Institute of Law Organises a Workshop on Akoma Ntoso Technology
In the context of its extensive effort to further develop and upgrade the Palestinian Legal and Judicial System (AL-MUQTAFI), the Institute of Law (IoL) at Birzeit University hosted on 23-25 April 2012 a training workshop on the Akoma Ntoso model. The IoL unrelentingly seeks to integrate and incorporate legal and judicial theories and most up-to-date programming tools. The workshop brought together IoL researchers and IT specialists. In addition to Mr. Ashok Hariharan, Software Development Coordinator, Africa i-Parliament Action Plan, UN/DESA, law and IT experts from the University of Bologna in Italy, including Professor Monica Palmirani and Mr. Gioele Barabucci, provided the training.
Experts covered theoretical and applied areas of the training. Professors Palmirani explained that Akoma Ntoso “is an advanced technique that processes and displays legislative and legal data. Integrating the theory of law with most effective, efficient and tailor-made IT models, Akoma Ntoso facilitates linking legal concepts and documents.” In the legal context, the Akoma Ntoso model processes and displays online laws and court judgements, enabling multidisciplinary users to view legal principles that inform various specialisations. Additionally, the Akoma Ntoso system consolidates a common language used by various legislative bodies. Besides tracking phases of the legislative cycle, Akoma Ntoso informs legislative drafting by consolidating respective rules and guidance, enabling a clearer and more consistent legislative content.
Trainers made a purposeful presentation on standard naming techniques for identifying legal resources using Akoma Ntoso. Also using the same technology, experts explained how to deal with metadata describing regulations or court judgements, identify relevant concepts, process the legislative cycle, and integrate amendments. To take account of the Palestinian legal and legislative framework, panellists elaborated that Akoma Ntoso helps identify components of court decisions and introduced principles needed to customise and localise the model.
On the second training day, experts provided an overview of Bungeni Editor techniques, highlighting respective relations with the Akoma Ntoso design. Having introduced tools needed to customise and localise the model, trainers explained how the Bungeni Editor helps produce legal documents in tandem with the Akoma Ntoso operation.
To illustrate the theoretical presentation, experts provided a plethora of practical examples on Palestinian and foreign regulations. Discussants addressed detailed issues of legislative and judicial practices and how to align the Akoma Ntoso system with current AL-MUQTAFI techniques. An assessment was made of common grounds of AL-MUQTAFI and Akoma Ntoso software applications as well as of future prospects of smooth transformation into the new Akoma Ntoso system.
On the sidelines of the two-day workshop, the IoL research team and Mr. Hariharan visited the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). Currently, a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) team is assessing PLC IT needs. Mr. Hariharan made a presentation on the Bungeni Editor model, introducing relevant areas and benefits availed to parliamentary functions. In this context, IoL’s experience in customising and localising Bungeni Editor techniques can be utilised by the PLC to edit and analyse published legislation. Additionally, the PLC can apply these techniques to the legislation cycle, thereby scaling up the process and invigorating civil society oversight of PLC performance. The IoL research team also overviewed achievements and progress the IoL has made towards customising and localising the Bungeni Editor model with a view to process Palestinian regulations. The system will ultimately be adopted as a major software application to process legal documents on AL-MUQTAFI.
