ODI Open Data Certificates: Application to open legal data

The UK Open Data Institute has launched Open Data Certificates, and legislation.gov.uk, the UK Government’s official online legislative information service, will be implementing them, according to the ODI announcement.

“Certificates are created online, for free, at http://certificates.theodi.org/“

Click here for a post by Dr. Jeni Tennison, ODI’s Technical Director, about the certificates.

Here is a partial description of the certificates, from the announcement:

The certificate is made up of two components:

1) a visual mark that shows the quality level of the data

2) a human and machine-readable description of the data being released

There are four levels of certificates:

• Raw: A great start at the basics of publishing open data.
• Pilot: Data users receive extra support from, and provide feedback to the publisher.
• Standard: Regularly published open data with robust support that people can rely on.
• Expert: An exceptional example of information infrastructure.

Benefits of the certificates include helping:

• publishers of data understand how they can better connect with their users;
• users of data to understand its quality, licensing, structure, and its usability;
• businesses, entrepreneurs and innovators have confidence that the data has value to them;
• policy-makers benchmark and compare the progress and quality of the data released.

Commercial and public sector organisations have already committed to the certificates including:

• Open Corporates: corporate information for over 50 million companies worldwide
• OpenStreetMap: the free wiki world map offering worldwide open geodata
• legislation.gov.uk: 500 years of UK legislation information
• amee: an environmental score for each of the 2.7 million companies in Britain
• MastodonC: energy monitoring data analysis from Retrofit for the Future projects
• Placr: transport data covering all 360,000 stops and stations nationwide

Jeni Tennison, Technical Director at the ODI said:

‘Publishing open data can be difficult, time-consuming and may need the support of legal and technical teams. Anyone who gets a certificate, at whatever level, has done really well.’

‘The Expert level sets a very high bar. This ambition underpins the potential we see in open data if it is published well. We don’t know who will be the first to attain an Expert certificate, but whoever it is will be celebrated!’

‘Certificates are created online, for free, at http://certificates.theodi.org/ . The process involves publishers answering a series of questions, each of which affect the certificate generated at the end.’

In a series of tweets on 15 June 2013 (here, here, here, and here), Jeni said that ODI currently had “no revenue stream” associated with the certificate program, but that they were “working it out”; that ODI would not charge for certificates but “probably” would charge for “auditing/advice/training”; and that ODI would not seek exclusivity over the certificates in the future, since ODI’s goal was “more+better open data” and “exclusivity would work against that.”

For more details, please see the complete announcement and Jeni’s post.

HT @JeniT

Parliaments on the Net XI Conference: 2-3 May 2013: Tweets and resources

The Parliaments on the Net XI Conference is being held 2-3 May 2013 in London, England, UK.

Click here for archived videos of the Day 1 and Day 2 sessions.

The conference is being live-blogged at http://potn2013.tumblr.com/

The Twitter hashtag for the conference is #potn2013

Click here for archived Twitter tweets from both days of the conference.

Click here for the conference program.

Good Law Initiative Launch Event, 16 April 2013: Tweets and Resources

This post links to tweets and selected resources from the 16 April 2013 launch event for the Good Law Initiative, a project of the UK Office of the Parliamentary Counsel.

The main page for the initiative appears to be called Good law – Detailed guidance – GOV.UK.

Click here for video of the event.

The Office’s announcement of the Good Law initiative is called Join the good law conversation.

Twitter tweets from the launch event are now archived in .csv format.

The Twitter hashtag for the event, and for other Good Law activities, is #goodlaw

On 16 April 2013 the Office published a new report entitled When laws become too complex: Review by Office of the Parliamentary Counsel into the causes of complex legislation, which is also called the OPC Good Law Report or the Good Law Report.

For more information about the Good Law Initiative, please see Good law – Detailed guidance, or Good Law Initiative: UK Government Effort to Make Legislation More Effective and Accessible.

HT @johnlsheridan

Good Law Initiative: UK Government Effort to Make Legislation More Effective and Accessible

The UK Office of the Parliamentary Counsel is launching “the ‘Good Law’ initiative, with the aim of improving the user’s experience of legislation,” at an event to be held 16 April 2013, at the Institute for Government, London, England.

The Twitter hashtag for the initiative is #goodlaw

Here are excerpts of the announcement:

Legislation is difficult. The volume of statute law and regulations, together with their piecemeal structure, level of detail, and frequent amendments, mean that citizens find law complex, hard to understand, and difficult to comply with. That can generate barriers to economic activity, as well as burdens for individuals, businesses, and communities. It obstructs good government, and it undermines the rule of law.

Efforts have been made to address aspects of the problem. Parliamentary Counsel has adopted a simple, plain English style. The National Archives have improved access to up-to-date legislation through legislation.gov.uk. The Law Commission has a programme of special Bills for law reform, consolidation and repeals. But the problem remains.

At this event, the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel launches the ‘good law’ initiative with the aim of improving the user’s experience of legislation. Join us to discuss what ‘good law’ means in practice. What do users expect from legislation? How can we make it more accessible? When is complexity in legislation desirable? And when is unavoidable?

I believe that at the launch event, John Sheridan of The National Archives will give a presentation about the role of legislation.gov.uk in the Good Law initiative.

For more information about the launch event or to register for the event, please see the event announcement.

