal value to consolidated texts;
· preparation of a questionnaire on the various aspects of the consolidation
production process.
15 th and 16 th May 2008 in Tallinn
The items on the agenda of the second meeting were:
– presentation of national projects and experiences:
o consolidation in Austria
o consolidation in Germany
– presentation of the Editor of Legal Acts (Slovakia)
– debate on the questions of the questionnaire to be sent to the other Forum members
It was decided to launch the questionnaire in an online form.
14 th and 15 th July 2008 in Riga
The main items of the third meeting were:
– presentation of national projects and experiences:
44

o consolidation in Latvia
– final corrections and adoption of the questionnaire to be sent to the other Forum members
www.wg-consolidation.eu
17 th June 2009 in Brussels
The main items of the third meeting were:
– “Guide to the publication of, and access to, legislation in Europe”, chapter on consolidation
– situation in Europe;
– presentation of national projects and experiences – Luxembourg;
– result analysis of the group’s questionnaire
While analysing the multiple consolidation practices, the working group concluded that the main
attention should be drawn to:
– legislative drafting rules and, eventually, advice for similar consolidation guidelines;
– actions for handling contradictory/mistaken instructions (practices when consolidation
normally is not possible);
– visibility of the applied modifications (different mark-up practices);
– legal value of consolidated texts and the liability of the state for the official consolidations.
1.3. On-line questionnaire
The Consolidation Working Group of the Forum launched a questionnaire focusing on the
consolidation production practices. Since some other questionnaires concerning also consolidation
items were circulating about the same time, it was decided that the questions already asked, for
example for the EU Official Gazette Guide, will not be repeated.
The Group decided to launch a questionnaire in an “online” form, which seemed more comfortable
for the respondents; as the answers could be equipped with attachments (e.g. screenshots, manuals)
or links to real web applications, and it was also possible to consult the other respondents’ answers.
The invitation to share the information concerning consolidation via the online questionnaire was
issued on 23 rd July to the delegations of Member States of EU, candidate countries, EFTA countries and
others, altogether 40 countries. In spite of deepest holiday season the response was very good (we
received more or less finalised answers from 28 countries).
The questionnaire focused on three main aspects: legislative, organisational and technical.
2. Legal aspects
Is there a legal basis for consolidation? Answers to this question divide into halves: 14 countries
with a legal basis and 14 without. Legal regulations stipulate the bodies authorized to carry out
consolidation, the sequence of the consolidation, the procedure of creating (and adopting) the
consolidated versions of legislation, the methods of drafting including guidelines for consolidation, the
distributive media and, last but not least, the status of the consolidation.
Consolidation is regulated by:
· legal act
Latvia: States obligation to carry out consolidation is prescribed by Regulations of the Cabinet
of Ministers of Republic of Latvia on Systematization of legal acts.
45

Estonia: Consolidation is regulated by Riigi Teataja (State Gazette) Act.
· guidelines (not legally binding)
Denmark: Danish Ministry of Justice has set out guidelines regarding consolidation.
Germany: Instructions for drafting and consolidation of legal acts are published in the “Handbuch
der Rechtsförmlichkeit” (manual for legal formality) published by the Federal Ministry
of Justice.
Basis for the creation of a consolidated version:
· after each modification of a legal act – in 17 countries out of 28, who answered the
questionnaire, consolidation is made after each modification, and the versions are available
online.
· decided by authorities case by case, published in official publication on paper
FYR Macedonia: According to the Rules of procedure of the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia
– article 177 (OG of the RM no. 91/2008) “if the law has been changed or amended a number of
times, or if the law brings about extensive changes and amendments, the initiator of the law may propose
establishment of a consolidated text of the law. If the Assembly deems that justified, it shall authorise the
Legislative Committee to prepare a consolidated text of the law and publish it in the “Official Gazette
of the Republic of Macedonia” within 30 days from the day of the publishing of the law introducing
alterations and amendments to the law in the “Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia”.
Czech Republic: Parliament decides if a consolidated version is to be created.
Slovakia: Republication (only paper version) depends on the decision of the National Council.
The consolidation is done mainly in cases when the basic act was amended by number of amending
acts and/or the basic act has some of special importance. Electronic version of the Zbierka zákonov
Slovenskej republiky (the Collection of Laws) is called JASPI (Jednotný Automatizovaný Systém Právnych
Informácií - Uniform Automated Legal Information System). The consolidation of legal texts is made
continuously after the amending act has been published in the paper version of “Zbierka zákonov”
(Collection of Laws). The consolidation is usually made in few days.
Deadlines for consolidation:
Usually there are no fixed deadlines for consolidating i.e. the consolidation is done “as soon as
possible”, which in some cases mean 2-5 days after modification and in some cases several months.
For example in Belgium the time to wait before the text is consolidated is about 6 weeks for
federal legislation and 18 months for regional legislation because only 4 persons are responsible for
all consolidations in two official languages. But, the day after the publication of the amendment one
can see in the future consolidated text a note saying an amendment of the text has been published and
can consult by hyperlink the text of the amendment.
In Denmark the Danish Ministry of Justice recommends that a consolidation is drafted each time
an amendment has been passed. In reality most ministries draft a consolidated act in an area maybe
once a year. In Switzerland consolidation for the print and offline versions is made 4 times a year.
In Italy consolidation is made usually monthly (but there is no fixed rule), in Finland - every week.
In Latvia the consolidated version is available online the same day the amending act comes into force.
In Estonia the new consolidated text of a legislative act has to be published in the Riigi Teataja at the
same time as the amending legislative act.
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2.1. Definition. Consolidation – integration of amendments
Although generally there is no legal definition for consolidation, the understanding of consolidation
is basically the same – integration into a consolidated text of all the amendments to the original legal
act or in other words – legal act in its current wording, where in one document is merged the initial
version of the particular act and its latter sequential amendments. A consolidated text is an updated
version of the legislative act (= in force at a given time).
Some definitions:
EU – consolidation integrates (in a single non legally-binding text) the provisions of the original
instrument together with all subsequent amendments to it. Consolidation brings benefits to
citizens, administrations and business in the form of a more accessible, transparent legislative
framework (COM (2003)71 final).
Estonia: There is no legal definition of consolidation today. In previous Riigi Teataja Act
consolidated text was defined as follows: “A consolidated text is the version of legislation
which sets out all amendments made to the legislation. The first original text is at the same time
also the first version of the consolidated text.” The term is now universally understood and is
beyond dispute; thus there is no need for a definition.
2.2. Legislative drafting rules
Each country has developed its own practices in drafting legal acts. Regardless of the fact whether
the drafting rules have been established by a legal act or are based on standard practice, the objective
is to produce a legal act that is correct and comprehensible.
· Adopted rules:
In the European Union in order for the Community legislation to be better understood and correctly
implemented, it is aimed to ensure that it is well drafted. The need for better lawmaking has been recognized
at the highest political level. The Council and the Commission have both taken steps to meet that need
(Council: Resolution of 8 June 1993 on the quality of drafting of Community legislation (OJ C 166,
17.6.1993, p. 1); Commission: General guidelines for legislative policy, document SEC (1995) 2255/7,
18.1.1996). The three institutions involved in the procedure for the adoption of Community acts, the
European Parliament, the Council and the Commission, adopted common guidelines intended to improve
the quality of drafting of Community legislation by the Interinstitutional Agreement of 22 December 1998
(OJ C 73, 17.3.1999, p. 1). These rules foresee how the amendments should be composed, among
others, consistency of terminology and replacement of whole provisions (not separate words) etc.
Also in Lithuania the order No.104, 08.17.1998, adopted by Ministry of Justice of the Republic
of Lithuania Dèl i,statymu, ir kitu, teisês aktu, rengimo rekomendaciju, foresees that full particular article of
the law should be amended even if very little changes (like several words) have to be done into the
original document.
In Estonia the government has adopted technical rules for drafts of legislative acts including
instructions for amending laws and regulations (Government of the Republic Regulation No. 279 of 28
September 1999 “Technical rules for drafts of legislative acts”). According to these rules, a new text is
clearly defined from the basic text and can be incorporated into the consolidated version with definite
validity date. The section or provision which is amended is worded and the new text is added. If at
least one third of the text of an act is amended, a new draft act shall be prepared in which the repeal
of an existing act is set out.
47

Austrian legislative guidelines are provided by the Austrian Federal Chancellery (Handbuch der
Rechtssetzungstechnik. Herausgegeben vom Bundeskanzleramt, 1990) and include also strict rules for
amending laws, but the guidelines are not legally binding (so called “soft law”).
Polish rules of drafting new legislation are adopted in Regulation of the Prime Minister of the 2002
June 20th about rules of legislation technical.
In Czech Republic rules are set out in sub-legal organisational norm of the Government. It is rather
the same in the Slovak Republic: “Legislative rules of the Law-making”, adopted by the Parliament
in 1997 and published in the Zbierka zákonov (No. 19/1997 Z. z.) and “Legislative rules of the
government” (governmental resolution No. 352/2010, applicable for all the governmental bodies
(ministries, etc.), not published in the Zbierka zákonov).
In Latvia the respective Regulations of the Cabinet of Ministers on drafting rules were adopted in
February 2009 (MK noteikumi Nr.108 “Normatīvo aktu projektu sagatavošanas noteikumi”).
In Malta the Interpretation Act (Chapter 249) provides necessary guidelines to make provision in
respect of the construction and application of Acts of Parliament and other instruments having the force
of law and in respect of the language used therein.
· Guidelines:
In Sweden the Government office has published guidelines for legislative drafting, the Green book.
The guidelines contain both technical rules, such as rules about preambles, notes, provisions about entry
into force and transitional provisions, and substantial rules, for example, the form of rules of appeal or
penalty. Some of the drafting rules are meant to make it easier to consolidate legal texts, for example,
a technical rule saying that you shouldn’t describe changes in articles theoretically in amendments. You
should instead rewrite whole articles. This method makes it possible to “cut and paste”.
In Denmark the Danish Parliament, the Ministry of Justice and the Prime Minister’s Office have
issued guidelines for drafting legislation, including guidelines for amendments.
In Germany manual for legal formality Handbuch der Rechtsförmlichkeit include also the drafting
rules to make sure that the amendments are clear and consistent and there is a minimum risk of
misinterpretation.
In Belgium any official rules for drafting new legislation do not exist. However, a publication
concerning the procedure and the drafting of legislation has been issued: Principes de technique législative
- Guide de rédaction des textes législatifs et réglementaires (published by the Council of State - 2008).
There are no official rules for drafting new legislation in Luxembourg. However, two publications
concerning the procedure and the drafting of legislation have been issued: Guide pratique sur la
procédure législative et réglementaire (published by the SCL - Mr. Daniel Andrich) and Traité de légistique
formelle (published by the “Conseil d’Etat” - Mr. Marc Besch).
Also in Finland there is a publication Hallituksen esitysten laatimisohjeet (Bill Drafting Instructions).
Recently manual with guiding rules and examples was published in Iceland.
The prerequisite for preparing consolidated texts is that the drafting rules must allow the consolidated
texts to be prepared and all of the various amendments from different points in time to be introduced
into the basic text – the consolidated text. For this reason drafting rules should require that the need to
prepare a consolidated text be taken into consideration in the process of drafting amendments.
v The requirement for preparing consolidated texts is that the drafting rules
must allow the consolidated texts to be prepared and all of the various
amendments from different points in time to be introduced into the basic text
– the consolidated text.
48

For this reason, drafting rules should make it obligatory to take into consideration, during the d
rafting of amendments, the need to compile a consolidated text.
Amendments are made in the form of text inserted into the act to be amended. Amendments must
fit seamlessly into the currently (or at certain given time) in force version of the basic act. Defective
instruction in amending act might cause contradictories or infeasible situations in consolidation
process.
v Amendments must be:
· in clear and unambiguous wording,
· easy to insert into the original text,
· based on applicable version of the basic act.
In order to ensure that the consolidated text is clear and unambiguous, the amendment must be
worded so that it can be easily inserted into the original text without needing any extra consideration
from the consolidator. It means that legislative drafting must foresee rules not just only for amending
acts but in perspective of the future consolidation.
2.3. Consolidation guidelines
Technical rules or guidelines and strict adherence thereto should create a situation where it is easy
to prepare a consolidated text, or doing so occurs without any major problems, and ensures that the
legislator’s intentions are pursued closely when drafting the legislation. However, when answering our
questionnaire, the representatives of at least eight countries admitted that although the rules existed,
they did not facilitate consolidation.
People responsible for consolidation often face in their everyday work the problem that an
amendment cannot be introduced into the applicable wording. Such situations can be precluded by
unambiguous drafting rules. Tackling the consequences does not help, because consolidators are left
alone with these problems. However, if there is a situation in which the amendment does not fit with
the existing text, it is a defect created in the legislative procedure, not in drafting the consolidated text.
A simple technique to overcome the problem of controversy is to provide in a special amendment note
the amendment as given in the amending act and assign the interpretation of the legislative act to the
user. But this solution does not meet the general goal of consolidation to make law accessible and
comprehensible for the common user.
Some frequent problems in consolidation process are as follows.
Amendment is not applicable because interim amendments to the basic act have not been taken
into account while preparing the new amendment: the amended provision is already repealed or in
different wording etc.
ü When amending a legal act, first the compatibility of the amendments with the consolidated
text being amended and with amended versions entering into force in future shall be verified
before signing (establishing) the amending act.
Such a situation could be avoided when the legislator preparing the amendment relies on the
applicable act in current wording and the drafting rules prescribe that the amendment must replace
expressis verbis the part of the applicable text that is amended.
49

The legal act is supplemented with a new provision, but a provision with this number already
exists in the act.
ü The provisions must be numbered on a continuous basis throughout the text.
Articles, paragraphs or clauses should not be renumbered, because of the potential problems
of references in other acts. Likewise, blanks left by the deletion of articles or other numbered parts
of the text should not subsequently be filled by other provisions, except when the content is identical
to the text previously deleted. The repealed provisions retain their number, while a note about
invalidity is added. The provisions inserted in between the existing numbers are provided with
superscript numbers or letters. From the perspective of the correct and accurate presentation of legal
information, this ensures the legal certainty of references within the act and of references to other
acts.
The amendment is to a provision that was already previously repealed.
ü The amendment cannot be implemented. The issuer of the act must re-establish the amendment
again in the correct form.
If the provision is already repealed the amendment to that provision should not be applied and the
legislator must be notified about the need to change the amending act. If possible, the legal act should
be corrected before consolidation, which means that consolidated text should be prepared together
with draft of the amendment or at least before publishing the amending act (this is the practice for
example in Estonia).
Consolidation is complicated because the amendment is theoretical.
The amendment should be involved with concrete section or provision of the act to be amended. The
section or provision which is amended should be worded and replaced with the new text. If the same
word or expression is replaced in several sections, the numbers of the sections, subsections and clauses
to be amended should be listed in the amending provision. If one or several words are replaced in the
entire act, the wording of the amending provision should indicate that the word or words are replaced
in the entire text. In Joint Practical Guide of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission
for persons involved in the drafting of legislation within the Community institutions (Office for Official
Publications of the European Communities, 2003) it is recommended that amendments should not be
made by inserting or deleting sections of text, other than dates or figures.
Consolidation is complicated because the amendment contains independent regulations.
Amendments that do not replace the provision but contain independent regulations (without
embracing or taking account of the whole) should not be permitted. The prohibition against independent
50

egulations in amending legislation should be clearly stated in the drafting rules. The only provisions
that may appear in amending legislation without the amendment request are the provisions regarding
the entry into force of the amendment. Since the sole legal effect of the new act is to amend the old
one, it exhausts its effect once it enters into force. Only the old act as amended is left in existence and
continues to govern the whole of the matter. However, it must be kept in mind that the entry into force
of various amended provisions is provided expressis verbis in regulations introduced into the amended
act. A user must understand when one or another amendment has entered into force. Once again,
keeping in mind the main goal of the drafting and publishing of consolidated texts – to make the
legislation available for users in its applicable form and unambiguously.
Amendment has transformed during the drafting and adopting procedure and has become
incompatible with the legislative act in force.
ü It must be permitted to cite an amendment in the content of the consolidated text without
introducing the amendment.
There are some principles that should be observed when drafting an amending act:
· amendments must always relate to the applicable basic act;
· each amendment must be clearly expressed in the form of a text to be inserted in the act
to be amended;
· preferably replace an entire provision in the case of amendments;
· no independent autonomous regulations (except the provisions regarding the entry into
force of the amendment);
· amending acts must not be amended;
· amendments to annexes containing technical passages are normally made in the annex to
the amending act (this rule may be departed from when the amendment is a minor one);
· organizational arrangements to insure the implementation of the drafting rules in a
legislative procedure before the act is adopted;
· the existing numbering is not changed in supplementing a legal act and numbers of
already repealed provisions are not used;
· in changing more than one cell or column in tables in an annex to a legal act, the table
is to be presented in a complete form once again (in such a case, a supplementary
consolidated text is effectively established).
If established, drafting rules should be accompanied by an arrangement to monitor their
implementation in a legislative procedure before the act is adopted. It is a unique feature of the formal
requirements for the drafting rules that nobody can question the legality of a legislative act based on
them after the act has entered into force. One option is, however, to also refer in the drafting rules
to the rules concerning drafting of a consolidated text and demand that they are taken into account
when drafting the amendments. After all, the goal of the drafting rules is an unambiguous legislative
act characterised by legal clarity, which is manifested in drafting consolidated texts and ensuring their
availability.
The mandatory drafting rules give rise to a presumption that the amendments made to legislation
can be introduced into consolidated texts and that the applicable law is clear and unambiguous. Many
problems can be sidestepped by the requirement of verification of compatibility of amendments with the
valid consolidated text of a legal act and with its future versions. Implementing this requirement ensures
the possibility of introducing amendments into the consolidated text upon publication of amendments
pursuant to the intention of the issuer of the act.
As an exception, it must be permitted to cite an amendment in the content of the consolidated text
without introducing the amendment – in the event that the amendment is not compatible on a quid pro
quo basis with the consolidated text.
51

2.4. Correction of mistakes in consolidated texts
Notification to the author:
Netherland: If the mistake concerns a purely material mistake, such as an error in orthography
or grammar, it is possible to issue an official corrigendum which will be published in the
Official Gazette at the initiative of the competent Ministry. If the mistake is discovered by the
SCL, notification will go to the relevant Ministry. However if the mistake concerns the content
of the legislation and has been as such voted by Parliament and validated by the Grand-Duc,
a formal amendment must be introduced into the legal procedure and the text must be revoted
by Parliament and resigned by the Chief of State.
Latvia: Publisher contacts the Ministry of Justice and its responsible department. Then they
notify about a noticed mistake to the institution who made a concrete amendment text and
decide how to correct that, mostly – with publishing an official corrigendum or by adopting a
new amendment.
Issue of official corrigenda:
Poland: If the mistake concerns orthographical or grammatical errors, then the legislation is
corrected upon publication on the website (by powers under the Statute Law Revision Act).
However if it concerns a particular legal term or a conflict between languages, then another
legal instrument is published to correct/rectify such mistake.
Notice in the consolidated text:
Denmark: If a negligible mistake is discovered in an act while consolidating, the Danish
practice is to correct it in the consolidated text and add a notice at the end, that there has been
a mistake in the original act, and that this will be corrected in a following amendment. Only
minor mistakes such as a typing error can be corrected in the consolidated act.
The correction of mistakes depends on whether the mistake was already in the amending act or
the consolidation was done incorrectly. In case the mistake was already in the amending act there
are two main practices. First, if the mistake is in a legal act, it can only be corrected by an amending
act. It might depend on legal procedure (mistakes in legal texts can only be corrected by another
legal act) or on the type of the mistake (not just an orthographical mistake but affecting the content).
Anyway the author of the legal act is notified and necessary measures taken to correct the mistake. In
ideal situation the amending act can be corrected before consolidation if the consolidated version is
prepared together with the draft of the amending act. Another practice is that the issuer of the legal
act is notified and with his consent the official corrigendum is published and the mistake is corrected.
2.5. Visibility of the applied modifications (different mark-up practices)
How the amendments are visually presented in the consolidated text.
France: The amendment is integrated in the text, reference to the modifying act is in the heading,
validity information at the end of the provision.
Hungary: A red line on the left side of the text highlights the changed article. A footnote is written
for every amendment. It contains the number of the amending act, the type of the amendment and a
link. When clicking the link the amending act is displayed. The heading of the act is red (not in force,
repealed), green (in force) or blue (enters into force at a future date).
Luxembourg: The legal modifications in consolidated texts are indicated by placing quotes at the
beginning and at the end of the concerned part of the act, completed by the indication of the date of
the modification preceding the concerned article or paragraph.
52

