Dear Sirs,please find in attachment the Internet Draft for urn:lex formal namespace registration.
We tried to use the upload form service at https://datatracker.ietf.org/idst/upload.cgi
but we had problems. Waiting for your kind reply best regards PierLuigi Spinosa Enrico Francesconi Caterina Lupo ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PierLuigi Spinosa ITTIG / CNR Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell'Informazione Giuridica del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Via de' Barucci, 20 50127 Firenze tel. +39 055 4399-673 fax +39 055 4399-605 e-mail: pierluigi.spinosa at ittig.cnr.it Web: http://www.ittig.cnr.it ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Attachment:
rfc-lex.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document
Internet-Draft P. Spinosa - ITTIG/CNR
Request for Comments: N. xxx E. Francesconi - ITTIG/CNR
Category: Informational C. Lupo - CNIPA
October 2009
A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace
for Sources of Law (LEX)
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not
specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is
unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2009).
Abstract
This document describes a Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace
Identification (NID) convention as prescribed by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) for identifying, naming, assigning, and managing
persistent resources in the legal domain.
1. Introduction
1.1. The Purpose of Namespace "lex"
The purpose of the "lex" namespace is to assign an unequivocal
identifier, in standard format, to documents that are sources of law. The
identifier is conceived so that its construction depends only on the
characteristics of the document itself and is, therefore, independent
from the documentâ??s on-line availability, its physical location, and
access mode.
"Sources of law" include any legal document within the domain of
legislation (including bills), case law and administrative acts or
regulations.
This identifier will be used as a way to represent the references (and
more generally, any type of relation) among the various sources of law.
In an on-line environment with resources distributed among different Web
publishers, uniform resource names allow simplified global
interconnection of legal documents by means of automated hypertext
linking.
1.2. Entities Supporting this Standard
The following entities support this proposal:
â?? ITTIG/CNR (Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques of the
Italian National Research Council) â?? Italy;
â?? CNIPA (National Centre for ICT in Public Administration) â?? Italy;
â?? PRODASEN â?? IT Department of the Federal Senate â?? Brazil;
â?? LII (Legal Information Institute), Cornell Law School - USA
1.3. The Context
In the last few years a number of initiatives have arisen in the field of
legal document management.
Since 2001 the Italian Government, through the CNIPA (National Authority
for Information Technology in the Public Administration), the Ministry of
Justice and ITTIG-CNR (the Institute of Legal Information Theory and
Techniques of the Italian National Research Council) promoted the
NormeInRete project. It was aimed at introducing standards for sources of
law description and identification using XML and URN techniques.
Other national initiatives in Europe introduced standards for the
description of legal sources [10]: for example the Metalex project,
promoted by the University of Amsterdam and adopted by the Dutch Tax and
Customs Administration, the Belgian Public Centers for Welfare and
others; LexDania project in Denmark supported by the Danish Ministry of
Justice; CHLexML in Switzerland developed by COPIUR, the Coordination
Office for the Electronic Publication of Legal Data Federal Office of
Justice; eLaw in Austria mainly coordinated by the Austrian Parliament.
Such initiatives, based in synergies between government, national
research institutes, and universities, have defined national XML
standards for legal document management, as well as schemes for legal
document identification.
Outside Europe, similar initiatives have faced similar problems. For
example, the Brazilian Senate carried out a feasibility study to provide
unique and transparent identifiers to sources of law on the basis of the
IFLA-FRBR model.
Similarly, the Akoma Ntoso (Architecture for Knowledge-Oriented
Management of African Normative Texts using Open Standards and
Ontologies) project provides a set of guidelines for e-Parliament
services in a Pan-African context by proposing an XML document schema
providing sophisticated description possibilities for several
Parliamentary document types (including bills, acts and parliamentary
records, etc.).
Finally, the Tasmanian Government provided advanced legislative
information services through the EnAct project. It gave searchable
consolidated Tasmanian legislation by automating much of the legislative
drafting and consolidation process, as well as using SGML document
representation. Numerous less-visible efforts in the United States and
elsewhere have struggled with similar issues.
Several of these identifiers are based on a URN schema. The first
national standard was defined in Italy within the NormeInRete project; to
this the Danish LexDania and the Brazilian Lexml standard followed.