Click here for more information about the principles underlying the Good Law project.

HT @johnlsheridan

Hallo Carrasco et al.: Data models for version management of legislative documents

María Hallo Carrasco of National Polytechnic School, Ecuador, and Professor Dr. M. Mercedes Martínez-González and Pablo de la Fuente Redondo, both of University of Valladolid, have published Data models for version management of legislative documents, forthcoming in Journal of Information Science.

Here is the abstract:

This paper surveys the main data models used in projects including the management of changes in digital normative legislation. Models have been classified based on a set of criteria, which are also proposed in the paper. Some projects have been chosen as representative for each kind of model. The advantages and problems of each type are analysed, and future trends are identified.

The legislative metadata models discussed in the paper include:

• Agora-Lex
• AKOMA NTOSO
• CEN Metalex
• EnACT
• ESTRELLA General XML format(s) for legal Sources
• Legislation.gov.uk
• Legislative Documents in XML at the United States House of Representatives
• Norma
• Norme in Rete

Morley on Sheridan, Open Legislative Data, and Legislation.gov.uk

Video of Oliver Morley’s presentation last month at the Sprint 13 conference, concerning open data at The National Archives, including Legislation.gov.uk, is available.

This clip starts at the discussion of Legislation.gov.uk, the UK open legislation platform. The discussion covers John Sheridan‘s innovative work developing Legislation.gov.uk according to principles of open Linked Data, the new project to update the UK statute book by means of expert participation, a new platform that will allow UK Government personnel to edit legislation, and new tools that produce visualizations of the quantities of UK and EU statutes and regulations.

Click here for John Sheridan’s VoxPopuLII post about the technology of Legislation.gov.uk.

Click here for slides of John Sheridan’s recent presentation on Legislation as Data.

HT @johnlsheridan

Sheridan on Legislation as Data

John Sheridan of the National Archives gave a presentation entitled Legislation as Data, 25 January 2013, at the Open Data Institute in London.

Click here for the presentation slides.

Click here for archived Twitter tweets from the event, in .csv format.

The Twitter hashtag for the event was #odifridays

For posts about the presentation, please see the comments to this post.

HT @JeniT

[NOTE: Updated 31 January 2013 to add a link to the slides.]

Please Participate in Survey About Legislation.gov.uk

Please consider participating in a user survey respecting Legislation.gov.uk, the official, free online source for UK statutes. The survey is available on the main Legislation.gov.uk site — from the “Survey” tab on right screen — or directly here.

John Sheridan of The National Archives (UK) and administrator of Legislation.gov.uk, writes:

We’re working with Parliamentary Counsel to understand how people interact with legislation. Participate in the http://legislation.gov.uk survey.

Apparently anyone — including those who are not citizens or residents of the UK — may participate in the survey.

HT @johnlsheridan

Legislation.gov.uk to Be Enhanced Using Expert Participation

John Sheridan of The National Archives (UK) announced today that The National Archives would use the technique of “expert participation” to update and complete Legislation.gov.uk, the UK’s online statute book, according to a National Archives press release entitled Experts to contribute to world-leading legislation website.

According to the announcement:

The Expert Participation Programme … is a new initiative to bring legislation on the site fully up-to-date. The National Archives is teaming up with trained editors from the private and voluntary sectors to help our in-house editorial team revise legislation on legislation.gov.uk. John Sheridan, Head of Legislation Services at The National Archives, explains: ‘This project will, in time, transform public access to the law in this country. We are creating a sustainable model for revising legislation, making official, revised UK legislation available to the public for free and without any additional cost to the taxpayer.’

As Mr. Sheridan told Joshua Rozenberg of the Law Society Gazette:

a team of no more than 50 ‘external expert participants’ will be needed to bring the database up to date by 2015. He is looking for people who have a mental image of how legislation is constructed and amended, although his volunteers do not have to be lawyers. All will be trained and given the software tools they need to work online.

Mr. Sheridan made the announcement at the LawTechCamp London legal technology unconference, being held 29 June 2012.

The announcement was also described by Joshua Rozenberg in his article, The National Archives is recruiting volunteers to update the statute book, Law Society Gazette, 28 June 2012.

“Expert participation” is a public participation method advocated by Professor Dr. Beth Noveck of New York Law School in her book Wiki Government. Professor Noveck has implemented the method in such projects as Peer to Patent, Peer to Patent UK, and ExpertNet.

For more information on Legislation.gov.uk, please see Mr. Sheridan’s VoxPopuLII post, Legislation.gov.uk.

Tennison on the UK Open Standards Consultation and Legislation.gov.uk

Dr. Jeni Tennison of TSO has posted UK Open Standards Consultation, on her blog, Jeni’s Musings.

In this post, Dr. Tennison responds to the UK Government’s consultation on open standards for government information systems. Dr. Tennison’s post refers frequently to the UK’s free law service, legislation.gov.uk, of which she is a principal developer.

Dr. Tennison’s post addresses issues including:

• The definition of open standards;
• The criteria a government should use to decide whether to mandate the use of open standards;
• The effect of open standards on efficiency, “innovation, competition and choice in delivery of government services”;
• The effect of open government information standards on the re-use of government information by businesses and civil society; and
• The relationship between open standards and the licensing of government information.

For more information, please see the complete post.

HT @JeniT.