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CONSLEG:2001D0822:20070426:EN
Article 62
Review
►C1 Before 31 December 2011, the Council ◄, acting unanimously on a proposal from the
Commission, shall establish the provisions to be laid down for the subsequent application of the
principles set out in Articles 182 to 186 of the Treaty. In this context, the Council shall in particular
adopt any necessary measures where an OCT decides in accordance with its own constitutional
procedures to enter into special preferential arrangements between the Community and various
partners in the region to which it belongs. The Council shall take particular account in this respect
of international obligations entered into by the Community, its Member States or the OCTs,
including those within the framework of the WTO.
http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000413818&dateTexte=20080827&fastPos=2&fastR
eqId=1183200438&oldAction=rechTexte
Article 2 En savoir plus sur cet article...
Modifié par Décret n°2004-459 du 28 mai 2004 - art. 3 JORF 29 mai 2004 en vigueur le 1er juin
2004
Il https://www.riigiteataja.ee/ert/act.jsp?id=12861144
est créé un site dénommé Légifrance (http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr), placé sous la
responsabilité du secrétaire général du Gouvernement et exploité par la Direction des Journaux
officiels.
Ce site donne accès, directement ou par l'établissement de liens, à l'ensemble des données
mentionnées à l'article 1er. Il met à la disposition du public des instruments destinés à faciliter la
recherche de ces données. Il offre la faculté de consulter les autres sites publics nationaux, ceux
des Etats étrangers, ceux des institutions de l'Union européenne ou d'organisations
internationales assurant une mission d'information juridique. Il rend compte de l'actualité
législative, réglementaire et juridictionnelle.
Par dérogation aux dispositions du deuxième alinéa du présent article le site Légifrance ne peut
donner accès aux actes mentionnés aux articles 1er et 2 du décret n° 2004-459 du 28 mai 2004
fixant les catégories d'actes individuels ne pouvant faire l'objet d'une publication sous forme
électronique au Journal officiel de la République française.
Les autres sites exploités par les administrations de l'Etat qui participent à l'exécution du service
public de la diffusion du droit par l'internet sont désignés par arrêté du Premier ministre, pris après
avis du comité mentionné à l'article 5 du présent décret.
/…/
Article 4 En savoir plus sur cet article...
Des licences de réutilisation des données mentionnées à l'article 1er et détenues par l'Etat
/…/
peuvent être accordées aux personnes qui souhaitent faire usage de ces données dans le cadre
de leur activité, que celle-ci ait ou non un caractère commercial. Une convention précise les
conditions d'utilisation des données et, notamment, les engagements pris par le bénéficiaire afin
de garantir que l'usage qui en sera fait répond à l'exigence de fiabilité qui s'impose pour la
diffusion de telles données.
La décision d'accorder la licence est prise par l'autorité responsable de l'exploitation du site sur
lequel sont diffusées les données objet de la licence. Le comité mentionné à l'article 5 du présent
décret est préalablement consulté.
Les licences sont accordées à titre gracieux. Le bénéficiaire supporte le coût de la mise à
disposition des données. Les licences ne peuvent être rétrocédées.
NOTA:
Décret n° 2006-672 du 8 juin 2006 art. 17 : Les dispositions réglementaires instituant des
commissions administratives définies à l'article 1er créées avant la date de publication du présent
décret sont abrogées au terme d'un délai de trois ans à compter de cette date (Comité du service
public de la diffusion du droit par l'internet - Article 5 du décret n° 2002-1064).
art. 18 : L'abrogation ou la caducité des dispositions créant une commission dont l'avis est requis
préalablement à une décision prise par l'autorité administrative entraîne celle des dispositions
réglementaires prévoyant sa consultation.
53

Italy: The amendments are visually presented in bold between double brackets if a sentence has
been added or modified; if a sentence has been repealed, it’s replaced with one having some points
inside double brackets. In the left part of the screenshot it’s shown the number of amendments for an
article.
Romania: Number of amendments is listed in the heading as well as their entry into force. New
provisions are incorporated to the text with different font colour; but if there is e. g. just one new word
in the whole paragraph, the entire paragraph with new word will have another font colour.
Sweden: It is not possible to see old versions of articles. After each article in the consolidated text
there is a serial number for the amendment witch changed the certain article. Sweden has a special
database register showing every amendment for each article in the act.
Croatia: There are visually presented with special sign (*) and there is a red note with the name
of amendments and its validity
Latvia: Under each modified article or section there is located a note with a legal basis of a
particular change. That means: a note contains an explanation (for example: Modified by law (or
regulation) adopted on 01.01.2008., that comes into force on 01.04.2008.) or (Expressed in a new
redaction by law (or regulation) adopted on 01.01.2008., that comes into force on 01.04.2008.) All
introduced amendments are arranged above the title of an act (with appropriate links).
54

http://www.likumi.lv/doc.php?id=133536&version_date=01.08.2010#50755
06.04.2006. likums "Publisko iepirkumu likums" ("LV", 65 (3433), 25.04.2006.) [stājas spēkā
01.05.2006.] ar grozījumiem:
08.02.2007. likums ("LV", 29 (3605), 19.02.2007.) [stājas spēkā ar 20.02.2007.]
16.07.2009. likums ("LV", 120 (4106), 30.07.2009.) [stājas spēkā ar 13.08.2009.]
19.04.2010. Satversmes tiesas spriedums ("LV", 63 (4255), 21.04.2010.) [stājas spēkā ar
21.04.2010.]
20.05.2010. likums ("LV", 91 (4283), 09.06.2010.) [stājas spēkā ar 15.06.2010.]
Redakcijas: [01.05.2006] [10.01.2007] [20.02.2007] [13.08.2009] [01.09.2009] [01.10.2009]
[01.11.2009] [21.04.2010] [15.06.2010] [01.08.2010] [04.12.2010] [01.08.2011]
/…/
5.pants. Iepirkuma procedūru piemērošanas izņēmumi
Pasūtītājs nepiemēro šajā likumā noteiktās iepirkuma procedūras, ja līgumcena ir mazāka par 70
000 latu un ja līgums tiek slēgts par:
1) piegādēm vai pakalpojumiem, kurus sabiedrisko pakalpojumu sniedzējs sniedz, veicot likuma
"Par iepirkumu sabiedrisko pakalpojumu sniedzēju vajadzībām" 3., 4., 5., 6. un 7.pantā minētās
darbības šajos pantos noteiktajās jomās;
2) iespieddarbu, elektronisko izdevumu, rokrakstu un citu dokumentu iepirkumu bibliotēku krājumu
papildināšanai vai izglītības un pētniecības procesa organizēšanai izglītības iestādēs un valsts un
universitāšu dibinātās zinātniskajās institūcijās;
3) nepieciešamo tādu muzejisko priekšmetu iepirkumu muzeju krājumu papildināšanai, kuriem ir
mākslinieciska, kultūrvēsturiska, zinātniska vai memoriāla vērtība;
4) (izslēgts ar 16.07.2009. likumu);
5) iepirkumiem ārvalstīs, kurus veic Latvijas Republikas diplomātiskās, konsulārās un citas
pārstāvniecības, kā arī Nacionālo bruņoto spēku vienības, kas piedalās starptautiskajās
operācijās un starptautiskajās mācībās;
6) preču un pakalpojumu iepirkumu, ko veic kredītiestāde savas darbības nodrošināšanai.
(Ar grozījumiem, kas izdarīti ar 16.07.2009. likumu, kas stājas spēkā 13.08.2009.)
Lithuania: Information about amendment comes after each amended or changed article of the
legal document). Every new amendment is listed at the end of the consolidated version.
55

http://www3.lrs.lt/pls/inter3/dokpaieska.showdoc_l?p_id=324790
15 straipsnis. Seimo nario atlyginimas
1. Seimo nario darbas, taip pat išlaidos, susijusios su jo parlamentine veikla, atlyginami iš valstybės
biudžeto.
2. Seimo nario atlyginimo dydį ir mokėjimo tvarką nustato Seimas. Įstatymas dėl Seimo narių
atlyginimo dydžio pakeitimo įsigalioja tik nuo kito naujai išrinkto Seimo pirmojo posėdžio dienos.
3. Seimo nariams pareigūnams ir Seimo opozicijos lyderiui už atliekamą darbą mokamas
atlyginimas, kurio dydį nustato įstatymas.
4. Seimo narys negali gauti jokio kito atlyginimo, išskyrus atlyginimą už kūrybinę veiklą. Seimo
nario atlyginimu už kūrybinę veiklą laikomas autorinis honoraras už meno kūrinius bei jų atlikimą, už
publikacijas bei knygas, už medžiagą radijo ir televizijos laidoms, jeigu Seimo narys nėra susijęs su įstaiga,
įmone ar organizacija, atlyginančia už kūrybinę veiklą, darbo, tarnybos ar panašiais santykiais, dėl kurių gali
kilti viešųjų ir privačių interesų konfliktas.
Straipsnio pakeitimai:
Lietuvos Respublikos Konstitucinis Teismas, Nutarimas
2004-07-01, Žin., 2004, Nr. 105-3894 (2004-07-06)
Nr. IX-2545, 2004-11-09, Žin., 2004, Nr. 165-6025 (2004-11-13)
Nr. X-127, 2005-02-15, Žin., 2005, Nr. 24-759 (2005-02-19)
Pakeitimai:
1. Lietuvos Respublikos Seimas, Statutas
Nr.I-716, 1994 12 20, Žin., 1994, Nr. 100-2002 (1994 12 28)
DĖL KAI KURIŲ STRAIPSNIŲ PAKEITIMO IR PAPILDYMO
2. Lietuvos Respublikos Seimas, Statutas
Nr.I-816, 1995 02 .23, Žin., 1995, Nr. 18-408 (1995 03 01)
DĖL KAI KURIŲ STRAIPSNIŲ PAKEITIMŲ IR PAPILDYMŲ
3. Lietuvos Respublikos Seimas, Statutas
Nr.I-977, 1995 06 28, Žin., 1995, Nr. 58-1436 (1995 07 14)
DĖL KAI KURIŲ STRAIPSNIŲ PAKEITIMO IR PAPILDYMO
4. Lietuvos Respublikos Seimas, Statutas
Nr.I-1133, 1995 12 19, Žin., 1996, Nr. 6-138 (1996 01 19)
DĖL KAI KURIŲ STRAIPSNIŲ PAKEITIMO IR PAPILDYMO
________________
5. Lietuvos Respublikos Seimas, Statutas
Nr. VIII-2, 1996 11 26, Žin., 1996, Nr. 116-2702 (1996 12 03)
STATUTAS DĖL 25, 28, 29, 32, 35, 48, 62, 64, 66, 68, 71, 80, 192 STRAIPSNIŲ PAKEITIMO IR PAPILDYMO 72(1)
STRAIPSNIU
6. Lietuvos Respublikos Seimas, Statutas
Nr. VIII-358, 1997 07 01, Žin., 1997, Nr. 66-1616 (1997 07 11)
STATUTAS DĖL LIETUVOS RESPUBLIKOS SEIMO STATUTO PAPILDYMO 72(2) STRAIPSNIU IR 10, 44, 46, 48, 141, 148,
162 STRAIPSNIŲ PAKEITIMO
7. Lietuvos Respublikos Seimas, Statutas
Nr. VIII-508, 1997 11 11, Žin., 1997, Nr. 104-2627 (1997 11 19)
LIETUVOS RESPUBLIKOS SEIMO STATUTAS DĖL SEIMO STATUTO 46, 140, 159 STRAIPSNIŲ PAKEITIMO IR
PAPILDYMO
8. Lietuvos Respublikos Seimas, Statutas
Nr. VIII-1000, 1998 12 22, Žin., 1999, Nr. 5-97 (1999 01 13)
DĖL STATUTO PAKEITIMO
Nauja Seimo statuto redakcija
Šis Seimo statutas įsigalioja nuo 1999 m. vasario 1 d., išskyrus šio statuto 38 straipsnio 2 dalį, kurioje yra nustatoma, kad frakciją gali
sudaryti ne mažiau kaip 7 Seimo nariai. Ši nuostata įsigalioja nuo naujo Seimo darbo pradžios. Iki to laiko Seimo frakciją gali sudaryti
ne mažiau kaip 3 Seimo nariai.
Poland: Footnote only publishing addresses of the novelizations and short notes if necessary.
56
17

2.6. Official and legally binding nature
There is quite a large difference in opinions concerning the legal status of consolidation. Historically
the paper version of Official Gazettes has been official and legally binding. Still, not everything
published on paper in the Official Gazette is always legally binding. The consolidated versions of
legal acts published in Official Gazettes may be official, but in many cases they only have informative
value.
Since 2001 when Belgium changed the history in publishing Official Gazettes and started to
disseminate Belgisch Staatsblad/Moniteur belge only via Internet the electronic versions of Official
Gazettes have acquired official status in numerous countries. It has aroused the question of the status
of consolidated texts in these electronic publications.
Consolidated acts published in Official Gazette are legally binding:
Slovenia: Consolidations published in Uradni list Republike Slovenije (on paper and electronically)
are equally legally binding.
Estonia: Consolidation is officially published in electronic Riigi Teataja after each modification. It
is legally binding and court may apply the consolidated text. In case the consolidated text does not
correspond to the original text of the legislation or legislation amending or repealing thereof, a court
may refuse to apply the consolidated text and notify the State Chancellery of the contents of the noncorrespondence.
In many cases legal value of the consolidated version depends on the legislative procedure, it has
to be passed through Parliament:
United Kingdom: “Consolidated” versions of legislation are those which are passed by Parliament
and are therefore legally binding. The UK Statute Law Database is the official revised version of the
primary legislation of the UK made available online. Revised texts of legislation held on the Statute
Law Database are deemed to be the official revised edition of legislation and may be accepted by a
Court as the current version of that piece of legislation.
Malta: Consolidated versions of legal texts enacted by Parliament are legally binding as prepared
and published by the Law Revision Commission under the Authority of the Statute Law Revision Act.
Belgium: The consolidated versions of legal texts voted by Parliament are legally binding.
Luxembourg: The consolidated versions of legal texts voted by Parliament are legally binding
(example: “Code du Travail” - Code containing the legal acts referring to labour reglementation -
legally binding as of January 1st 2007).
Official collections depend usually on whether the publication form is official or not. As paper
publication has still official status therefore republication in Official Gazette can be also official.
Germany: The text is only official when the consolidated text is published in the law gazette
(Bekanntmachung der Neufassung).
Hungary: According to Article 60 of Act No. XI/1987 consolidated texts contained in the Official
Compilation of Law in Force (published every five years) are official.
Romania: Republication is the only official consolidated form.
Informative value: In most cases both consolidated texts printed in official paper publication or
published online have just informative value.
EU: The reason, why consolidation does not have official or legally binding status is that the
consolidated versions are not formally adopted by the legislative authorities.
57

Finland: To make consolidated versions official (legally binding) would require changes in the
legislative procedure, and the consolidated version would have to be passed through Parliament
simultaneously with the amendments. This can be the long-term objective.
Sweden: The legally binding promulgation of a legal act has to be exactly in accordance with the
decision of the deciding body (Parliament or Government). The consolidated versions are not formally
adopted by the deciding bodies.
Many countries are planning to give consolidated versions also official or/and legally binding
status in the future.
Czech Republic: System of publication of legally binding electronic and paper versions of acts in
consolidated form called e-Sbirka (e-Collection) is being prepared.
Serbia: Sluzbeni glasnik undertakes certain steps to make its consolidated basis legally binding.
Italy: No immediate plans, but they are thinking to move forward.
Experience of set-backs in this field:
Switzerland: It was discussed within the last revision of the law in 1994 to make consolidated
versions again official (was legally binding up to 1986), but the Parliament has finally confirmed his
position from 1986. Legally binding are still the publications of the original acts in the official gazette.
It is not planned in the next few years to change again the law.
v The official status of consolidated texts should be set forth in legal acts.
Official status and legal coherence is ensured by the obligatory introduction into the consolidated
text of all amendments adopted by the issuer of a legal act. For this reason, an official consolidated
text can be seen as the sum total of the act as established by the issuer of the act at various points in
time.
v To ensure official status, the consolidated text must be published at the
same time as the amendment.
This could involve a time difference: i.e., the consolidated text must be published at least before
the last amendment introduced enters into force.
It is also necessary to provide chronological coherence between the various updated versions of
the consolidated text along with data on the validity or entry into force of the amendments so that the
user would have a clear idea of when a given amendment was in force or will enter into force.
Problems arise when a consolidated text has many “future versions”. In this case it is necessary
upon effecting amendments to refer to the consolidated text that is being amended. The requirement
for this is that the consolidated texts must be official. In Estonia, consolidated texts feature publication
data identical to those of original texts. Even the amending act refers to the consolidated text that is
being amended, to the publication citation (not to the original text or to the publication citations of all
of the acts amending it).
Legislation and other documents published in an official gazette can only be official. Supporting
argument to this statement is that all the information posted on the official web sites of public
58

establishments cannot be unofficial. Citizens expect public establishments and the information provided
by them to be reliable. If part of the information is unofficial, the web page must provide a relevant
notice regarding such information. Yet this gives rise to the question why a public establishment should
give unofficial information.
The fact that an act is legally binding means, above all, that the applicable legislation is published
in the official gazette. If a person has received a text for implementation that has been published
elsewhere, it is neither certain nor verified that it is legally binding. At the same time, the official text
of the adopted act may have been published in some other outlet besides the official gazette intended
for publishing the state legislation. Only the text published in the official gazette, however, can be
regarded as legally applicable in such a situation. This applies on the condition that the laws or the
constitution of that country provides for publication in an official gazette. Attempts should be naturally
made to avoid a situation in which the official text differs from the legally binding text. For example, in
Estonia, the Riigi Teataja Act prohibits the publication of the texts published in the Riigi Teataja in other
publications, be they on paper or electronic, without a reference or link to the Riigi Teataja. The new
wording of the Riigi Teataja Act prescribes an even stricter prohibition — acts that are to be published
in the Riigi Teataja may not be published on the web page of a state agency, but links to the Riigi
Teataja are to be provided if necessary. This also applies when referring to the consolidated texts — it
is necessary and technically feasible to add a link that leads to the consolidated text applicable at
that particular moment. Such prohibition of parallel publication is intended to avoid differences arising
from the errors in the texts regarding official and legally binding texts.
There is an essential contradiction between the unofficial and official publication of consolidated
texts. If consolidated texts are made available as unofficial versions and such a publication is offered
as a service for users, then actually users are being misled as to the obligatory and legally binding
nature of such consolidated texts – all the more so if a public authority follows such a course of action.
In the case of publication of high-quality, legally certain consolidated texts by a public authority, their
official status and legal coherence must be ensured.
v The official status of consolidated texts must be provided by law.
v Official status also ensures legal coherency.
v Official status and legal coherence is ensured by the obligatory introduction into the consolidated
text of all amendments adopted by the issuer of a legal act. For this reason, an official consolidated
text can be seen as the sum total of the act as established by the issuer of the act at various
points in time.
v To ensure official status the consolidated text must be published at the same time as the
amendment. There may be a time gap – i.e. the consolidated text must be published at least
before the entry into force of the last amendment introduced.
v The amendments must be separated in the consolidated text by provisions so that the user
understands when a given amendment enters into force.
v It is also necessary to provide chronological coherence between the various updated versions of
the consolidated text along with data on the validity or entry into force of the amendments so
that the user would have a clear idea of when a given amendment was in force or will enter into
force.
2.7. Liability
Estonia: Pursuant to the Riigi Teataja Act the authorised representative of the issuer of the act is
liable for the authenticity of the consolidated text and the data contained within (for the conformity to
the signed legislation).
59

