A foundation for improving access to legal information (DE0030)

What is the public problem that the commitment will address? The legislative information provided free of charge by the Federal Government is current-ly spread across three different portals: Gesetze-im-Internet (laws), Rechtsprechung-im-Internet (jurisprudence) and Verwaltungsvorschriften-im-Internet (administrative regu-lations). The legislative information that is accessible to the public is limited to currently applicable federal law, federal case-law from 2010 onwards, and current federal adminis-trative regulations. There is little metadata for the documents, so the portals’ search func-tionality is also restricted. Furthermore, technical access to this information lags behind the current standard, and civil society actors and businesses face considerable practical obsta-cles to their own use of the data in leading-edge applications. There is a great deal of time and effort involved in preparing the data for automated selection and processing. Other countries already offer more modern and more user-friendly legislative information portals.

What is the commitment? The Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection (BMJV) will develop the vision of a uniform, contemporary legislative information portal that is intuitive, accessible and user friendly. The portal is intended to provide the general public with a significantly broader range of legislative information from the Federal Government in future. The documents, including comprehensive metadata, will be made available as open data for the first time. To achieve this, the Federal Government will do the technical groundwork for its own data repository that in time will also feed into the portal.

How will the commitment contribute to solving the public problem? The vision of the legislative information portal and the associated application programming interface (API) will be conceived and developed in an open, transparent, agile and user-cen-tric process. The API should allow citizens, civil society, the scientific and academic com-munity and businesses (such as start-ups) to process the data outside of the portal for both personal and commercial purposes, enabling them to offer innovative products and ser-vices. The project outcomes are to be made available to the public on a dedicated website. This will present the target vision for the legislative information portal in the form of a click dummy, accompanied by descriptions and explanations. The API documentation will also be published and a “request for comment” format set up to collect technical feedback on the interface. There are also plans to put a live and active, but functionally limited version of the API on the website. Interested parties can then test and experiment with it using a lim-ited and out-of-date dataset. The target group here – consisting of businesses, students, the scientific and academic community, civil society and private individuals – is extremely mixed, and the project a very complex one. Public participation is therefore needed to en-sure that the portal will generate real added value for all, and that the technical and func-tional requirements of potential downstream users are factored into interface development.

Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values? This commitment creates a high degree of transparency by offering an unprecedented scope of legislative information from the Federal Government. It does so free of charge in a machine-readable format via a standard interface and a user-centric platform. In addition to transparency, participation and inclusion, the agile approach chosen for this commit-ment, and the close involvement of users and the public, also addresses how technology and innovation can be harnessed in the interests of open access.

Additional information Measures set out in the Data Strategy of 27 January 2021. The legislative information portal will not go live until after the implementation period for this Action Plan. Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 16 (Peace, justice and strong institutions)

Milestones Start Date Implementation by Development and presentation on the website of the target system (click dummy with descriptions and explanations)e September 2021 August 2022 Development of a functionally limited version of the programming interface (API) September 2021 August 2022 Production and publication of documentation on the interface in the form of a request for comment, as a means of opening up dialogue with potential users September 2021 August 2022 Development of an interactive website that replicates and realises dialogue with users January 2022 August 2022 Exchange with civil society and business on interface design; incorporation of feedback September 2022 August 2023

Action Plan Review

Commitment 6.1: Improving access to legal information