Akoma Ntoso School

The school aims at providing knowledge of the most significant ICT standards emerging for legislation, judiciary, parliamentary and administrative documents with particular regard to Akoma Ntoso standard. The course provides understanding of Akoma Ntoso principles, impacts, scenarios in the different phases of the legislative, parliamentary and administrative processes.

Tools based on Akoma Ntoso XML standards are presented jointly with the ability to participate in the drafting and use of standard-compliant documents throughout law-making process. In particular we would like to create consciousness in the stakeholders in the legal domain about the benefits of Akoma Ntoso and the possibilities provided by the correct usage of Semantic Web technologies such as XML standards, ontologies, natural language processing techniques applied to legal texts, legal knowledge modelling and reasoning tools.

This edition of the LeX Summer School is organized in two courses:
##A Basic Course providing an introduction to XML web technologies and to basic technologies for drafting and managing standard-compliant legislative and legal documents;
##An Advanced Course providing in-depth analysis of the higher levels of Semantic Web technologies and of their application to the legal domain: modelling of modifications, procedures and legal knowledge;

LeX is an intensive 4-day, 8-hour-a-day program, that requires participants’ total dedication and intellectual commitment.

The program’s learning process assists participants to develop knowledge, skills and capabilities in using and managing shared and interoperable standards for legislative document enabling access, communication, processing, modelling, representing and integration of legislation through IT technologies, in an open and cooperative framework.

Teaching Objectives

Good management of legal documents involves at least six aspects:
##Drafting methods, to improve the language and structure of legislative texts;
##Legal XML standards, to improve the accessibility and interoperability of legal resources;
##Legal ontologies, to capture legal metadata and legal semantics;
##Legal Knowledge extraction using natural language techniques;
##Formal representation of legal contents, to support legal reasoning and argumentation;
##Workflow models, to cope with the lifecycle of legal documents.

The summer school will address all of these aspects, through multi- and interdisciplinary competences. It will provide and integrated approach to the management of legal documentation, as a core aspect of legislative and administrative innovation.

Target Group

We seek applicants who are interested in legal drafting and electronic management of legal resources and who plan to work in this area in the public administration, private sector or research fields.

LEX is designed primarily for officers of legislative bodies and other normative authorities (at international, national, regional and local levels), but it addresses also to drafters of normative texts in the private sector, editors, publishers, documentalists dealing with legal sources, experts in the electronic management of legal texts, students and researchers working in legal informatics and legislation studies.

For the technical people and for the tool developers the Summer School is a great occasion of networking.