Errors in consolidation could potentially result in damages to the citizen who relied on its correctness
in good faith. The liability of the public authority is regulated by the institute of state liability in many
countries.
As consolidated texts published in the official gazette are currently legally binding only in Estonia,
let’s see how state liability is applied in there. It is possible to demand, under general civil law bases,
remedy or compensation for an official act by which the state caused damage to citizens. The liability
of the public authority is regulated by the institute of state liability. A person whose rights are violated
by the unlawful activities of a public authority in a public law relationship may claim compensation for
damage caused to their person if the damage could not be prevented and cannot be eliminated by
the protection or restoration of rights. Compensation for damage caused by a failure to act may also
be claimed if the consolidated text is not issued in due course or a measure is not taken in due course
and the rights of a person are violated thereby.
The application of state liability presumes that the publication of the legally binding and official
act is considered an act of the exercise of the state authority and the obligation to publish flawless
acts according to a certain procedure has been clearly prescribed. The liability may also become
personal if the state (public authority) files a recourse action against the officials/employees who made
the mistake. The application of liability presumes precise delimitation of duties between officials/
employees and the identification of the time when the acts were performed by information technology
means and the person performing the acts (log files).
The existence of the liability system compels the publisher to assume full liability for drafting and
publishing the consolidated texts and provide organisational quality control measures to prevent any
mistakes.
3. Organizational aspects
Preparation of consolidated texts is for the most part centralized and takes place either at the
issuer, the Ministry of Justice, the sub-unit servicing the Parliament, or the State Chancellery. If the
preparation of consolidated texts was commissioned through subcontracting procedure, quality control
is performed by the unit responsible for issuing the act.
Consolidations are made by:
Ministries and other authorities
Sweden: The consolidation is done by the Division for Legal and Linguistic Draft Revision at the
Ministry of Justice.
Austria: Federal Chancellery.
EU: Consolidation of primary law (Treaties) is the responsibility of the Council Legal Service.
Poland: Consolidated texts of laws complies special department of the Chancellery of the Sejm to
be signed by Chairman of the Sejm and officially edited in Official Journal in paper version.
Lithuania: IT department in the Office of the Parliament.
Slovakia: consolidation is prepared only within the Ministry of Justice.
Publisher of Official Gazette
Hungary: The consolidation is done by the Legal Consolidation Unit of the Hungarian Official
Journal Publisher.
Turkey: The consolidation is done by the Office of the Prime Minister, Directorate General for
Development and Publication of Legislation.
60

Switzerland: The Centre for Official Publications within the Swiss federal chancellery.
Luxembourg: Service Central de Législation.
EU: Consolidation of secondary law (Regulations, Directives and Decisions) is carried out by the
Publications Office. Some other documents (like guidelines etc.) can be consolidated by the Publications
Office upon request. The consolidation team (6 people) of the Publications Office is responsible for
daily analysis of the Official Journal (taking consolidation decisions), preparing working instructions for
the external contractor and sending source files to the contractor. The technical consolidation is carried
out by the contractor (45 people). The delivered consolidated texts are then validated, controlled and
disseminated by the Office consolidation team.
Outsourced
In Finland consolidation is done by Edita Publishing Ltd. Publication of the entire gazette is
outsourced in Finland.
EU: The technical consolidation process is carried out by an external contractor, following detailed
instructions of the Publications Office consolidation team.
Netherland: Consolidation is made by an external contractor, following detailed instructions of an
interdepartmental editorial board.
It is also possible to prepare consolidated texts in decentralized fashion. In this case the consolidated
texts are prepared and submitted, pursuant to common methodological instructions, by the officials of
the institution that adopted the instrument and only by taking into account the amendments prescribed
in the instruments. When preparing an amendment, the officials of the ministry can verify the option
of the correct introduction of the amendment on the consolidated text to be created. It is a preventive
organisational measure that helps to correct and improve legislation that is faulty from the viewpoint
of the preparation of the consolidated text.
Estonia: Consolidated texts are compiled by the same authorities who are responsible for the
adoption of the basic acts and the amending acts.
1) The Ministry of Justice – Acts and decrees of the President of the Republic;
2) The State Chancellery – regulations and orders of the Government of the Republic;
3) Ministries – regulations of appropriate ministers;
4) The Bank of Estonia – regulations of the President of the Bank of Estonia;
5) The Chancellery of the Parliament – regulations of the National Electoral Committee.
Denmark: by the ministries.
To ensure methodological and organizational uniformity of preparation of consolidated texts and
integration with publication of amendments, the production and publication of consolidated texts must
take place entirely at the issuer.
Decentralized production of consolidated texts, where various agencies prepare and submit
consolidated texts, should proceed from the principle that the same agency that drafted the amendments
should prepare the consolidated texts. Such a system would ensure that need to prepare a consolidated
text is considered in the process of drafting amendments.
In the case of decentralized production of consolidated texts, the issuer must be responsible for
coordinating and administering the publication of consolidated texts. Such a system will ensure the
uniformity and regularity of the publication of consolidated texts and amendments, and verification
of correctness before publication. It will also ensure that the production process takes place using a
uniform methodology.
The availability of consolidated texts must be ensured in accordance with the same procedure as
the publication of amendments.
61

v In the case of electronic publication, the state should not charge a fee for
availability of the valid legislation. Legislation must be available to all in a manner
as understandable and all-encompassing as possible without technical problems.
4. Technical aspects
The electronic formats of collections of consolidated acts are most commonly HTML and PDF. PDF
format is used to maintain the same look of both versions, consolidated and the original act printed in
the official Gazette. PDF format is also suitable for archival.
Consolidation can be made:
Manually – in most cases simple copy-paste.
Switzerland: Automation is not possible at this time. There are very often other legal acts indirectly
touched by amendments. For detecting these special cases it needs high qualified persons. Some links
and other very important information have to be done by lawyers.
Semi-automatically –
EU: The synchronisation of the XML structure from the “pilot” language to the other language
versions is semi-automatic, with manual interventions if automation failed.
Belgium, Germany: Some production steps are supported by automatic procedures. The
modification of the text is done manually.
Automatically –
Fully automatic consolidation seems to be unreachable challenge. It demands very precise
drafting rules for drafting the amending acts and also strictly following the rules. A technical premise
for automatic consolidation is encoding the structure and content of the legal documents.
Automatic or semi-automatic process of consolidation needs standardization of the structure of the
electronic documents. XML is considered to be one of the best for that at present days. In electronic
collections of consolidation using XML schemas is becoming inevitable. This allows different amended
versions of consolidated texts of the same act to be compared and makes it possible to automatically
process consolidated texts.
XML schemas used for legal documentation and consolidation:
Common standard –
Metalex - is an open format and a generic and extensible framework for the XML and RDF
encoding of the structure and contents of legal documents. It aims to be jurisdiction and languageneutral,
and is based on modern publishing concepts like XSLT-based transformation pipelines and
emerging Semantic Web standards like RDF and OWL.
Denmark: LexDania;
Switzerland is using different standards (Metalex, LexDania);
Germany: Bundesanzeiger and Bundesgesetzblatt print are partly XML-based; eBundesanzeiger
is XMLbased.
Own standards
Italy: Norm In Rete;
EU: Formalised Exchange of Electronic Publications (Formex);
Netherlands, Finland, and France – own XML schema;
62

Belgium, Latvia: Consolidated acts are structured documents in data base that are convertible to
XML format if necessary.
The use of the XML mark-up language is most suitable for compiling consolidated texts. This allows
different updated versions of consolidated texts of the same act to be compared and enables automatic
processing of consolidated texts.
In developing legislation information systems, the need for publication of consolidated texts should
be considered, with publication procedure integrated with publication of amendments so that the
introduction of every amendment into the consolidated text and the need to publish the consolidated
text would lie within the sphere of control. It is possible to automate the monitoring system.
In studying the practices and problems in different countries, the working group concluded that
the best practice would be to use a particular ideal model to resolve problems and fulfil the objective
of making the consolidated texts available.
v The official status of consolidated texts should be set forth in legal acts.
v The requirement for preparing consolidated texts is that the drafting rules must allow the
consolidated texts to be prepared and all of the various amendments from different points in
time to be introduced into the basic text – the consolidated text.
v Amendments must be separated in the consolidated text by provisions so that the user would
readily understand when each amendment enters into force.
v To ensure methodological and organizational uniformity of the production of consolidated texts
and integration with publication of amendments, the production and publication of consolidated
texts must take place entirely at the issuer.
v Decentralized production of consolidated texts, where various agencies prepare and submit
consolidated texts, should proceed according to the principle that the same agency that drafted
the amendments should prepare the consolidated texts. Such a system would ensure that the need
to prepare a consolidated text is taken into consideration during the drafting of amendments.
v In the case of decentralized compiling of consolidated texts, the issuer must be responsible for
coordinating and administering the publication of consolidated texts. Such a system ensures
the uniformity and regularity of the publication of consolidated texts and amendments, and
verification of correctness prior to publication, and also ensures that the production process
takes place according to a uniform methodology.
v The availability of consolidated texts must be ensured in accordance with the same procedure as
the publication of amendments.
v In the case of electronic publication, the state should not charge a fee for availability of the law in
force. Legislation must be available to all in a manner as understandable and all-encompassing
as possible without technical problems.
v The use of the XML mark-up language is the most suitable for producing consolidated texts. This
allows different updated versions of consolidated texts of the same act to be compared and
enables the automatic processing of consolidated texts.
v Development of legislation information systems must proceed taking into account the need for
publication of consolidated texts. Publication procedure should be integrated with the publication
of amendments such that the introduction of every amendment into the consolidated text and the
need to publish the consolidated text lies within the sphere of control. It is possible to automate
the monitoring system.
63

Goals and tasks
7th meeting, Rome
23rd – 24th September 2010
Consolidation
Final report of the Working Group
presented by
Ms Marika Seppius
Riigi Teataja, Estonia
analysing the methods and the organisation of consolidation
production and publication in different countries;
charting the different countries practices in producing and publishing
consolidated texts;
identifying the best practices and the problems/obstacles to
successful consolidation procedures;
studying the possibilities to attribute a legal value to consolidated
texts.
1
2

Participants
Chair: Marika Seppius (Estonia)
Secretary: Aija Bilzna (Publications Office)
Members: Helga Stöger (Austria)
Karl Irresberger (Austria)
Pavel Gardavsky (Czech Republic)
Jüri Heinla (Estonia)
Christoph Eckert (Germany)
Joelle Kaufmann (France)
Philippe Gibon (France)
Inese Luste (Latvia)
Artis Trops (Latvia)
John Dann (Luxembourg)
Roman Makara (Slovakia)
Albrecht Berger (Publications Office)
Meetings
10th and 11th March 2008 in Luxembourg – decision on the
objectives of the group
15th and 16th May 2008 in Tallinn – decision on the questionnaire
14th and 15th July 2008 in Riga – validation of the questionnaire
17th June 2009 in Brussels – result analysis
3
4

Questionnaire
online questionnaire, with attachments and links
28 questions on legal, organisational and technical issues
answers from 28 countries
results – summary of status quo
Overall remark
http://www.wg-consolidation.eu/
While analysing the multiple consolidation practices, the
working group concluded that the main attention should be
drawn to:
legislative drafting rules and, eventually, similar
consolidation guidelines;
actions for handling contradictory/mistaken instructions
(practices when consolidation normally is not possible);
visibility of the applied modifications (different mark-up
practices);
legal value of consolidated texts and the liability of the state
for the official consolidations.
(for more details please see the report)
5
6

Legal aspects - findings
Existence of legal basis for consolidation – 50% yes / 50% no
Mainly no fixed deadlines
No legal definition, the understanding is common
Various basis, rather common drafting rules
Different mistake correction practices
Notification to the author
Publication of official corrigenda
Notice in the consolidated text
Different mark-up (amendment presentation) practices
Different opinions on legal status of consolidated texts
Legal aspects - conclusions
Drafting rules must be followed and allow clear consolidation
Amendments must be:
in clear and unambiguous wording,
easy to insert into the original text,
based on applicable version of the basic act.
Official status of consolidated texts should be set by law
Legal coherency + simultaneous publication of the amendment
and the consolidated text
7
8

Organisational aspects - findings
Centralised preparation of consolidated versions
Specific national authority
Publisher of Official Gazette
Outsourced (private company)
vs.
Decentralised preparation of consolidated versions
Author institutions
Responsible ministries
Organisational aspects - conclusions
To ensure uniformity of consolidation and amendments, the
authors of amendments (the issuers) should prepare the
consolidated versions.
In case of decentralised consolidation, the issuer must be
responsible for coordinating and administering the publication
of consolidated texts.
In case of electronic publication, the state should not charge a
fee for the availability of the law in force. Legislation must be
available to all in a manner as understandable and allencompassing
as possible without technical problems.
9
10

Technical aspects - findings
Most common formats – HTML and PDF
Automatisation degree
Manually (most countries)
Semi-automatically (e.g. EU, Germany)
Automatically (future challenge)
Wide use of XML schemas (common and own standards)
Technical aspects - conclusions
A technical premise for automatic consolidation is encoding the
structure and the content of the legal documents. It demands
very precise drafting rules for drafting amending acts and also
strictly following the rules.
Use of XML is most suitable for compiling consolidated texts.
In developing legislation information systems, the need for the
publication of consolidated texts should be considered, with
publication procedure integrated with publication of
amendments so that the introduction of every amendment into
the consolidated text and the need to publish the consolidated
text would lie within the sphere of control. It is possible to
automate the monitoring system.
11
12

Important notice
As regards the different national backgrounds and
systems, of course, in no way can the working group's
recommendations and conclusions force the national
states to adapt one or the other way of proceeding.
Questions and answers
?
Thank you for your attention!
13
14

European Forum of Official Gazettes
7 th meeting
Rome
24 September 2010
71
Rome 2010
Progress Report from the
Working group on
Indexing and Search
presented.by
Aleš Gola
Chairman of the working group
Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic

1. Mandate and objectives of the working group
Providing legal information to all kind of users (citizens, businesses, government) in the most
efficient way is one of the principal tasks of publication offices. Examination and implementation of
methods and techniques that enable easy and transparent access to legal documents and information
contained in legal information systems therefore has to be permanent concern of publication offices
and of the Forum.
Optimal indexing together with corresponding search facilities constitute basic means to provide
users with information and documents. Adopting efficient and functional interfaces exploiting these
basics and implementing modern technologies can further improve accessibility of legal documents and
information, provide possibility to share knowledge with other users and even enable transformation of
legal information systems to legal knowledge systems.
Based on these assumptions, the objectives of the working group “Indexing and Search” are as
follows:
1. Collect experiences and information
o on indexing facilities for legal documents and databases (metadata, thesauri, document
structure, search engines, use of links to/between documents as well as organisational
aspects of indexation with special focus on indexation automation possibilities),
o on search facilities (search engines - their properties and possibilities, used search
interfaces or, in simple words, how to enable users to find exactly the document or
information they are looking for in the shortest possible time and with minimum effort),
o on the design of end user interfaces and potential of selected modern technologies
(interface of legal information systems, RSS feeds, semantic web techniques, social web
technology etc.).
2. Identify and recommend best practices and technologies which could bring maximum of benefits
to the users and be economically reasonable for publication offices.
3. Present model solutions for indexing, search, and other aspects of legal information systems
based on working group findings.
2. Members of the working group
CHAIRPERSON: Mr Aleš Gola, (Czech Republic)
SECRETARY: Mr Holger Bagola (Publications office)
PUBLICATIONS OFFICE Mr Andrea Bartolini
Mrs Christine Laaboudi
Mr Jose Antonio Dominguez Rojas
Mrs Krassimira Dimitrova
Mr Alexander Bresch
Mrs Anna Lisowska
CZECH REPUBLIC Mr Jiri Bajer
Mr Emil Horč ič ka
DENMARK Mrs Nina Koch
Mr Søren Broberg Nielsen
ESTONIA Mr Martin Parik
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GERMANY Mr Jörn Erbguth
Mr Sascha Heinig
Mr Ralf Killian
MKD Mr Andon Stefanovski Jiri
POLAND Mrs Alicja Witorska
ROMANIA Mr Ion Dumitru
Mrs Cristina Popescu
SLOVAKIA Mr Pavel Gardavský
SLOVENIA Mrs Almira Turk
3. Working group meetings
Four meetings of the working group have taken place:
1 st meeting of working group - 19-20 March 2009 in Luxembourg
The Meeting was aimed at setting a basis for future work. The working group agreed on the
mandate proposal to be submitted for approval at London meeting of the Forum. An important part of
the first meeting formed the discussion on terminology concerning indexing and search, which resulted
in a proposal of common definitions of terms. The working group also debated the framework of an
indexing and search questionnaire and created a basic list of possible questions.
2 nd meeting of working group - 28-29 April 2009 in Prague
The working group agreed on the commented and finalised version of the common terminology
list. The preparation of the questionnaire continued with commenting and discussing the extent of
the questionnaire as well as the harmonisation of questions. The working group decided to use an
online questionnaire technique to disseminate the questionnaire, to review the items and test-fill the
questionnaire. The delegation of Slovakia presented principles of the EPI-system for access to legislation,
including future plans concerning the use of Topic Maps - one of the semantic web technology standards.
The German delegation demonstrated an approach to retrieval by means of hyperlinking such as used
in Juris system. This methodology seems to offer a rather user-friendly retrieval of documents which offer
parallel mean of access to documents and information contained in legal information systems.
3 rd meeting of working group - 20-21 April 2010 in Luxembourg
The meeting was opened with the report of the chairman of the working group on results of the
Forum meeting in London. The working group agreed that the mission of the working group should
be extended by integrating aspects of metadata normalisation and standardisation. Afterwards the
delegations from Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia presented new projects of their publication
offices concerning area of indexing and search. The Danish delegation informed about the start of the
implementation of a feasibility study on implementing of the Google search technology into the Danish
legal information system.
Presentations during the meeting were primarily aimed at transformation process of the Publication
Office of the European Union. The Publication Office presented experiences with a prototype for semiautomated
indexing and described a methodology which is based on statistics and lexicometry and
is supposed to provide reliable results. The Publication Office also introduced efforts for harmonising
and standardising controlled vocabularies (authority tables) which will serve as values for various
metadata elements. The administration of metadata definitions, element sets and authority tables using
the metadata registry was the subject of another presentation. The set of reports was concluded with
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information on a new version and methodology for Eurovoc where the language independent concepts
and the language dependent terms replace the former system of descriptors. The Slovak delegation
then demonstrated an example of Eurovoc how Topic Maps, the ISO standard 13250 for semantic
mark-up and knowledge engineering, can be used to improve indexing and search.
The rest of the meeting concentrated on discussing results of the test-filling of the questionnaire.
The working group decided to disseminate the questionnaire after the results of the discussion will be
implemented.
4 th meeting of working group - 15-16 June 2010 in Luxembourg
The chairman of the the working group presented the results of the Rome meeting of the extended
chair of the Forum. His overview was followed by a Danish presentation on the results of the XML
working group which consist of a vocabulary (XML Schema and DTD) for common metadata. Another
presentation described the use of ontologies, the FRBR model and semantic web technologies in project
of transformation of Publication Office of the European Union. The Slovak delegation demonstrated
how Topic Maps can be used as a tool for enhancement of information retrieval.
The second part of the meeting was dedicated to evaluation of the results of the questionnaire.
The working group drew up preliminary conclusions, which will be discussed in-depth by the working
group members.
Minutes from the meetings of the working group can be accessed at website of the European
Forum of Official Gazettes.
4. Questionnaire
The working group “Indexing and search” decided to prepare and disseminate a questionnaire
on the practices of of publication offices in the area of indexing and search in order to prepare an
overview of the current situation and to concentrate future efforts to key areas of interest of publication
offices.
The extent of questions and topics covered was based of working group mandate which adopted
the complex approach to indexing and search within a larger scope, the access to information contained
in legal information systems of publication offices. This approach was based both on experience of
group members and results of presentations of advanced legal information systems from Slovak and
German delegations. Despite these systems are partially commercial and therefore not all findings
can be generalised, they revealed that access to information in modern legal information systems
is generally based on a mix of different technologies and mostly concentrated on search interfaces
and the use of indexing practices. Therefore the questionnaire also covers questions concerning
documentary bases of legal information systems, the collection and use of user feedback, the creation
and structure of metadata, the implementation of hyperlinking between documents, the openness of
legal information systems and their connections with other sources of legal information as well as the
implementation of social web technologies.
The working group decided to use an online questionnaire in order to simplify the filling of the
questionnaire by the users as well as facilitate the following evaluation by the members of the working
group.
After the initial drafting the questions were revised in a multistage process aimed at specifying
their wording and leaving out questions that were not deemed necessary for the purposes of the
working group. As integral part of the process the questionnaire was test-filled by the working group
members. After a final revision the questionnaire consisted of 68 questions divided into three sections:
Indexing, Search and Common questions. The questionnaire was disseminated to 39 Forum members
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and cooperating countries on 17 May. 2010 with a deadline set to 11. June 2010; a reminder was
sent consequently. 33 out of 39 countries responded the questionnaire.
The answers to the questionnaire prove good general understanding of the submitted questions.
Only in some cases the questions were misunderstood. The reason might be the cooperation of several
persons on the preparation of answers, a confusion caused by describing current and future states at
the same time as well as inaccurate wording of some questions.
After the discussion and evaluation of the answers the working group decided to interconnect the
evaluation of answers in the interim report with information gained from the presentations of practices
during the working group meetings. The working group also decided to highlight progressive practices
in the area of indexing and search.
For the sake of evaluation, the following chapters group the questions and their answers according
to their topics. Questions offering a preset of multiple choices of answers are displayed along with
graphical display of answers. Answers to open questions which cannot be graphically expressed, are
marked as open questions.
4.1 Documentary aspects
C02. How many documents does your legal information system offer to the user? – Open question.
C03. Do the files in your legal information system usually consist of several documents (for
example.pdf file containing several acts, secondary legislation, international treaties etc.)?
Yes
No
In certain cases yes
C04. Are your legal documents structured according to a XML-compliant grammar (e.g.
datastructure stored in database and exportable to XML if necessary)?
Stored in XML (with DTD/XSD)
Stored in XML (well formed)
Stored in database
No, we’re not familiar with XML
C05. Which character encoding system(s) is (are) used in your documents and legal information
system?
Unicode
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Other (please specify)
Not yet, but we plan to convert to Unicode
The working group considers questions on documentary bases as an important prerequisite for the
evaluation of the following questions. The answers revealed that publication offices have to deal with
a huge number of documents ranging from thousands to millions, typically between tens and hundreds
of thousands of documents. The precise number can be actually higher in multilingual environments,
as e.g. the European Union treats all language versions of document as one “documentary unit”. It
is also important to note that documents in many countries consist of several other documents. Such
a document, which is typically an issue of the official journal, serves as a container of documents
carrying the actual legal content.
The questionnaire showed that preferred character encoding used for documents by publication
offices is Unicode.
Concerning the internal structure of documents, the use of XML mark up is common but not the
prevailing practice. The Swedish transformation project also shows that an alternative solution can be
adopted: the use XHTML in combination with an RDF vocabulary.
4.2 Use of controlled vocabularies
I01. Do you use controlled vocabularies in your legal information system (thesauri, taxonomies ...)?
simple list of indexing terms
taxonomies
topic maps
thesauri
other?
I02. What is the main purpose of use of controlled vocabularies?
improving information retrieval
internal document organization
other (please describe)
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I04. Please describe the contents of controlled vocabularies, add descriptive documents,
screenshots, etc.
branches of law
Keywords
user target groups
accessibility information
other (please describe)
I05. Does your legal information system contain a central register of controlled vocabularies?
Please specify in additional notes which applications use controlled vocabularies and how is the
maintenance of controlled vocabularies and access to controlled vocabularies organised?
Yes, central register exists.
Not yet, but planned
No, please explain why
I06. Do you provide an end user interface to the implemented controlled vocabularies?
Yes, for information retrieval
Yes, for browsing controlled vocabularies
Yes, for user adding of terms
No, please explain why
I07. If you use more than one controlled vocabulary please describe if they are interconnected
and how.
No, we use only one controlled vocabulary
Yes, please describe if they are interconnected and how.
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I12. Do your controlled vocabularies contain synonyms/equivalents? How are they implemented
and used?
Yes
Yes as non-descriptor
Yes, other (please specify)
Not yet, but planned
No
I13. What is the number of descriptors and non-descriptors (such as synonyms) in your controlled
vocabularies? If you use thesauri or taxonomy what is the maximum level of hierarchy? – Open
question.
Based on the questionnaire results, publication offices use controlled vocabularies relatively
commonly. The purpose of their use is in most cases the enhancement of information retrieval in their
legal information systems. In most of the cases those controlled vocabularies actually are indexes of the
official journals with a basic level of internal organisation containing keywords used for indexing. In
some cases the controlled vocabularies are organised as taxonomies or even as a thesauri. Examples
of thesauri range from the Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary used in United Kingdom as a common
indexing tool for public sector documents and Eurovoc to specialized legal thesauri as used by the EPI
system in Slovakia.
The United Kingdom remarked that, based in their findings, users actually prefer to use other
means to retrieve documents than controlled vocabularies. They therefore decided not to use complex
controlled vocabularies in the future, but focus on the development of a number of light weight domain
specific ontologies, for example about parts of government. They plan to extract these directly from
the legislative texts and manage them in a separate knowledge base of legislation (an RDF store). An
initial version should be available later this year.
Controlled vocabularies used for improving information retrieval are usually publicly accessible
and can be browsed or used as a way to directly access documents. In some cases users are even
allowed to add their own terms to controlled vocabularies.
Another major area of use of controlled vocabularies concerns document organisation. In this
context the answers provided several cases of use of advanced technologies for their structure, including
semantic web technologies such as the use of RDF/OWL (ontologies). Examples from this area were
provided by the Publications Office of European Union, the United Kingdom and France.
The use of controlled vocabularies for document organisation (especially in area of metadata) is
connected with projects of metadata registers. An example is the Record project of the Publications
Office of the European Union. The RECORD metadata registry is not only a central organisation of
harmonised metadata, but also a point for extraction and dissemination of the stored values. Design
and processing are mainly inspired by the international standard ISO 11179. The registry also serves
as a foundation for efforts for harmonising and standardising controlled vocabularies (authority tables);
their contents will be used as values for various metadata elements. The aim of the harmonisation is
to exclude the use of different terms to express the same or similar concepts which led to a currently
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inhomogeneous and therefore unsatisfactory situation in the metadata catalogue, while at the same
time historical changes have also to be kept in mind.
Only very seldom publication offices use more than one controlled vocabulary. In the case where
various controlled vocabulary are used, they are usually not interconnected. However, ontologies can
interconnect controlled vocabularies on an organisational level by storing them in a knowledge base.
Some answers revealed that in several countries synonyms contained in controlled vocabularies
are used to expand search results, especially for layman users of legal information systems who have
difficulties choosing the preferred legal term in their search queries (Switzerland, Slovakia, United
Kingdom). Apart from synonyms, controlled vocabularies in some cases show rather high complexity,
as taxonomies can reach up to seven levels.
4.3 Eurovoc
I09. Do you use Eurovoc? For which purpose? Do you plan or don’t you plan to use it? Why you
do/don’t plan Eurovoc usage?
for multilingual purposes
for search terms expansion
for indexing
no (describe why please)
not yet, but planned
I10. Which version of Eurovoc do you use? If you use older version do you plan to use newer
version of Eurovoc an when?
Eurovoc v4.2
Eurovoc v4.3
other vision
I11. If Eurovoc is used, did you implement enhancements for domains which are not covered?
Yes, we supplement Eurovoc
No, we use Eurovoc “as it is”
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A separate set of questions was dedicated to the use of Eurovoc which is a unique indexing
tool with direct connection to European Union and law of European union . The recently presented
new methodology introduced for Eurovoc is based on semantic and knowledge technologies, where
the language independent concept and the language dependent terms replace the former system of
descriptors as the central point of interest.
The answers also showed that, despite its use is nowadays limited to several countries, a
considerable number of countries plan or consider to use Eurovoc in future. The reason why Eurovoc
is used or planned to be used is either based on necessity to deal with multilingual environments or
because of its connection to European laws and the possibility to provide a “European view” (Slovakia)
on national legislation. Countries using Eurovoc as a thesaurus for indexing national legislation tend
to implement new terms in areas not or not well covered by the original version.
The reasons why other countries are not using Eurovoc differ among publication offices. Denmark
pointed out that Eurovoc has gaps in specific areas of legal terminology and therefore cannot be
used for indexation of Danish legal documents. The United Kingdom stated that it investigated the
possibility of using Eurovoc and also the Global Legal Information Network’s controlled vocabulary.
The implementation of either or both was prohibitively expensive for relatively little return in terms of
improved search results or improved experience for end users. The United Kingdom is convinced that
there is only little or no demand at all from users for the use of Eurovoc. It considers Eurovoc to be
perhaps too broad to be useful for indexing legal documents. The United Kingdom suggests the use of
smaller, light weight ontologies which in their opinion could provide richer exploration of legislative
concepts.
4.4 Indexing practices
I03. In case controlled vocabularies are used, is the indexing done manually, semi-automatically
or automatically?
manually
semi-automatically
automatically
Yes
No
I08. Do you go for re-indexation after a new version of your controlled vocabularies is released?
I14. What is the frequency of updating index(es)? Is index(es) update performed or dependent on
the data content update or at scheduled time?
Index update daily
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Index update weekly
Other period of index update
Index(es) update performed or dependent on data content update
I15. Please explain the management of the controlled vocabularies (modifications, maintenance)?
– Open question.
Indexing practices are one of the major areas of interest of the working group. Manual indexing
is still a prevailing praxis among most of the publication offices using controlled vocabularies for
improvement of information retrieval. Manual indexing requires educated legal staff and is considered
as an economic burden more than the management of controlled vocabularies itself. Several countries
stated that the costs of manual indexing is one of the reasons why they did not implement controlled
vocabularies (United Kingdom) or abandoned their use (Belgium).
Another form of response to the costs of manual indexing is the implementation of general
automated indexing tools. Experiences from United Kingdom, however, show that the use of general
tools is not reliable in area of legislative documents.
Several countries implemented or plan to implement semi-automated indexing to provide assistance
to human indexers and reducing overall cost of indexing.
The Publications Office of the European Union develops the prototype of a system for automated
pre-indexing. The automatic indexing process purpose is to assist human indexers in the association
of Eurovoc descriptors or concepts to documents. The methodology of the system is based on statistics
and lexicometry which serves to generate rules how to index documents based on former results of
human indexers. The original prototype is now being transformed in the way that it could deal with
large quantities of documents.
Bosnia and Herzegovina introduced a system where indexing is done manually, and then, depending
on different criteria, a programme suggests improvements of indexing (depending on the most common
queries). These suggestions are improved by operators and then applied by the engine. Spain adopted
the opposite approach, where an Oracle application provides a term list for an indexed document, from
which indexers choose adequate indexing terms. The terms are based on Eurovoc.
In general it can be concluded that automation in this area is still at the beginning of implementation
and in process of selecting adequate technologies and procedures.
The cost of human labour is also the reason why many publication offices do not re-index, at least
not immediately, their documentary bases after the release of new version of a controlled vocabulary.
In some cases (European Union) instead of re-indexing the previous version the controlled vocabulary
is mapped to new version. In other cases the updated index is available more or less immediately after
changes in the documentary bases.
4.5 Search engines
S01. Do you use search engines in your legal information system?
Yes
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no - please tell why:
S02. Is (are) your legal information system search engine(s) based on open source or commercial
tools or is it (are they) the result of specific development? Please provide us with the name and version
(if possible) in the textbox and explain reasons of your choice (if possible) in the “Additional notes”
box.
Commercial
modified commercial
open source
developed specifically for you legal information system
S03. Is the search system integrated internally in your legal information system or do you use an
external search service (e.g. Google)? Please explain reasons for your choice.
integrated in our LIS
we use an external service
S04. If you use external search service, are you able to influence its behaviour (adjusting it’s
parameters to your needs and constraints of your system - e.g. which metadata are indexed or
which items are displayed in the list of search results). If there is a possibility of modifications do you
use it and how?
No, it is a “blackbox”
Yes, but we use “as it is”.
Yes, we adjust parameters to our needs.
S05. Are external search engines allowed to search/index your legal information system?
Yes, fully (all content).
Yes, but with restrictions
No, please describe why
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Not yet, but planned
S06. If external search engines are allowed to search/index your legal information system, are
you aware of share of visitors coming to your legal information system from external search engines?
If possible, please also express numbers of these visitors compared to overall number of visitors?
Yes, specify the number
Yes, specify the number and share
No
Not yet, but we plan this
S28. Please describe the overall search architecture implemented in your legal information system.
– open question.
S27. Please explain the management of search facilities. – Open question.
Based on the answers, the search engine interface is (or will be) integral part of legal information
systems maintained by the publication offices. This proves both good awareness of the importance of
search facilities for users, as well as the demand for search interfaces from users of legal information
systems.
The publication offices use a large variety of search engines ranging from integrated database
search engines, through separate search engines to the use of external search engine interfaces. The
search engines may be based on commercial solutions, which is more frequent, or proprietary or even
open source tools. The choice is clearly made based on the specific situation of every publication
office.
There are two general trends, which are obvious. The first one is the integration of search engines
into legal information systems. The reasons stated are the necessity to have a control over the search
setup or possibility to adapt search to likenesses of legal documents.
The second one is the demand of users for a simple search interface with advanced facilities. This
leads to efforts to implement general search engines as Google search into legal information systems.
One of the countries which chose this approach is Denmark. Its report on the implementation
of the Google search engine showed both limits of its general setup and a possible solution. Using
uninfluenced Google search led to unsatisfactory results when the less relevant documents were
displayed as more relevant. It was also clear that an indexing engine does not consider the document
as a whole and does not index more data than a given number of megabytes. However, the behaviour
of Google search is to some extent modifiable (about 15 % of all settings) while the rest of setting
reminds a business secret of Google. One of the possibilities which can be exploited in order to improve
the results is the implementation of metadata. The user can set a level of relevance for legislative
documents based on their types, validity and number of passive references to the documents. After
these changes the relevance of the search result was improved and can be regarded as satisfactory
for the implementation into official legal information system. The Czech Republic experienced similar
problems while implementing Google search.
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Legal information systems are generally open to be indexed and searched by search engines.
Exceptions are applied usually because of the partially commercial character or due to limited system
capabilities. Considering the amount of users retrieving information using external search service,
which ranges from 5 to 60 %, external search engine can become a major gateway to the documents
stored within the legal information systems, in some cases actually more important than implemented
search engines.
An example of an advanced overall architecture was provided by United Kingdom. The United
Kingdom informs that for the new legislation service there are a number of search facilities. There is a
search box on the homepage. There is a drop down quick search available throughout the site. There
is an ‘intelligent’ advanced search page that guides users through search options. There is a “changes
in legislation” service that provides a different type of search, relating to which legislation documents
have changed what other documents, over time.
4.6 Users, search interface and feedback
C01. Who are the users of your legal information system?
legislation creators
professional lawyers
business users
citizens
civil servants
other, please specify
S09. Do you use various search engines interfaces for different classes of users? (e.g. legislation
creators, legal professionals, citizens). If possible, please add links or other attachments (like
screenshots) illustrating search engine interfaces and describe for which classes of users are interfaces
designed for?
Yes, please describe
One all-purpose interface only
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Various search interface(s) planned
No various search interface planned
S21. Does your legal information system offer a user driven search (search engine enhanced by
use of knowledge on human behaviour as well as search engine allowing user-customised search)?
Yes (please describe)
Not yet, but planned
No, please tell us why
S22. Do you collect feedback on use of search facilities in your legal information system? Do you
use collected data to improve search facilities?
Yes, we collect (please describe how)
Yes, we collect and use to improve search facilities (please describe how)
Not yet, but planned
No, please tell us why
S23. Do you systematically collect information on user behaviour connected with search (structure
of user queries, sequences of documents displayed by user etc.). Do you analyse collected information
and use it for improving search facilities?
Yes, we collect (please describe)
Yes, we collect, analyse and use it for improvement (please describe)
Not yes, but planned (please describe)
No, please tell us why
S24. Does your legal information system provide a help for the user (help interface, helpdesk,
callcentre ...)? If so, how many requests concern search?
Interactive help interface
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Helpdesk
Call centre
No, but planned (please describe)
No, please tell us why
S25. Do you inform users on a regular basis about changes in search facilities and about changes
that impact search results (change or improvement of search possibilities, monitoring of new documents
in area of interest of user etc.)? Please specify how and about which kind of changes are the users
informed in additional note.
Yes, by e-mail
Yes, by RSS, Twiitter, Facebook
Yes, by web announcement
Yes, other (please describe)
No, please tell us why
Not yet, but planned (please describe)
This section of question deals with interaction between publication offices and users of legal
information systems and investigates whether information collected from users is turned into adjustment
of legal information system.
The extent of users based on publication offices’ findings is almost the same and very broad.
Denmark stressed legislation creators and civil servants to be a very important group of users. Several
other countries added university teachers and students as another substantial group of users.
The United Kingdom utilizes information on user base to develop personas as legislation users;
this approach serves as basis for the management of services. The primary persona (Mark Green) is
an expert professional, working in local government. He is not a trained lawyer, but knows about the
law in one area of interest. He does not have access to the commercial services. The second persona,
Heather Cole, is a citizen trying to protect her rights. The legal librarian (Jane Booker) is legally trained
and represents the “expert” user; she has access to commercial legal services.
One of the areas where information on the structure of users is implied is the design of the search
interface. Some countries provide different search interfaces for different groups of users, usually
with larger amount of options for expert users ranging from simple up to advanced or even “extreme
search” (Denmark). In most cases, however, publication offices provide only one search interface,
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usually with possibilities to modify the search. One of the reasons is to minimize the costs for the
maintenance of various search interfaces. Several countries mentioned their idea to implement simple
search possibility based on an advanced search engine.
Generally said, the collection of feedback from users is not an uncommon practice amongst
publication offices. Half of the respondents confirmed that they systematically collect feedback
concerning search and user behaviour. In approximately half of the cases publication offices evaluate
the collected data to improve search facilities.
The practices such as applied in the United Kingdom are an example for the collection and use of
user feedback; they constantly work together with users (including detailed user testing, ethnographic
research, eye-tracking etc) to improve all aspects of the services, including search. The United Kingdom
also uses the results collected from logs and analytical tools (e.g. nedstat) to refine the performance of
the search engine. Based on analytical information commonly requested legislation is prioritised in the
results (e.g. Data Protection Act) and common misconceptions are resolved through manual tweaking
of search results.
Another example of good practice comes from Denmark where a survey on user satisfaction
with search facilities maintained. It turned out that most of the users lack simple search possibility
(“Google-like search”). As a consequence Denmark started with the implementation of the Google
search technology. Also in France the analysis of user feedback was one of the main reasons to
develop a new version of its system. Apart from collection of user feedback the French publication
office regularly holds presentations on the Legisfrance system at different places in France. Latvia uses
questionnaire polls or a daily question on the particular search improvement to enhance its services.
Publication offices also provide help to the users, some of them combine various technical solutions.
The share of search-related requests ranges from 20 to 95 %. Some publication offices also use
means of direct communication to inform the users about changes in search facilities and in the legal
information system in general on a regular basis.
4.7 Search engine functionalities:
S07. Do you offer special search related functionalities (please explain how they are implemented
in an additional note or even add some screenshots or links to real applications)?
faceted search
search agents
list of favourite documents / personal collection of documents
history of last documents accessed
personal filter to be applied to a set of queries or search macros
personalized search interface (e.g. customized search mask)
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other (please specify)
S10. Do you provide some solution for a “suggestion approach” (services like “Google Suggest” or
“Yahoo Suggest” that dynamically generate hints below query form based on terms usage frequency)?
If yes, please describe more about principles in “additional notes” section or add some screenshots
or links.
Yes
No
S11. Does your legal information system already start searching while typing the query or does
it wait for a specific submission (e.g. pressing “submit” button or “enter” keypress) after completion a
query?
after submission
S12. Does your legal information system offer a wildcard search (use of wildcard characters such
as “?” instead of certain character or “*” instead of parts of words) within a search query?
Yes, please describe
No, please tell us why
S13. Does your legal information system offer some query language operators?
classical AND/OR/NOT
PHRASE (like “...”)
also NEAR
some other?
no query language possibilities available, please explain why
S14. Do you use ranking methods (e.g. by evaluation of queried terms frequency) when generating
search results? If you use ranking methods please describe their principles in additional note.
Yes, please specify
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No, please explain why
Not yet, but planned
S15. Does your text search take into consideration the context of related documents (such as
documents hyperlinked to the displayed document, documents categorized in the same way as
displayed document e.g. legal branches, etc.)? Please describe this mechanism in additional note and
add screenshots if possible.
Yes
No, please tell why
S16. Does your text search take into consideration user session (previously visited documents,
previous search queries etc.)?
Yes, please describe
No, please explain why
Partially, please describe
S17. Does your text search take into account textual context of terms used in query? (Such as
grouping result by contexts of queries, e.g. query term is “crisis” and produced results are grouped by
“economical crisis”, “financial crisis” ...)
No, please tell us why
Yes, please specify how
Not yet, but planned
S18. Which sorting mechanisms do you use or provide when generating or using list of search
results?
alphabetical by some field
by dates (inforce etc.)
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ascendent/descendent
multiple criteria at once
by rating
other, please specify
S19. What is the content of list of search results (titles, types of documents, abstracts, keyword in
context, dates etc.)?
S20. Do you provide any filtering possibilities upon generated lists of search results? (e.g. iterated
search within search results or filtering by thesauri terms)
Yes, please specify
No, please tell us why
This set of question aims at different technologies and design features for search facilities used in
legal information systems.
From answers concerning the entering of the search query it is obvious that the most widespread
technologies comprise the use of wildcards and query operators that are offered by search engines.
On the contrary, technologies as query suggest, searching while entering, search agents, search filters
and macros and customization of the user interface are widespread amongst general search engines,
but are not always implemented. In some cases the reason can be the concern that the use of query
suggestions could hide important information to the users and therefore is not suitable for official
legal information systems. On the contrary, Germany implemented a suggest approach called “juris
Vorschlagsliste”. It depends on information available within the documents, but not on input from other
users. It is restricted to metadata like keywords, titles, names of laws, reference numbers, sources of
information etc.
The following questions deal with the ranking of search results. Ranking of search results is used
or planned to be used by most publication offices. However, some countries did not implement search
result ranking either because their search engine does not support ranking, they did not consider the
results relevant (Liechtenstein) or consider the use of such techniques inappropriate for official legal
systems because of transparency and cost of implementation (Austria). The relevance of document is
usually based on statistical methods (frequency of hits), in some cases also links to other documents, the
structure of documents (Estonia – higher relevance if the hit is within the name of the document), user
session, context of query terms and results of previous searches are taken into consideration (Bosnia
and Herzegovina – ranking is based on frequency of hits and previous successful searches of users
previewing found documents). Concerning the use of term context the United Kingdom noted that,
based on their findings, users tend to search for legislation by title or name rather than legislation about
a particular subject. Also users’ notions of appropriate terminology for subjects diverge significantly
from the terminology used in legislation.
The last section of questions concentrates on the content of the lists of search results and
options connected with their use. Results show varying content of search result lists, usually containing
the name of the document, the date of promulgation, and whether the document is in force or not.
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Surprisingly, information on the legal value of the document (legally binding version or not) is usually
not included in the content. Some systems allow sorting the results according to predefined parameters
and in some cases to further refine the search by filtering. A clear trend in this area is the implementation
of faceted search, which displays search results which are sorted according to facets created on the
basis of metadata.
4.8 Technologies concerning both indexing and search
S08. Does your legal information system use special techniques of web search indexing concerning
formats and the structure of documents (for example splitting large documents into smaller parts for
clearer search results)?
C06. Is stemming used by indexing and/or search engine during indexing or processing the
query (fishing, fished, fisher --> stem ‘fish’)? If yes please describe the principles.
Yes, stemming used
No, please explain why
Partially stemming (e.g. based on suffixes only and not on dictionary), please describe
C07. Is lemmatisation used by indexing and/or search engine during indexing or processing the
query (vais, vas, va, irai, irais ... --> lemma ‘aller’)? If yes, please describe the principles.
Yes, lemmatisation used
No, please explain why
C08. Does your indexing and/or search engine deal with stop word lists during search indexing
or processing the query? If yes, please describe how.
Yes, stop words used
No, please explain why
Technologies targeted in these questions are related to the search engine indexing and processing
of queries which can substantially influence search results.
Complex internal structures of legal documents led several publication offices to enable splitting
documents into sections (Ireland) or into articles (Italy) to obtain more accurate search results. The
United Kingdom’s new legislation website allows users to browse and address document at any level
of the document structure (eg, whole act, part, chapter, section) and to navigate to that level. The
searching follows the same pattern. There is a special “index” document for each piece of legislation
that is used to optimise search. The default search result for an item of legislation is a table of contents,
from where various selections (versions, comments, extents etc) can be made. In Norwegian statutes
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chapters can be viewed as well as the whole statute/regulation. Bulgaria provides, along with PDF
containing the official journal, access to some of the most important documents (acts/laws/government
decisions, etc.) as separate indexable/searchable objects.
Lemmatisation and stemming are techniques of lexical analysis which lead to a normalised or
root form of a word. The majority of publication offices did not implement those techniques, especially
lemmatisation. The reasons why stemming or lemmatisation are not implemented are problems with
accentuation (Belgium) or the fact that the technology is not supported by the implemented search
engine. The extraction of stop words is not a dominant praxis either. In some cases the implementation
is planned, several countries stated that its implementation is problematic (Slovakia) or can exclude
exact phrase search, which is important for legal information systems (Denmark).
4.9 Alternative means of access to information in legal information systems
S26. Are there any aspects of web site design which are related to search (for example providing
simple access to documents on selected topics, last 10 published, most frequently used or most
frequently searched documents)?
Yes (please specify)
No
C09. What kind of hyperlinks do you create in your legal information system?
links to facsimile of official gazette
links to current consolidated version
links to amending legislative
links to prior/future consolidated versions of a law
links between table of contents and parts of the dokument
reverse links (links to documents that refer to the current document/fragment)
links to relevant administrative regulations
links to relevant cases
links to relevant literature
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links to similar documents
links to underlying EU directives
other (please specify)
C10. What kind of technical linking mechanism do you offer?
manually maintained static links
links generated automatically based on metadata of the source documents
links generated automatically based on metadata of the target documents
links generated automatically based on data outside of both documents
user dependant links (e.g. dependant on user rights, user preferences or prior queries – please give
details)
other (please specify)
C11. What are the appearance and features of links in your legal information system?
links contain title information of target dokument
links contain other information of target document (like specific referenced text)
links are attributed with metadata
links point to the top of the dokument
links point to a specific position within the document
links point to a list of documents from which the user can select a dokument
links consist of a query which can be refined by the user
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other features (please specify in additional note)
C12. How often are links checked and updated?
at runtime
whenever new documents are added to the collections
at least daily
at least weekly
less than weekly
other (please specify)
C13. Do you allow external services (other legal information systems or websites) to deep link
(directly access) documents or pieces of information in your legal information system or you only allow
them to link to homepage of your legal information system?
No, we only allow access to homepage
Yes, we allow deep links
C14. Does your legal information system provide deep links (links pointing to particular documents
or piece of information) to other legal information systems?
Eur-Lex
Other (please specify)
No, please explain why
Not yet, but planned
C15. Do you offer social web technologies in your legal information system (p.ex. own collection
of documents, own tagging of documents, discussion forum etc.)?
User tagging (without sharing)
User tagging with sparing
Other (please describe)
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We plan such features
We don’t plan such features
As mentioned above, search engines or interfaces taking into account controlled vocabularies
are not an exclusive gateway to legal information system. Users can also accede to documents or
information by the following means.
Providing direct access to selected documents is one of these techniques, which is used by the
majority of publication offices. Users are usually provided with references to last published documents.
An alternative path to information is provided by hyperlinks between documents within legal
information systems. As presentation of the German Juris system and the Slovak EPI system revealed,
rich hyperlinks can to large extent substitute search allowing users to navigate comfortably through
the documentary basis and mediate the knowledge on relations between documents. Hyperlinking
is provided by the majority of publication offices, including links to the official journal, amendments,
consolidated versions, between tables of contents and content itself. Twelve countries provide links that
point to specific positions within a document can therefore provide direct access to information. Links
are in most cases generated automatically, in several countries also maintained partially manually.
Maintenance of links is done at least daily, usually when new a document is added.
Sweden informed that for the project of a new legal information system, links between documents
(or other resources, such as parts of documents) are expressed using RDF triples. Each document
has an abstract URI, easily computed from aspects of the document (aspects like publishing agency,
document type, document number and date) which do not necessarily correspond to any particular
URL where the document can be found. As a mean of hyperlink management Slovakia developed a
software called “SUBSTITUATOR”. It parses the original text, searches for potential sources and kinds
of hyperlinks, checks if the target of the hyperlink exists and then creates it. The operator then verifies
the hyperlinks. This technology improves up to 5-10 times the speed of the hyperlink creation.
The majority of publication offices maintain open legal information systems allowing other systems
to directly access documents. An example of good practice is the United Kingdom which developed a
complex URI set for referencing legislative documents, including their versions and format.
External links, if provided, usually target EUR-Lex as the source of information on law of the
European Union s. In several cases link head also to web pages of national parliament.
Social web (particularly technologies that enable sharing, collaboration and facilitate exchange
of information) has also potential to provide direct access to documents or information. However,
because of the official character of legal information systems the use of these technologies is very
limited. If such technologies are used, they mainly focus on the customisation of the system. As an
exception, the United Kingdom noticed that they are looking to move to a participation model for the
development and maintenance of the revised versions of legislation. A pilot project is planned to be
carried out this autumn.
4.10 Metadata
C17. Do you add metadata to the documents in your legal information system?
Yes, please specify
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No, please tell us why
C18. What kind of metadata do you create? Please add or attach the list of metadata elements
and describe the meaning of each element. If you use special metadata for legislation or other legal
documents in your legal information system, please describe them as well.
C19. Do you use a standard metadata set or is your metadata set based on a standard metadata
set (Dublin Core, METS etc)?
Dublin Core (or based on DC)
Other, please specify
No, please describe why
C20. Is your metadata scheme expressed in a formal mark up language such as XML, DTD or
RDF/OWL?
XML
DTD
RDF/OWL
Other, please specify
No, please describe why
The results show that the majority of publication offices create metadata in order to manage documents
contained in their legal information system. The extent of metadata created, however differs significantly in
particular countries. Generally the countries that create metadata provide at least a basic set of legislationrelevant
metadata including date of promulgation, in force/not, name, number, information concerning
amendments and links to other documents. This information is coherent with answers to previous questions,
where the presence of sufficient amount of metadata is a prerequisite for the implementation of a given
technology. Some of the countries create a rich and well structured set of metadata - example of this approach
publication are Denmark, European Union, France, Germany, Macedonia, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
The United Kingdom also noted that being a public sector office they have to comply with requirements of UK
Government’s e-Government metadata standard and additional bibliographic metadata).
The working group was also interested in standards and types of metadata schemes. Despite
considering their usefulness, most of the countries do not use any of the general metadata standards as
a whole . In many cases their use is foreseen, but publication offices discovered that general standards
to large extent do not cover the area of metadata used for legislative documents. Publication offices
decided either to use the possibility to enrich general standards according to their specific requirements
while still being compliant to it or to develop proprietary solutions.
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The metadata scheme, if present, is usually expressed in XML (XML Schema or DTD). The use of
these standards opens space for exchange of information. Some countries, e.g. the European Union,
Sweden and the United Kingdom, do not consider the structure of metadata sufficient and started
to implement metadata schemas based on semantic web technologies. These schemas provide the
possibility to implement a larger variety of information, their aspects and relations.
During the meetings of the working group Publications Office of the European Union presented a
complex project of transformation which also covers the area of metadata and metadata management.
As the Publications Office deals with multilingual and interinstitutional environments, the quality and
well structured metadata are prerequisites for the success of the project. The basis for the whole process
is harmonisation and standardisation of metadata and their organisation in controlled vocabularies
(authority tables) which will serve as source of values for various metadata elements. The aim of
harmonisation is to exclude the use of different terms which express the same or similar concepts
thus leading to a currently inhomogeneous and therefore unsatisfactory situation in the metadata
catalogue; maintaining historical changes at the same time (despite quite complicate management) is
an additional challenge. The Publications Office involves experts from cooperating institutions in the
harmonisation process which leads to a higher quality of results as well as to better acceptance of
created standards.
The metadata registry serves as a tool for processing and managing metadata in the RECORD
project. RECORD is not only a central organisation of harmonised metadata, but also a point for
extraction and dissemination of the stored values. The process of maintenance and updating is mainly
inspired by the international standard ISO 11179.
Metadata are organized with use of semantic methods. Metadata vocabularies are conceived as
ontologies which enable the use of definitions of classes, relations, functions, and other objects and
therefore more complex description. A dedicated standard for bibliographical records is used for the
organisation of metadata: FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records). All metadata
records, ontologies, controlled vocabularies and Eurovoc are in the common metadata repository.
Because of the complex approach, which is based on the best available technologies and at
the same time involves other stakeholders in the process of metadata creation, the approach of the
European Union can be highlighted as one of best practices in this area.
The discussions of the working group concerned the question of economical aspect of the
metadata creation. Metadata creation requires considerable amount of human expert labour (and
costs) and therefore the extent of metadata is limited according to the capabilities of a particular
publication office. As in case of automated indexing, this aspect stresses the issue of development or
implementation of tools for (at least partial) automated metadata extraction or adoption of voluntary
participation schemes for external experts.
4.11 Semantic web technologies
C16. Did you introduce or do you plan to introduce use of semantic web technologies in your
legal information system (RDF, OWL, Topic Maps ...)? – Open question.
Semantic web is an extension of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of information and
services on the web is defined. The package of semantic web technologies ranges from the use of
unique identifiers to the conceptualisation tools, ontologies up to semantic search. These technologies
provide a common framework that allows data to be deeply structured, shared, automatically reused
across application and easily retrieved.
The questionnaire shows that the publication offices start or plan to implement semantic web
technologies in many areas of their legal information systems.
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The European Union implements semantic web technologies in many areas of its transformation
projects. New version of Eurovoc utilizes Web Ontology Language (OWL) for data modelling. It
also utilizes the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS), which will serve to facilitate web
access to Eurovoc. The European Union also implements semantic technologies such as the Resource
Description Framework (RDF), OWL and FRBR for creation of metadata vocabularies, ontologies and
bibliographic records.
The Swedish transformation project uses as an option RDF to describe the structure of documents
(along with XHTML). It also plans to use RDF and OWL to structure metadata. Sweden also implements
the use of URI in connection with hyperlinks.
Slovakia demonstrated the use of Topic Maps as a way to improve information retrieval. In
the future Slovakia plans to largely implement this standard for the description of the content and
terminology of legal documents.
The United Kingdom decided to implement semantic technologies to describe legislation (versions,
relations of documents, time aspects), the navigation within documents and metadata in general. This
project makes use of RDF, FRBR and METALex standards. The United Kingdom also plans to implement
a number of light weight domain specific ontologies as an indexing tool. They plan to extract these
directly from the legislative texts and manage them in a separate knowledge base of legislation (an
RDF store).
As seen above, the applications range from mark up vocabularies for structuring documents
(Sweden), controlled vocabularies and metadata vocabularies (European Union, United Kingdom,
Sweden) or Eurovoc, adopting different approach to indexing tools (United Kingdom), the organisation
of metadata sets (European Union) and semantic search (Slovakia). A key area is the organisation
of metadata. The publication offices already use a large variety of semantic web technologies. The
introduction of semantic technologies is still limited to only few countries.
5. Conclusions
1) The publication offices have to deal with processing legal documents on an industrial level.
This task is further complicated by the sometimes complex internal structure of the documents.
However, the results also showed good (and growing) awareness to the importance of
the description of internal structures of documents by means of mark-up languages and the use
of standardised character encoding thus improving the exchange and reuse of documents.
2) Search interfaces or interfaces to controlled vocabularies are only one of several gateways to
documents in official legal information systems. Hyperlinks are the most important alternative
which to some extent can replace the use of a search interface. The extent of hyperlinking
largely depends on the richness of metadata.
3) With only some exceptions the most frequent tool used in indexing documents is a legacy
index of the official journal. Eurovoc as an advanced indexing tool is implemented (or will
be implemented) in a growing number of countries. Indexing tools in many cases include
synonyms (or non descriptors).
4) Manual indexing is still a prevailing praxis in most of the publication offices using controlled
vocabularies for the improvement of information retrieval. Manual indexing requires a
considerable amount of human expert labour and is therefore considered as an economic
burden and in several cases was reason why indexing tools were not implement or their
use was abandoned. Economical reasons also lead several publication offices to starting
implementation of semi-automatic indexing tools.
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5) The search engine forms an integral part of official legal information systems. A standard
system generally uses either specific interfaces for different kinds of users or allows modifying
search queries by metadata parameters. Responding to user requirements, some of publication
offices provide or implement possibility of simple advanced search, usually based on general
web search engine technology (Google search).
6) Due to the openness of legal information systems a considerable number of users retrieve
documents and information stored in official legal information system information by means of
external search engines.
7) Official legal information systems implement many standard search and web search indexing
techniques. However, technologies like query suggestions, complex ranking of legal documents,
separate indexing of structural parts of document and linguistic methods for the expansion of
queries, some of them generally widespread, are used only by some of them.
8) The possibility of advanced search, faceted search, the quality of ranking of search results, and
hyperlinking in large extent depends on the quality, structure and range of metadata created
during the publishing process. Most of the publication offices at least create a basic set of legal
metadata; the creation of a rich set of metadata is limited only to some of them. The reason
for the difference is that the creation of metadata requires human labour. This fact also raises
the question of automated and implementation of voluntary participation models for external
experts. Metadata vocabularies are in most cases described by means of semantic mark up
(XML) and form a key area for the implementation of semantic web technologies.
9) Despite of being in centre of interest and having the potential to substantially improve
information retrieval and exchange, the implementation of semantic web technologies is still
limited to only few countries. The applications comprise mark up vocabularies for structuring
documents and controlled vocabularies as metadata vocabularies or Eurovoc, the adoption of
different approaches to indexing tools, the organisation of metadata sets and semantic search.
The publication offices use a large variety of semantic web technologies ranging from URI
identifiers to ontologies.
10) The publication offices are well aware of the composition of their users and of the importance
of user feedback. However, information collected is not always used for the improvement of
search facilities of legal information systems.
6. Mission of working group
Based on its mandate, on findings from the questionnaire and on suggestions from publication
offices, the working group will aim its future efforts at the following topics:
1) Metadata
a. standardisation
b. interoperability
c. structuring in relation with collected data
d. essential set of legal metadata
e. creation of metadata
f. automatic creation of metadata
g. ways to integrate authors in the process of metadata creation
2) Search facilities
a. improvement
b. interface definition
c. issue of external search engines
3) Semantic web technologies in relation with information retrieval
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European Forum of Official Gazettes
7 th meeting
Rome
24 September 2010
101
Rome 2010
Final Report from the Working group
on Access to Legislation
and Financing models
presented.by
Petra Škodlar
Chairman of the working group
General editor
Uradni list Republike Slovenije
(The Official Journal of the Republic of Slovenia), Slovenia

1. Introduction
The working group Access to Official Gazettes and Legislation was founded at the Helsinki-
Tallinn Forum in June 2007. After the first meeting of the group in April 2008 the members decided to
change the name of the group into Access to Official Gazettes and Legislation – Financing models in
order to capture the goals more accurately. The group is paying particular attention to the financing
models for different activities publishers undertake. Through establishing adequate financing models
the publisher can offer better services and thus the user can access quality and correct information in
a more centralized way. To be able to provide such services the group would like to explore different
ways of access to Official Gazettes and Legislation from the publishers’ and also users’ point of view.
2. Terms of reference and membership of the working group
Following the agreement to the formation of the Working Group, detailed terms of reference were
proposed to the Extended Chair of the Forum and were agreed as follows:
Goals of the group:
• to chart ways in which legislation can be obtained by the user in countries Members of the
Forum,
• to divide ways of access into different groups (access on paper, electronic access etc.),
• to evaluate ways of access from the users’ and providers’ point of view,
• to discuss options of providing legislation and establish a “user-friendly” way of providing law.
*(Other goals may be added during the work of the group and after the analysis of the
questionnaire, where ideas from all countries will be accepted, is made.)
Group activities:
• a questionnaire will be sent to the countries Members of the Forum,
• the analysis of the questionnaire will be made by the Chairperson and the Secretariat,
• a working group will be formed from representatives of countries Members of the Forum who
will show interest in participating in the working group,
• the working group will hold meetings and report its’ results in interim reports, final results of the
working group will be presented in the final report.
The following individuals attended meetings of the Working Group:
Chair: Ms Petra Škodlar (Slovenia)
Secretary: Ms Maria Manuela Cruz (Publications Office)
Members: Mr Albrecht Berger (Publications Office)
Ms Lola Pérez-Herrera (Spain)
Ms Inese Kovalova (Latvia)
Mr Artis Trops (Latvia)
Mr Karl Schiessl (Austria)
Ms Sabine Stadler (Germany)
Mr Markus Tanner (Switzerland)
Mr Liviu Alexandru Moraru (Romania)
Ms Biljana Cvetanovska (FYR of Macedonia)
Mr Andon Stefanovski (FYR of Macedonia)
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3. Meetings
Two meetings of the Working Group have taken place:
– 23rd April 2008 – Brussels,
– 16th June 2008 – Ljubljana.
The group did not meet in the year 2009.
The next meeting is programmed for October 2010.
4. Activities in 2010
The working group resumed its work in the year 2010 when the questionnaire was formulated
and sent out to all the members of the Forum. The results are expected in September and a partial
report on results will be given on the Forum meeting in Rome. The next meeting is programmed to take
place in October 2010, when final conclusions of the working group will be prepared and will be
published on the European forum of Official Gazettes website.
5. Questionnaire
The working group prepared the following questionnaire:
Dear colleague,
“QUESTIONNAIRE
Please find in this file a short questionnaire of the working group “Access to Legislation and Official
Gazettes – Financial Models”.
It is divided in two sections. The first 4 questions are intended for all organizations in charge of the
official journals/gazettes, and the last questions only for those organizations which are not funded by
the State budget.
If you feel you would like to tell us more about the subject of the questionnaire please feel free to give
us any additional information at the end of the questionnaire.
Please return your questionnaire to the email address: petra.skodlar@uradni-list.si, if possible by the
17 th September 2010. Thank you very much for your cooperation.
****
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Country:
Organization:
Part I : addressed to all organisations
1. The organization in charge of the publication of official gazette is:
a) a public body yes no
b) a private company yes no
c) other (please precise): __________________________________ yes no
2. The organization (including all its activities) is financed:
a) from the State budget yes no
b) solely by finances obtained from its economic activities yes no
c) by a combination of State budget and private financing yes no
d) other (please precise):___________________________________ yes no
3. The activity of publishing the official journal/gazette is financed:
a) from the State budget yes no
b) solely by finances obtained from its economic activities yes no
c) by a combination of State budget and private financing yes no
d) other (please precise):___________________________________ yes no
4. Besides publishing the official journal/gazette, is the organization involved in other activities
(i.e. publishing books, public procurement, organization of seminars, etc.)?
Part II : addressed to organisations which are not financed by the State budget
5. Where do funds to produce and publish the official journal/gazette come from (e.g.: monthly
subscription, revenues from publishing, etc.)
6. Which other projects or activities bring in the majority of funds obtained in your company?
7. Would you like to mention any projects or products that are especially profitable to your
company? Please give more information on them.
8. In your opinion, what other profitable activities could be undertaken by official journals/
gazettes?
9. Would you like to add information about the economic model of your company or give us any
other comment?
Thank you very much for your cooperation!”
The group expects to gather answers to the questionnaire in the first half of September 2010.
Partial results will be presented on the annual Forum meeting in Rome at the end of September.
The answers to the questionnaire will give an overview of the economic situation in the countries,
members of the European Forum of Official Gazettes and show interesting activities undertaken by
different public bodies or companies. They will also serve as a future reference for the exchange of good
practices.
105

6. Interim conclusions of the working group
The interest of the group is closely connected to practical questions of publishing law and obtaining
funds to continuously improve the quality of this service. The group is aware that there is a distinction
between publishing bodies that are (at least partly) funded by the State budget and those that are not
funded by the State budget. The latter have to find their own ways of financing their activities. The
recent trend of offering everything free of charge to the public makes the situation for non budgetfunded
publishers rather difficult. Therefore, the goal of the group is to explore different activities
and ways to finance them. Until now each member has presented the situation in his/her country
(the abstracts can be found in older reports). No general conclusions have been withdrawn so far
as work was partly discontinued. Also, the group has decided to hold back its activities, especially
the preparation of the questionnaire, since various questionnaires with similar contents were circling
around simultaneously in 2009 and it was possible to obtain some information from them. The group
based some of its work on the publication Access to legislation in Europe, published in 2009 by the
Publications Office.
The general findings and remarks, as well as the subjects the group is interested in, remain:
- the role of the publisher,
- the criteria for publishing free of charge,
- (commercial) products and services vs. funding.
All these subjects have already been discussed in previous reports.
In addition to the above mentioned interests the group is also interested in different possibilities
of financing, as its members mostly come from the countries whose official gazettes/journals are not
funded by the state budget. With the questionnaire that is currently circulating, we hope to obtain
information on different projects countries undertake to improve their economic situation. The exchange
of good practices is of vital importance to us all and we believe that even after our work is concluded,
the countries will continue to exchange information on bilateral or other level.
We would also like to point out a general conclusion that there is no better or worse way of
obtaining funds; there are just different ways. We can see that some publishers are official state
organizations and others are private or public companies. This can be seen as one of the more
important differences in obtaining funds. But what is really important is that all publishers understand
the importance and meaning of the Official Gazette of their country which is the promulgation of
legislation. As such, the Official Gazette has an obligation towards the reader and has to offer correct
and quality information.
106

European Forum of Official Gazettes
7 th meeting
Rome
24 September 2010
107
Rome 2010
Standardization of Metadata
presented.by
Madeleine Kiss and Marc Küster
Publications Office of the European Union

Standardization of metadata
Madeleine Kiss / Marc Wilhelm Küster
Publications Office
Rome, 24 September 2010
REACH

Target Content and Metadata Layer
Standardized
Codes
Global
Access
Linked Open Data
By Peter Schmitz
Supporting
Architecture
Standardized
Structures

Théodore Chassériau, ca. 1850
http://www.archive.org/stream/shakespearesdram12shak#page/n5/mode/2up
Standardized
Structures
Standardized
FRBR: Group 1 Classes: Work, Expression, Manifestation,
Structures
Item
Attributes such as
Title
Form
Intended audience
Attributes such as
Title
Date
Language
Attributes such as
Physical medium
Publisher
Identifier (ISBN etc.)
Attributes such as
Item identifier
Provenance
Access restrictions

Common Data Model (CDM)
Evolutionary metadata / legislative lifecycle
Currently at the core of PreLex and TransJAI
Standardized
Structures
Standardized
Structures

CDM
C lass 1
C lass already described
Work
O rganisat ion
*
- a dr es se d by
Class1
inherit from
Class2
Legal resource
* - is about
* - is subject of
D irect ory code concept
Eurovoc concept
A gent
- C r e at es
- C ontains
D oc . C olect .
EFTA int ern . agreem .
O t her EFTA doc
D oc of EFTA court
*
Subject
Is r elated
- is about of
C ontains
*
Inst it ut ion
- is subjectf of
Is par t of
*
- C elex ID
- adr esses
- Sector ID
*
- belongs to
R elates C ites Is C ited
- is c re a t e d
- adr esses *
* - C r eates
- is cr eated by
*
C lass 2
christophe .mignot @publications .europa .eu
Date de production : 25 mai 2010
C ase law concept
Work
- For m al Id
- Public date
- Title
- D ate
*
- C om m ent on date
* Is explained Explains
- adr essed by
- Is contained *
Legal R esource
EFTA doc
O t her manif est .
- digital for m at of m anifest
EFTA inf o & comm
A ct of EFTA Surv . A ut h . A ct of EFTA St and C omit
1
- has
- belongs to
1
*
M anif est at ion
- m anifests
- consolidates
Expression
Text ual real .
* - is consolidated by
* C onsolid . Vers .
*
* -C ontains
- m anifested by *
-has
- Title
*
*
- Add . info on title
EFTA pend . court case
Preparat ory act
- ID C O M
Language
* - Is par t of
- Ar ticle nbr
Legal art icle
- im plem ented by *
- r eq ue st ed by
N at . implem . measures
- d e li v e r e d b y
- im plem ents
* - im plem ents
*
-r equests
-defends
- Year of LR
- com m ents *
C olect ion
- C elex nbr
*
- C elex seq nbr
- is inter pr eted by
*
- Type of Legal R esour ce
- D oc ID
* - inter pr ets
C ase Law
- defended by
- O bsolete D oc ID
- Type of Legal R esour ce
- R eper toir e
- D ate of entr y into for ce
- com m ented by
- Type of pr ocedur e
*
*
- Type of entr y into for ce
- consolidates
- N ational judg
C onsolidat ed A ct
- C om m ent on entr y into for ce
- is consolidated by
-affected by
-affects
- R elated jour n . ar ticle
-deliver ed by
- D ate of end of validity
- N br of cited doc
*
- C onsleg couche
- C om m ent on end of validity
- judgem ent num ber
- C onsleg file
*
- D ate of deadline
- C onsleg r ef
*
*
*
* - deliver s A dvocat e gal
- C om m ent on deadline date
- D ate of signatur e
* - is about
- Place of signatur e
*
*
- used or igin . by
* - is subject of
- D ate of vote
Language
-uses or igin - D ate of dispatch
- adr esses
- C om m ent on D ate of D ispatch
O rganizat ion
C ase Law concept
-deliver s
*
- D ate of opinion r equest : D ate
- adr essed by
*
*
Judge
- C om m ent on date of opinion r equest
- In for ce : Boolean
*
- C om m ent of cr eated bodies
- is about
*
- Subject m atter
- is subject of
- O pinion of EESC
D irect ory code concept
*
*
Metadata codes
C O D legisl . act ivit . A C C legisl . act ivit . A C I legisl . act ivit . A VC legisl . act ivit . C N B legisl . act ivit . C N S legisl . act ivit . C O S legisl . act ivit . D EX legisl . act ivit .
IM M legisl . act ivit . IN I legisl . act ivit . SYN legisl . act ivit . N LE legisl . act ivit . A PP legisl . act ivit . C N C legisl . act ivit . PR T legisl . act ivit .
- be lo ng s t o
- contains
*
agent
M anif est . of print publi
*
legislat ive procedure
- u ses
- used by
legislat . preparat ory act
- id com
- involved in
commission legislat . proposal
C ommiss . proposal codif ied regulat ion
*
*
event
- involves *
D igit al object
Legal resource
- fr agm ent identifier
Temporal ent it ies
legal f ragment
- contains
*
EP legislat ive resolut ion
A ct ivit y
*
- is par t of
period
- is located in *
* - contains
St and - alone dossier
*
*
C ount ry
C ourt opinion
Judgement
A gent
C ourt seizure
- is par t of
- is location of *
* - contains
A dminist rat ive unit
- im plem ented by
Third part y proceedings
O pinion A dvocat e gal
A greem . w it h non - M S
C omplement ary legislat ion
C ourt ruling
C ourt O rder
Treat y
- D ate of tr ansposition
Legal resource Secondary legisl .
- C om m ent on date of tr ansposition
- based on
*
- D ate of notification
D ecision
- M isc . info
N on - opp . t o not if . concent r .
- m odifies
*
- deposes
*
C ase law
- is par t of
*
Local aut horit y
- initiated by *
*
Legislat ive act ivit y
* - is par t of
* - contains
Legislat ive dossier
* - based on
Legal resource
D irect ive
Legal resource
region
- deposed by
- initiates
* - is basis of
- adr esses
- basis for
Int ernat . agreem .
A ct of a parlia body cr int rn agreem
Secondary legislat ion
A gremt bet w . M S D ecis . of M S represent . O t hers act s in O J C
*
*
*
*
agent
- adr essed by *
Legislat ive procedure
- title
- year of pr ocedur e
- pr ocedur e nbr
- pr ocedur e type
N on legislat . proc
- title
- year of pr ocedur e
- pr ocedur e nbr
- pr ocedur e type
* -is based on
- m odified by *
Legal resource
B udget
A greem . O t her
A ct of body cr . Int agrem
Person
Legal basis
- Legal basis com m ent
* - basis for
*
R ecommend . of t he ESC S
O t hers act s in O J L
A bC of re - examined proposal
adopt ion com pos by C ouncil
A bC of amended proposal
A oC dec on common pos
A oC opin . on EP amend . on 2 read .
C FSP
D ecl . of Parl . C ounc . & C ommi .
O pinion
Police & judic . coop . in C rim . M at t ers
EC SC D ecision
N on - opp . t o not if . joint vent .
Writ t en Q st
O ral Q st
C ommiss legisl . act ivit .
Q st at Q st t ime
C ouncil
- in it i at e d by
* - initiates
* - initiated by
C ouncil legislat ive act ivit y
*
G uideline EC B
C ommission
-i n it ia t es
A dopt ion of act by com
Part ial adop . by council Formal adop . by council
legal resource
Parliam . quest ion
- D ate of debate
- N br of session
- D ate of r eply
- Type of r eply
- C om m ent on r eply
- Political afiliation
- N ationality of m ep
- Par liam . ter m
*
O JC : O t her O JL : ot her
Legal resource
addendum
A dopt ion by com .
N o adopt . by council
C ouncil agreement
A greem . on council com . pos
O f f icial Journal C series
O f f icial Journal C series : O t her
R ecommend . of t he E . C omm .
Descriptive metadata can be free text | coded
free text
Evaluation under REACH
REACH
coded values
CS (OJ)
< AU>CONS (Eur-Lex)
CSU (General publications)
In this last example
the meta names are different in the various production pillars
different codes are used for the same Institution for various
labels “Council of the European Union” | “Council”
R egulat ion
C ounc . resolut ion
R ules of proc .
parliament Standardized
- initiates *
Structures
- initiated by *
Legislat ive act ivit y
Legislat ive act ivit y
Lack EESC and
ECB legislative
activity
Legislat ive act ivit y
A dopt ion by parliament
Parliament legisl . act ivit y
C ommit t ee of t he regions
- initiates *
- initiated by *
C ot R legilat . act ivit y
C ourt of just ice
- initiates *
- initiated by *
C ourt of just ice legilat . act ivit y
C ourt of Just ice judgment
Legislat ive act ivit y
N o EP opinion at 2nd reading
Legislat ive discussion Transmission of document
10/19 Standardized
Codes

Descriptive metadata – Current situation
The ATTO (Atelier for translation tables in the Office)
is used for two systems (EUR-Lex, EU-Bookshop)
provides translations for a given code
11/19 Standardized
contains only a list of codes without any management feature
Code * English français … LV
OPOCE Office for Official
Publications of the European
Communities
OPEU Publications Office of the
European Union
Office des publications
officielles des
Communautés européennes
Office des publications de
l’Union européenne
OPL Publications Office Office des publications
* Code might be different from acronyms and is unique
Dublin Core metadata element set (1)
DC Element * OP Element Nature Mandatory |
Optional
01 Title Title Free text Mandatory
02 Creator Corporate | Person Coded Mandatory
03 Language Language Coded Mandatory
04 Date Date(s) Formatted Mandatory
05 Type Resource type Coded Mandatory
06 Format Resource format Coded Optional
07 Publisher OP by default Coded N/A
08 Identifier Identifier + URL |
URI
* http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/
Formatted Mandatory
Codes
12/19 Standardized
Codes

Dublin Core metadata element set (2)
13/19 Standardized
DC Element OP element Nature Mandatory
Codes
| Optional
09 Description Abstract | Summary Free text Optional
10 Contributor Corporate + Person Coded Optional
11 Subject Thesaurus |
Classifications
Coded
Mandatory
12 Source Original work Link Optional
13 Relation Links in granularity |
versioning
14 Coverage Country, places,
events
Link
Coded |
formatted
Optional
Optional
15 Rights Copyright Free text | coded Optional
16 Audience Target audience Coded Optional
Common Authority Tables (CAT) – September 2010
PERSONAL AUTHORS EurLex + PreLex
ROLES LC + EurLex + Prelex
PLACES (locations, towns) UN-LOCODE
RESOURCE FORMAT (incl. dimensions) ONIX + IANA
RESOURCE TYPES (categories of resources) Internal sources
TARGET AUDIENCES ONIX
Etc.
14/19 Standardized
Common Authority Tables Source Codes
LANGUAGES (ISO 639/1, 639/2B|T, 639/3) ISO
COUNTRIES (ISO 3166/1-2 and 3, 3166/3) ISO
NTU (incl. NUTS and ISO 3166-2) ISO + UNO + Eurostat
CURRENCIES (ISO 4217) ISO
CORPORATE AUTHORS (the entity primarily
responsible for making the resource)
Various internal sources
stable version in progress to be started

Common Authority Tables (CAT)
Analyse the set of data
Harmonisation
Feed-back to and from the Units
Discussions for the schema
Set up the schema, tests with the set of data, review the
schema, if necessary, after the tests
Documentation
Check the quality | improve the data
IssuesLog
LessonsLearned
Export the data in HTML with the associated documentation
Highlight report
Results of the Common Authority Tables
The results of the work and some figures:
15/19 Standardized
Codes
16/19 Standardized
Languages: more than 5,000 codes have been analysed and
mapped (across 7 systems) and the related labels in 23 official
languages
Countries: more than 2,000 codes have been analysed and mapped
(across 4 systems) and the related labels , for the time being, in 3
languages (German, English, French)
Currencies: more than 600 codes have been analysed and the
related labels , for the time being, in 3 languages (German,
English, French)
Other Authority Tables Personal Authors | Roles | NTU | Places
are now stable, deadline is foreseen for December 2010
Codes

Linked Data
1. Use URIs as names for things
2. Use HTTP URIs so that people can look
up those names.
3. Provide useful information, using
semantic web standards (RDF, SPARQL)
4. Include links to other URIs
Based on Tim Berners-Lee: Linked Data
Open Data
A piece of knowledge is open if
you are free to use, reuse, and
redistribute it subject only, at most,
to the requirement to attribute and
share-alike.
http://www.opendefinition.org/
Linked Open Data
Linked Open Data

Ontology: A formal representation of the
knowledge by a set of concepts within a
domain and the relationships between
those concepts
(Wikipedia)
20/21
Linked Open Data
http://linkeddata.org/
Linked Open Data
Linked Open Data
URIs
RDF
Links
Microformats

Conclusions
Questions ?
Thank you!

European Forum of Official Gazettes
7 th meeting
Rome
24 September 2010
119
Rome 2010
Legal XML standard for managing
Official Gazette Resources
presented.by
Monica Palmirani
Associated Professor with CIRSFID, University of Bologna
in Computer Science and Law.

1. The Roles of the Official Gazette in the Web 2.0
The new challenge of the Internet Era is to foster all the potentialities of the Web 2.0, to improve
interchanging between different bodies and in the same time to preserve in the long-period the digital
document collections. For the legal resources those issues are dramatically true, and they represent
really critical points into the digitalization process for passing to a paperless era. This approach,
adopted in the long term perspective, supports eGov, eDemocracy and eParticipation development
and it creates the essential pre-requirements for the competing and growth economy.
The OpenGov initiative lunched by president Obama in the January 2009 1 is based on the
assertion to create “an unprecedented level of openness in government” for ensuring “the public
trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness
will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in government.”. The
Australian Government declares the July 2009 its endorsement to promote greater participation in
Australia’s democracy. It is committed “to open government based on a culture of engagement, built
on better access to and use of government held information, and sustained by the innovative use of
technology.”.
In this scenario the Official Gazettes organizations can play a key role adopting a Legal XML
standards for preserving the legality, authenticity and authority over the time of those fundamental
document collections such as law corpora. The Official Gazette body is entitled to safeguard some
pillar principles: permit to all the citizen equal accessibility, guarantee transparency and independency
from proprietary applications, support open access to the legal resources as a fundamental legal value
in a modern democracy, favor the private sector in the usage of the public information (Directive
2003/98/EC) and in this way support interoperability.
An abstract analysis of the fundamental functions of the Official Gazettes of the European and
non-European bodies underlines three main roles independently from the legal system tradition or form
of governance:
• to provide legal validity of the normative acts trough an official publication instruments
mostly empowered at Constitutional level as cognitive source of law;
• to ensure the publicity, authenticity and the cognoscibility of the law ;
• to preserve in long term the legal deposit of those documents.
Recently those institutional roles, endorsed by the democracy establishments, are enriched with
new utilities:
i) to offer free and authoritative access to the law original sources on the web;
ii) to provide consolidated and updated law collections with annotations;
iii) to supply the digital publication of the original text on-line legally binding (e.g. digital authentic
publication);
iv) to give new add-value services (commentary, jurisprudence, legal notes, etc.).
The following figure shows some statistic regarding the European countries (27 member states and
the European Union institutions).
1) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/, Open Government Directive, December
8, 2009, Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies. http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/documents/opengovernment-directive
121

Figure 1. Figures elaborated from the “Access to legislation in Europe” 2 , pag. 230.
But other services could arise from the Web 2.0 platform 3 for fighting the overproduction of legal
information, the crisis of the legislation 4 , and the disorientating of the end-users. New tools (e.g. iPad,
smartPhone, etc) permits to envisage the navigation of the content by mobile devices, to use RSS 5 for updating
in real-time the news, to adopt tagging coming from expert people for qualifying and interconnecting the
content, to apply folksonomy techniques for fostering semantic web, to use graphic representation for helping
the citizens, to use social networking techniques for creating jurisprudence and commentary. For opening
the door to these new applications devoted, among the others, to close the gap of the digital divide that still
remains really high 6 and affects the digital democracy, we must use the XML format for the legal documents.
There is in this moment a sceptical attitude to adopt XML for legal and legislative documentation 7 ,
due to some errors made by the enthusiastic beginners and in some way the PDF format returns an
interesting possible option for managing legislative resources in easer way. Nevertheless all the above
mentioned opportunities to implement Web 2.0 functionalities are definitely closed. Even if the PDF
is enriched by metadata (i.g. GLIN project 8 ), in any case we assist to a fracture between the text as
originally delivered and endorsed by the authority, and the computer searching mechanism based on
separate metadata, not aligned to the text. Following this way we lost the possibility to provide open
documents to the citizens, third parties, association of consumers, etc. for building the knowledge
society [18], to apply reasoning tools to the text or semantic ontology for managing the text.
For avoiding those risks and the failures that XML surly hides we need to analyse in deed which
are the characteristics that a Legal XML standard should have for maintaining the great expectations
also in long-term perspective.
2. Legal XML perspective
In the European scenario 17 9 Official Gazettes out 28 are using XML format in some phase of their
2) Access to legislation in Europe, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2009, ISBN 978-92-78-40510-6
3) http://www.gov2summit.com/gov2010/
4) Sartor et. al., Legal Informatics and Management of Legislative Documents, 2008, http://www.ictparliament.org/sites/default/files/
WP002_legislativeinformatics.pdf
5) Really Simple Syndication.
Other services
Consolidation
Legislative
Database
Online Access
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
6) Global Information Technology Report 2009–2010, ICT for Sustainability, World Economic Forum, 2010, pag. 97, “Despite the best
efforts of governments and the private sector, the broadband digital divide persists as a significant challenge to inclusive and sustainable
development, especially in emerging economies.”
7) See the World e-Parliament Report 2010.
8) GLIN- Global Legal Information Network http://www.glin.gov/search.action
9) See the Access to legislation in Europe.
122
16
21
22
27

publishing process for favouring interoperability, access, neutrality from the application, preservation
of the document in long term.
The World e-Parliament Report 2010 provides interesting figures on the usage of the XML into the
Parliaments: 34% of parliaments are now using XML, 90% for interoperability, 71% for presentation
on the web, 48% for improving searching and 38% for the preservation in long term.
In this scenario the potentiality of the usage of XML for the Official Gazette purposes are really
tremendous.
Transparency. Often the publication process joins the layers of the content (the law approved
by the empowered body) with the typographic aspects, so the digital document becomes a mix of
different tags, metadata, information that it is difficult to disconnect. This affect the transparency of the
information in front of the citizens and also in relation with the interoperability with other information
systems (search engine, spider, etc.). So the risk is to loose over the time the differences between the
information added by the Official Gazette and the text approved by the assembly. Another risk is
to pass to PDF or opaque standard that doesn’t permit the manipulation of the text and the machine
reading of the knowledge.
Access and Accessibility. The XML document format permits a large broadcasting with
different devices, an inclusive and open communication for
reducing the digital divide 10 , and improving accessibility for
disadvantage people.
Figure 2. From the World
e-Parliament Report 2010
between different institutions involved into the legislative process.
Consolidated text. The XML permits to update in semi-automatic
way the legal text using different methodologies (direct consolidation,
inverse consolidation, side-by-side comparison). The granularity of
those manipulation is not so longer limited to the documentary unit
(article, comma) as it is currently happen in the database approach,
but it is possible to operate on the single fragment of provision.
Graphic representation. The metadata embedded into the
legal XML documents permit to represent the semantic connections
and relationships with graphic tools. This approach permit a more
usability of the legislative document collection.
Multicanality. The separation between content
representation and the typographic layer permits to reshape
the layout for different media: Internet, mobile, tv, kiosks, paper.
New way to search. With XML it is possible to increase
the potentialities and the accuracy of the searching. applying
the indexing techniques and in the same time fostering the
structure of the text. It is extremely useful to adopt ontologies,
folksonomy, and tagging of the content (see de.li.cious) for
filling the gap between the legal experts and citizens.
Interoperability. The XML inside of the Official Gazette
permits to set up an effective
policy of interoperability
between different information
systems (legacy systems) and
10) 23,9% of Broadband penetration into the 27 European States, February 2010, EuroStat; 65% of Level of Internet Access, January
2010.
123
Figure 3. Magna Glossa
of Accursio.

Preservation in long term. The Magna Glossa of Accursio 11 is a dramatic example of
preservation in long term of the law. It was ended about in 1228, it represents the main Corpus Iuris
Civilis of Justinian I, and the annotation was positioned around of the main original text (in the center).
This example underlines the opportunity to have a format document able to preserve clearly separated
the content, the metadata, the structure to the presentation elements (miniatura). After hundreds of years
this document preserves his integrity under semantic point of view. Are we able to do the same with
our legal digital document? There is the serous risk to archive digital documents in a format not open,
not independent from the application layer, with a not clean separation between the metadata (glossa)
and the original text.
Self-containable. If the goal is to represent the legislative or legal document in autonomous way,
independent to any type of database, application or indexer, we need to maintain all the main metadata
inside of the document. In other words it is recommendable to not fragment the semantic schema of the
document information into several separate files, on the contrary it is strongly suggested to preserve the
unitarily of the document on the net. This approach will encourage the growth of new services.
Technological Neutrality and Independency. A open XML standard permits to maintain
the document collection independent from the technical platforms and application trends. This is a
assurance to be able in the future to manage the paternity of the information, without any intermediary
layer in the middle. Some legislative repository scatter the legal documents into the database fields and
they present them with on-the-fly rendering. If this is approach is really amazing under the technological
point of view,
Reuse. Due to the fact that XML is an evident interchange format of data, the legislative collection
marked-up and annotated becomes a truly legal heritage available for any kind of reuse The Directive
2003/98/EC opens an opportunity to reshape the relationship between public and private sector
concerning of public data. The Official Gazette could exploit those precious capital 12 for improving a
better transparency in front of the citizen and in the meantime for supporting the economy growth of
new services in the legal documentation 13 .
3. Legal resources: a complex multilayered information architecture
Not all the Legal XML standards [16] are enough expressive for coping with these aims. Legal
XML standards of the new generation implements some architectural design principles able to support
these processes in the respect of the lawful values, for guarding the legal guarantees of the future
generations. Akoma Ntoso, but also Metalex CEN that is a more abstract interchange standard based
on the same principles, are best practice examples how it is possible to have an interdisciplinary
approach and preserving technology and legal values over the time. This is possible due to the strong
descriptiveness of the standard, to the robust separation between content, metadata and presentation
levels and finally because those standards uses the FRBR 14 ([6], [7]) document ontology for naming the
legal resources on the web with persistent link.
In particular it is really important to represent each legal resource has a complex multilayered [17]
information architecture that includes several perspectives of analysis:
TexT. The aspect of the document officially approved by a legally competent authority.
11) The Magna Glossa of the Corpus Iuris Civilis was started by Azzone and ended in 1228 by Accursio. Now it is archived in the
Collegio of Spagna in Bologna.
12) “The value of the EU PSI market is estimated at €27 billion,2 which is four times the EU market for mobile roaming services.”,
COM(2009) 212 final.
13) Re-use of Public Sector Information– Review of Directive 2003/98/EC, Brussels, 7.5.2009, COM(2009) 212 final.
14) http://www.ifla.org/en/publications/functional-requirements-for-bibliographic-records
124

TexT’s sTrucTure. The aspect of the document that describes the way the text is organized.
MeTadaTa. Any additional information that was not deliberated by the legally competent authority.
Metadata can describe the document itself (e.g., by way of keywords), its workflow (e.g., procedural
steps in the bill), its lifecycle (the document’s history), or its identification (e.g., by way of a URL, URI,
or URN, or by specifying an annex).
OnTOlOgy. Any information specifying the legal or institutional setting in which the document
plays a role—e.g., information identifying the document as a judgment or opinion about the legal
system’s concepts—or any concept which is invoked in the text and which needs modelling. LKIF-core
ontology is a good example of legal ontology modelled following this principle [10], [11].
legal rules. The legal interpretation and modelling of the text’s meaning. The transformation of
the norms in logic rules for permitting legal reasoning. The LKIF-Rule is a good standard for modelling
norms with formal and logic rules [14], [19].
4 .Legal Ontology
3. Legal Metadata -
2. Structure
1. text
5. Legal Rules
Figure 3. Layers of representation in Legal Document Modelling
For example Akoma Ntoso implements the first three levels of this cake and provides hooks and
mechanisms for referring to external ontologies and to legal knowledge modeling. CEN Metalex
provides general mechanisms for coping with all the levels, and includes a document ontology able
to manage the events, the rules, the authors, and other more fine grained legal knowledge models.
Fundamental part of this multilayer architecture is the IRI reference based naming convention that
functions as the interface between levels.
4. Legal XML standard characteristics
What characteristics should the Legal XML standard have to face for voiding the future risks and
in meantime to get the opportunities of the semantic web?
We can group the characteristics in two classes: functional and technological requirements.
Functional requirements are following listed.
125

legal and legislaTive OrienTaTiOn: Legal XML standard provides a representation of the main
structures of legal documents using a principled approach that provides the best combination of
technological excellence and sophisticated juridical competency. The XML in this context has to
capture the relevant legal metadata of the single act (law, decree, etc.), and the metadata of the whole
publication work per se. The legislative documents express and embed cultural values, legal principles,
sovereignty of a territory, intellectual job of the political management class, historical traditions. For
these reasons we have the responsibility to represent in the best way all these knowledge for preserving
the legal values for the next generation (e.g. as Accursio made in XIII centaury).
descripTiveness: Legal XML standard preserves the original descriptiveness of the document and
avoids an excessive generalization of the elements. Those helps the back-office markup phase to
recognize the correct application of the tags, and helps also the external application of the document
because it is auto explicative. The tag vocabulary guides the users to understand the meaning (e.g.
article tag obviously represents the basic normative unit, block tag it is too general and ambiguous).
prescripTiveness: Legal XML standard implements rules and constraints directly drawn from the
legal domain that can be used to increase the quality of the legal information available (e.g., support
for the local legal drafting rules). The rules embedded into the XML-schema lead the quality and
provide a compulsory grid to the authors, editors, documentalists for obtaining an harmonization of
the quality over the time.
self-cOnTainMenT: Legal XML standard provides a place within the document for all information needed
to access, use and understand the content and the metadata of the document itself. This means that external
resources (such as ontological specifications and traditional databases) become useful shortcuts, and not
fundamental mechanisms for traditional and innovative uses of the documents. This is fundamental for their
long-term preservation, since this makes document collections independent of the architectural choices and
technological evolutions that may be found in different installations or become available in time.
sTrucTure MOdelling: Legal XML standard fully describes the original structure of the document
when expressed into XML. The correct attention is given to the textual content and to the metadata
associated to it for respecting the author subdivision of the document. The “cover-page” of the Official
Gazette is no so longer a subsidiary part, it is the expression of a procedural step, and represents a
precise lawmaking regulation provision.
sTrOng separaTiOn Of levels: Legal XML standard strongly separates all the layers of the semantic
web: content, structure, metadata, ontology, rules.
sTrOng naMing pOlicy: Legal XML standard adopts at all levels a syntax based on URI that can be
used to precisely refer to the concept being sought. This allows the correct and specific support for a
large class of references, including static legal references, dynamic legal references, data-level object
inclusion, ontological references, etc.
sTrOng TeMpOral MOdel: Legal XML standard correctly represents the temporal model underlying
the concept of dynamicity over the time of the legal documents. Based on the naming policy, it allows
to represent versions, variants, documents containing a plurality of versions, as well as static and
dynamic references.
sTrOng wOrkflOw MOdel: Legal XML standard includes a mechanism for expressing workflow
events connected also with a strong ontology of the context.
inTerchange dOcuMenT fOrMaT: Legal XML standard provides an interchange data format from
one standard to another, as well as between legacy systems, applications layers, and different data
formats. It is both an interchange standard and interoperability standard.
hOMOgeneOus publishing fOrMaT: Legal XML standard provides an open document infrastructure
for the publishing of heterogeneous collections of legal resources, independently of the type of the
legal document, of the legal system, of the jurisdiction.
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Technical requirements are following listed.
neuTral and Open dOcuMenT fOrMaT: Legal XML standard provides a homogeneous infrastructure
for representing the structure of heterogeneous legal resources. The standard should be public, open,
well documented and distributed into the community. A close and proprietary XML standard doesn’t
help the Open Gov Initiative, even if the data format is really fashion.
reliance On exisTing sTandards: Legal XML standard completely and correctly makes use of and
is based on web standards: XML, URIs, XML Schema, XML Namespace, RDF, OWL, etc.
MeTadaTa MOdelling: Legal XML standard associates documents with a rich set of metadata
elements, designed for providing not just the values, but the semantics associated to them, providing a
principled framework for the reasoning and the comparison of abstract and concrete concepts about
the documents and their content [5].
MiniMal required MeTadaTa seT fOrMaT fOr queries: Legal XML standard guarantees a minimal
metadata set for the interoperability of queries within heterogeneous collections of legal documents
expressed in different local and national standards. It increases the interoperability between different
document databases. Activities such as N-Lex or Eur-Lex could take advantage of those requirement
in order to manage all legal sources coming from different countries with the same data software
architecture and tools without the need to have the actual data format converge into a single one [9].
paTTern design OrienTed: Legal XML standard is designed with attention to respect classes of
patterns [4]. In other words we define classes of tags with properties in line with a cert content
model, which identifies the structure allowed within the element. Most of the elements in the Akoma
Ntoso standard have very similar structural descriptions. These structural descriptions (the patterns)
are seven and any other tags in the schema belong to them. The advantages of this approach is the
modularization of the schema, the flexibility respect the extensions, the consistency of behaviours for
each class of elements. Especially this last feature favour the tool developing.
5. State of the Art of the Legal XML
Several legal information systems in the last twenty years aimed to manage the changes into the
legal corpora with the technologies like database, SGML and HTML first, and XML, OWL after, with
the goal to provide updated versions of the law in any time (so called point-in-time mechanism).
EnAct [1], [2], written by Timothy Arnold-Moore for the government of Tasmania, was the first
system in 1995 producing the point-in-time 15 legislative database in SGML. In 1992, the LII (Legal
Information Institute) of Cornell Law School, launched by Peter Martin and Tom Bruce [12], has
been provided on the web (HTML) the consolidated United States Code 16 . AustLII, Australasian Legal
Information Institute, co-funded by Graham Greenleaf in 1995, makes today accessible on the web
more of 400 legal database using HTML [15]. Eur-Lex began to consolidate database of European
Legislation in 1999 using Formex, an SGML data standard now translated in XML (Formex v4) 17 .
Norway activates on 1st January 2001 a web service by Lovdata 18 and provide consolidated legislation
[8]. France transformed in 2002 the commercial service Jurifrance into a public web portal called
Legifrance 19 , including consolidated text in mixed format (HTML, XML, PDF). Austria with eLaw project
(2004) transformed its previous database RIS (1983) into a web collection of authentic documents,
15) Point-in-time is the function that permits to manage all the versions of the document over the time and not only the original document
and the last version.
16) http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/
17) http://formex.publications.europa.eu/index.html
18) http://www.lovdata.no/info/lawdata.html
19) http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/
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dematerializing completely the legal Official Gazette publication The Emilia-Romagna Region (Italy)
started the consolidation of regulations in 2003 using the NormeInRete XML schema 20 , and the Italian
High Court of Cassation started the same mark-up in 2005 and now it is approaching to consolidate
the set of document. Senate of Italy started recently some experimental XML markup on the bill for
producing the side-by-side comparison text for underlining the differences between two versions (mostly
coming from other institutions) [3]. Senate of Brazil from June 30th, 2009 launched the parliamentary
consolidated database (LexMLBrazil 21 ) with the point-in-time function based on a customisation of XML
Akoma Ntoso schema. The Library of Congress of Chile 22 provides the actualized legislation using the
national XML schema for legal resources, and from the 2009 offers, by the LeyChile service, all the
versions over the time of the legal documents starting from the 1998. Finally the Kenya Law Report 23 is
now converting their database of laws in XML documents marked-up in Akoma Ntoso standard [22],
[21].
6. Legal XML Standard Generations
The state of the art of the last ten years produced plenty of Legal XML standards for describing
the document as legal resource. Before to introduce the basic elements of Akoma Ntoso we want to
provide a categorisation of the existing standards on the base of their main characteristics, especially
respect the multi-layer subdivision above presented we can identify four categories:
• the first generation of Legal document XML standard 24 , was oriented mostly to describe the legal
text and its structure with an approach near to the database entities or the typography-word
processing paradigms;
• the second generation posed more attention to the document modelling and to the
description of text, structure and metadata 25 . Nevertheless the descriptiveness of the
elements was not preceded by an abstract analysis of the classes of data and the result
is a very long list of tags, a complex inclusions of DTDs or XML-schema, with a frequent
overlapping between metadata and text definition and a weak instruments for linking the
text to any other layers;
• the third generation is based on pattern. The pattern defines the properties of the class and its
grammar, content model, behaviour and hierarchy respect the other classes, so any additional
tag belongs to an existing abstract class and in this way it is preserved the consistency over
the time. A strong attention to divide the text, structure, metadata and ontology is a primary
principle in order to track in robust way any new layer put on the top of the pure text. Because
the pattern defines general rules that no longer impose real constraints in the mark-up action,
so the clarity of design scarifies the prescriptiveness. Akoma Ntoso and CEN/Metalex are
examples of this approach;
• the four generation uses the pattern jointly with co-constraint grammar like, among the others, RELEX
NG, Schematron, DSD, etc. for resolving above mentioned problem of lack of prescriptiveness.
Akoma Ntoso belongs to the third generation and it is a good candidate for becoming a four
generation Legal XML standard.
20) http://demetra.regione.emilia-romagna.it/
21) http://projeto.lexml.gov.br/documentacao/resumo-em-ingles
22) http://www.leychile.cl/Consulta
23) http://www.kenyalaw.org/update/index.php
24) Like EnAct or Formex.
25) As NiR or Lexdania.
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7. Legal Document Values over the time
One of the pillars of Akoma Ntoso, and of the other standard of the same generation, consists in
preserving as much as possible the legal document’s ontological values. In other words, Akoma Ntoso
ensures that the legal document will be preserved exactly as the author has represented, modeled,
and conceived it, independently of the XML technique used. For this reason XML is used by Akoma
Ntoso according to a document-oriented approach rather than to a data-oriented approach. The tags
are entered into the document for the purpose of modeling its semantics rather than to break up the
document into several fields in the database. The following picture shows the risks of this fragmentation,
too much dependent to the applicative layer.
Figure 4. Legal Document fragmentation
The document-oriented approach makes possible to preserve the document as the author produced
it: the logic of the database does not transform the content or the order of the elements; the document
is thus application-independent, and it ensures more transparency and persistency over time.
Figure 5. Document-oriented approach
129

If the document has several annexes or a particular structure, Akoma Ntoso does not force it
into the standard but makes it flexible, so as to represent the author’s intentions. This is essential in
making sure that the document’s contents preserve their legal validity over time, accurately reflecting
what the competent issuing body originally intended with respect to such contents. For this reason the
roles the different actors play in the document-management process are kept clearly distinct, as are the
metadata coming from workflow processes.
8. Conclusions
The Official Gazettes have a fully possibility to shape a new Web 2.0 era of the legal information
and they have also the responsibility to preserve the authenticity, the legality and the authoritativeness
of the legal corpora for the future. A clear and neat Legal XML standard is a good investment for
preserving the legal heritage in long-term and to assure to the community transparency, cooperation
and participation. The investment costs for implementing this approach are relevant, but as in the in the
Middle Ages the manuscripts made the differences for entering into the modern era (also economically),
so also these kind of chooses could influence the quality of legal information for the next generations.
9. References
[1] Arnold-Moore T., Jane C.: Connected to the Law: Tasmanian Legislation Using EnAct. Journal
of Information, Law and Technology 2000(1).
[2] Arnold-Moore T.: Automatically Processing Amendments to Legislation. ICAIL 1995, pp. 297-
306, 1995.
[3] Bacci L., Spinosa P., Marchetti C., Battistoni R.: Automatic mark-up of legislative documents
and its application to parallel text generation, in Proc. of LOAIT Workshop, pp. 45-54, 2009.
[4] Barabucci G., Cervone L., Di Iorio A., Palmirani M., Peroni S., Vitali F.: Managing semantics
in XML vocabularies: an experience in the legal and legislative domain, Balisage 2010 (under
publication).
[5] Barabucci G., Cervone L., Di Iorio A., Palmirani M., Peroni S., Vitali F.: Managing semantics
in XML vocabularies: an experience in the legal and legislative domain, in Proceedings of
Balisage: The Markup Conference 2010. Balisage Series on Markup Technologies, vol. 5,
2010.
[6] Bekiari, C., Doerr, M. and Le Boeuf, P. International Working Group on FRBR and CIDOC
CRM Harmonization. 2008. FRBR object-oriented definition and mapping to FRBRER (v. 0.9
draft).
[7] Bekiari, C., Doerr, M. and Le Boeuf, P.: International Working Group
on FRBR and CIDOC CRM Harmonization. 2008. FRBR object-oriented
definition and mapping to FRBRER (v. 0.9 draft). Accessed 20 August 2009
http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/docs/frbr_oo /frbr_docs/FRBR_oo_V0.9.pdf.
[8] Bing J., The Policies of Legal Information Services: a Perspective of Three Decades, Yulex
2003, ISBN 82-7226-077-8, pp. 35-57, 2003.
[9] Boer A., Radboud W., Vitali F.: MetaLex XML and the Legal Knowledge Interchange Format,
in Computable Models of the Law, Springer, 2008.
130

[10] Breuker J., Boer A., Hoekstra R., Van Den Berg C.: Developing Content for LKIF: Ontologies
and Framework for Legal Reasoning, in Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, JURIX
2006, pp.41-50, ISO Press, Amsterdam, 2006.
[11] Breuker J., Casanovas P., Klein M. C. A., Francesconi .E.: Law, Ontologies and the Semantic
Web - Channelling the Legal Information Flood IOS Press 2009.
[12] Bruce T., Martin P. W.: The Legal Information Institute: What Is It and Why Is It?, Cornell Law
Forum 2-6, 1994.
[13] Di Iorio A., Schirinzi M., Vitali F., Marchetti C.: A Natural and Multi-layered Approach to
Detect Changes in Tree-Based Textual Documents. ICEIS 2009, pp. 90-101, 2009.
[14] Gordon Thomas F.: Constructing Legal Arguments with Rules in the Legal Knowledge
Interchange Format (LKIF). Computable Models of the Law, Languages, Dialogues, Games,
Ontologies 2008, pagg. 162-184.
[15] Greenleaf G: Jon Bing and the History of Computerised Legal Research – Some Missing
Links’ in Olav Torvund and Lee Bygrave (Eds) Et tilbakeblikk på fremtiden (“Looking back at
the future”) pp. 61-75, Institutt for Rettsinformatikk, Oslo, 2004.
[16] Lupo C., Vitali F., Francesconi E., Palmirani M., Winkels R., de Maat E., Boer A., and
Mascellani P: General xml format(s) for legal sources - Estrella European Project IST-2004-
027655. Deliverable 3.1, Faculty of Law, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The
Netherlands, 2007.
[17] Palmirani M., Contissa G., Rubino R.: Fill the Gap in the Legal Knowledge Modelling.
RuleML 2009: 305-314.
[18] Rifkin J., The Age of Access. Penguin Putnam, New York, 2000.
[19] Sartor G., Legal Reasoning: A Cognitive Approach to the Law. Vol. 5. Treatise on Legal
Philosophy and General Jurisprudence. Berlin: Springer, 2005.
[20] Vitali F., Akoma Ntoso Release Notes. [http://www.akomantoso.org]. Accessed 20 August
2009.
[21] Vitali F., Zeni, F., Towards a Country-Independent Data Format: The AkomaNtoso Experience.
Proceedings of the V Legislative XML Workshop, 67–86. European Press Academic
Publishing,2007.
131

European Forum of Official Gazettes
7 th meeting
Rome
24 September 2010
133
Rome 2010
Presentation of new
Working group proposals
1. “Sharing experiences and best practices in the dissemination
of information to citizens”
2. “Provision of information about economic issues”
presented.by
Karl Schiessl
Director of Wiener Zeitung, Austria

European Forum of Official Gazettes
Karl Schiessl
CEO Wiener Zeitung
Vienna, Austria
24 th September 2010
Rome, Italy
Proposal for working group 1
7 th meeting
Good to know.
Sharing experiences and best practice in the
dissemination of information to citizens
Which information is requested by the citizens?
Latest news (politics, sports results, stock prices, .…)
Programs, schedules (cinema, travel information, ....)
Guidelines (administration, route planner, ….)
Help for their daily life
Good to know.

Proposal for working group 1
Sharing experiences and best practice in the
dissemination of information to citizens
Which information is provided by official gazettes?
Legal information
Information about activities of the public administration
Provable and definite legal text
Good to know.
Proposal for working group 1
Sharing experiences and best practice in the dissemination of information to citizens
Challenge
Create information which enables an average citizen to manage his
everyday life
business matters
interactions with the public administration
by himself without the help of external experts and advisors.
Good to know.

Project plan:
Stage 1 Introduction of the issue with the help of concrete examples in
Europe, e.g. the Austrian HELP/USP: Efficient dissemination of
actual information to citizens via internet.
Project plan:
Good to know.
Stage 2 Ascertainment of similar information systems by questionary
(Provider – official or private? Charged or free – financial model?
Multilingual? Up-to-dateness? etc.)
Stage 3 Shared network of administration guidelines for EU-citizens
(in case of …..)
Good to know.

Proposal for working group 2
Provision of information about economic issues
The current financial crisis disclosed:
Transparency is necessary for well-functioning markets
but
Transparency is not created by the markets
Average citizens were used to do most of their everyday business in
well-known environments by using their mother tongue: rent houses,
buy cars, use transportation, perform their jobs etc.
Proposal for working group 2
Good to know.
Provision of information about economic issues
National borderlines are more and more vanishing - more transparency and
information is required, about:
firms and companies
financial products
public subsidies
call for tenders/ e-tendering
etc.
In many countries official gazettes handle such data.
Therefore OG are predestined to extend this kind of information
about economic issues.
Good to know.

Project plan:
Stage 1 Introduction of the issue by demonstrating concrete examples in
Europe (Unternehmensregister/Business Register (D);
Firmenmonitor/Business Monitor (A), …..)
Stage 2 Ascertainment of similar information systems by questionary
(Provider – official or private? Charged or free – financial model?
Multilingual? Up-to-dateness? etc.)
Stage 3 - Directory of information-providers on economic issues
- Proposal for a classification system of securities and papers
Good to know.

European Forum of Official Gazettes
7 th meeting
Rome
24 September 2010
139
Rome 2010
Presentation of new
Working group proposals
3. “Sustainable development”
presented.by
Didier François
Deputy Director of Direction de l’information
légale et administrative, France

Sustainable development
The new body called the DILA has been in operation for a number of months, and we are now in
a position to define the scope of Sustainable Development (SD) within our activities; the definition of
sustainable development covers a greater sector than environmental protection on its own – it also has
social and economic implications.
In launching the working group for the next meeting in September, I now propose to deliver
a report on the status of current thinking (it would seem that we cannot…not put the question) and
any initiatives planned within the DILA; we will then broaden the scope of our work to cover the
implementation of concrete SD initiatives that all of us are able to conduct; each country involved will
have a member of staff to drive the process forward.
I will now give a summary of the various possible approaches from the French point of view:
In creating the DILA, it was partly the intention of the French Government to rationalise State
services production and print requirements (hard copy and digital).
The State itself needs to implement the procedures that it intends to promote to other players,
be they public (regional communities, public establishments and enterprises) or private (businesses,
associations or individuals).
Therefore, the State needs to set an example in terms of sustainable development by incorporating
it not only into public policy, but also into its daily operations.
Transversal management and areas of application
The implementation of an approach based on sustainable development within an organisation
(community or business) is a complex voluntary process, and involves all areas of the business.
Isolated initiatives are not an option. If insufficient thought has been put into developing the
approach, there is a risk of generating unwanted adverse effects – in terms of both ecology and the
economy.
The biggest risk is that the “sustainable development” label might be used to apply policies or
justify acts that have only a distant relationship with the actual concept of sustainable development
itself. To take a superficial example, eschewing “material” values still doesn’t dispense with paper
consumption or intrinsically improve the quality of products in environmental terms.
We need to implement a true transversal management programme, with contact points in major
areas of the business, and involving all stakeholders in a sustainable economic model.
We also need to identify and locate these stakeholders.
*****
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Concrete areas of application
specifically concerned in the implementation of a sustainable development programme:
Communication
Communications need to “demystify” sustainable development. This involves promoting the
concrete benefits of the programme, giving an honest appraisal of the situation, identifying initiatives
and, above all, providing “user guides”. This also means avoiding a number of stumbling blocks
(strong principles and good intentions) and remaining as concrete as possible.
Sustainable development is a concept that can be identified from a number of perspectives:
applications range from the law, through high technology and right up to governance.
Print
Print is a major concern in terms of this issue. In fact, the production and printing of papers and
reports… mainly uses products that represent a major risk in terms of land, water and air pollution.
Specific responses are required for such sources of pollution, and special attention is also required
throughout print processes in this respect.
As printers or people issuing orders to printers, we are confronted on a daily basis with the
problem of disposing of lots of different types of waste, which need to be processed to prevent any
impact on the environment.
Throughout the graphics process in any big or small company, the use of dangerous chemical
substances involves the production of dangerous waste. This type of waste needs to follow the
appropriate regulation chain of elimination, covering final collection and final elimination.
Each entity producing or storing waste is responsible for the elimination thereof. It must have
a rational waste management system and apply serious thought to the following solutions: waste
reduction at source, sorting, storage, collection and transport, valuation, and, finally, traceability.
Imprim’Vert [“Green Print”]: an innovative approach taken up by the DILA
This approach is practical and voluntary, so there is hope for success. Business partners are
pushing more and more for printers to adopt this same approach. Those who have done so are
identified by the Imprim’Vert logo, and are now employing practices to protect the environment in
terms of the 1,200 tonnes of dangerous waste processed every year in France!!!
A number of companies issuing print orders, with notable mention of the Administration, are now
including environmental protection criteria in their tenders, and these are becoming a deciding factor
in awarding contracts.
In this particular way, “Green printers” are offering their business an avenue for sustainable
development. The environmental approach adopted to printers doesn’t stop there – ink manufacturers
have devised a Coatings Care procedure, and paper manufacturers have produced the IPPC European
directive (Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control). All the major players involved in this sector are
therefore working towards improved management of energy and resources.
Marketing
We need to identify the risks and opportunities involved in a heightened awareness amongst
citizens of the challenges of sustainable development.
142

A commitment to SD sends a positive, favourable message outside, which can be a trigger for
collaborations based on confidence in following an SD programme.
Businesses or administrations promoting this kind of collaboration will find it easy to reap the
benefits.
The role of marketing is to analyse the behaviour of the responsible citizen and implement a range
of innovations that are sustainable in terms of acceptance. We need to locate and nurture the link
between demand and a more responsible response.
Legal aspects
In legal terms, sustainable development can be enshrined in legal documents, which can be
produced at European (directives) or State level. Some examples of European regulations are the
REACH directive (on the major use of chemical substances in printing) and the WEEE directive (on
electric and electronic equipment waste).
At State level, environmental and social law is based on two strands: environmental and social
(the environmental code and the employment code in France).
Legal services are required to check the conformity of sustainable development initiatives
implemented by organisations as part of their economical, social and environmental structure with the
applicable standards and associated communications. (implementation of legal monitoring)
Purchasing
Adherence to environmental, social and economic criteria when manufacturing products within a
company is not only dependent on internal systems, but also on the quality of the products purchased
from suppliers, and upstream. Performance in terms of sustainable development therefore depends
on the progressive integration of the supply chain within our area of responsibility. We need to
review purchasing strategy (cost reduction, elimination of waste, improvement of energy efficiency,
conservation of resources) by involving partners who supply the business.
Managing sustainable development through purchasing can be achieved by taking account of
global acquisition cost, which, over and above the purchase cost itself, also covers transport, customs
charges, guarantees, storage costs, obsolescence, production waste and end-of-life.
Applying a sustainable development action plan to purchasing generally addresses four areas of
concern:
• enabling current generations to meet their needs without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet theirs,
• making purchasing savings due to improved product design,
• repercussions for image and reputation,
• response to legal obligations.
The implementation of a sustainable development policy is greatly dependent upon how an entity
uses its resources. These resources can be physical assets (property in the classic sense of the word),
but they can also be immaterial assets.
The achievement of sustainable development goals is highly dependent on how we plan to conduct
the initiative in terms of all these resources (employees, organisation ...).
143

Information systems
“Dematerialisation”, which consists of diverting document flow between organisations away from
hard copy documentation towards electronic information systems (this term is hardly appropriate,
as such “dematerialisation” does not actually stop us using materials) is often presented as a benefit
in terms of the environment, as it does away with paper consumption. In fact, we have realised
that the idea of “zero paper” is a myth. A qualitative analysis of the benefits and drawbacks of
“dematerialisation” in terms of sustainable development shows that things are not quite so simple.
Specifically, this process does not improve product quality in terms of the environment.
Reconciling sustainable development with information systems is no easy task, as information
systems are not generally designed for the long-term, but rather for a period of a few years. Also,
business information systems are designed to a logic mainly focused on accounting and finance.
Current initiatives for the application of SD principles in IT more often concern IT equipment proper
(recycling and electricity consumption). There is an international certification system for hardware, plus
a European Directive on dangerous substances.
Another crucial issue is to know what might be the impacts of the race towards IT supremacy on
the environment. We know that computers and software are overdesigned in terms of requirements,
and that the constant arrival of new versions of hardware and software on the market means that
depreciation periods are becoming ever shorter, generating more waste.
A number of interesting initiatives have been observed:
• There are specialist IT systems for setting reporting indicator batteries to zero in accordance with
sustainable development criteria
• Other software makes it possible to measure and monitor the carbon footprint of businesses and
communities across time
• Transversal projects agreed across all areas of a business can stimulate innovation and help to
structure and share the wide range of expertise available within organisations.
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144

A questionnaire addressed to members of the JO forum
would seem to be the most appropriate way to gather information from everybody and start
working from an analysis of what we already know.
Here are a few questions for members of the working group to consider and formalise a response:
Digital development is now an alternative to using paper; what are the real improvements derived
from such modernisation?
Does sustainable development need to be used as leverage for organisational and strategic
change?
How are European countries planning to rationalise their resources?
– Why ask the question?
– Isn’t the procedure already in place in certain respects?
– How does it affect us?
– Political requirements
– Legal constraints
– Competitive challenge
– What would our priorities be?
– Voluntary approach and its founding principles: diagnostics-objectives-action plan- schedule
– Identify the stakeholders
– Risks
– Costs (direct, staff training…)
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145

European Forum of Official Gazettes
7 th meeting
Rome
24 September 2010
147
Rome 2010
Information on the
8 th Meeting in Latvia - Riga 2011
presented.by
Artis Trops
Project Manager VSIA “Latvijas Vêstnesis”, Latvia