Hungary, Slovenia and Switzerland expressed their interest in URN
identifier for legislation as well. All these standards have a common
internal structure, regarding both the hierarchy and the elements
content.
In today's information society the processes of political, social and
economic integration of European Union member states as well as the
increasing integration of the world-wide legal and economic processes are
causing a growing interest in exchanging legal information knowledge at
national and trans-national levels.
The growing desire for improved quality and accessibility of legal
information amplifies the need for interoperability among legal
information systems across national boundaries. A common open standard
used to identify sources of law at international level is an essential
prerequisite for interoperability.
Interest groups within several countries have already expressed their
intention to adopt a shared solution based on a URN technique.
The need for a unequivocal identifier of sources of law in different EU
Member States, based on open standards and able to provide advanced
modalities of document hyper-linking, has been expressed in several
conferences by representatives of the Office for Official Publications of
the European Communities (OPOCE), with the aim of promoting
interoperability among national and European institution information
systems. Similar concerns have been raised by international groups
concerned with free access to legal information, and the Permanent Bureau
of the Hague Conference on Private International Law is considering a
resolution that would encourage member states to "adopt neutral methods
of citation of their legal materials, including methods that are medium-
neutral, provider-neutral and internationally consistent". In a similar
direction the CEN Metalex initiative is moving, at European level,
towards the definition of a standard interchange format for sources of
law, including recommendations for defining naming conventions to them.
The "urn.lex" naming convention has interpreted all these
recommendations, proposing an original solution for sources of law
identification.
1.4. General Characteristics of the System
Registrants wish now to promote interoperability among legal information
systems by the definition of a namespace convention and structure that
will
create and manage identifiers for legal documents. The identifiers will
be:
â?? globally unique
â?? transparent
â?? persistent
â?? location-independent, and
â?? language-neutral.
These qualities will facilitate legal document management as well as
provide a mechanism of stable cross-collections and cross-country
references.
Language-neutrality is an especially important feature that will promote
adoption of the standard by organizations that must adhere to official-
language requirements. The proposed standard will provide useful guidance
to both public and private groups that create, promulgate, and publish
legal documents. Registrants wish to minimize the potential for creating
conflicting proprietary schemes, while preserving sufficient flexibility
to allow for diverse document types and to respect the need for local
control of collections by an equally diverse assortment of administrative
entities.
As usual, the problem is to provide the right amount guidance at the core
of the standard while providing sufficient flexibility to cover a wide
variety of needs. The proposed "lex" standard does this by splitting the
identifier into parts. The first part uses a predetermined standard
(â??country name standardâ??) to specify the country of origin for the legal
document being identified; the remainder (â??local nameâ??) is intended for
local use in identifying documents issued in that country. This second
part depends only on sources of law identification system operating in
that nation and it is mainly composed by a formalized information related
to the enacting authority, the type of measure, the details and possibly
the annex.
The identification system based on uniform names must include:
â?? a schema for assigning names capable of representing unambiguously any
source of law (legislation, case law and administrative acts), issued
by any authority (national, regional and local) at any time (past,
present and future);
â?? a resolution mechanism â?? in a distributed environment â?? that ties a
uniform name to the on-line location of the corresponding resources.
This document only considers the first of these requirements. It also
contains a few references to the architecture of the resolution service
and to the corresponding software.
1.5. Linking a "lex" Name to a Document
The "lex" name is linked to the document through meta-information which
may be specified:
â?? internally to the document itself through a specific element within an
XML schema or by an HTML META tag;
â?? externally by means of an RDF triple, a specific attribute in a
database, etc.
One of these modalities is necessary for enabling automated construction
and updating of catalogues (distributed and centralized) and the
implementation of resolvers that associate the uniform name of a document
with its physical location(s). The standard assumes no particular
relationship between the originator of the document, its publisher, and
the implementer of catalogues or resolution services. They may be the
same entity, or not.
1.6. Use of "lex" Names in References
"lex" names will be used on a large scale in references as a HREF
attribute value of the hypertext link to the referred document.
This link can be created in two ways:
â?? by manually inserting, in the referring document, the link with the
uniform name: this is a burdensome procedure especially for documents
that are already on-line;
â?? by automatically constructing (either permanently or temporarily) the
link with the uniform name, through reference parsers of a text: this
is a more time-saving procedure even if subject to a certain percentage
of errors, since references are not always accurate or complete. This
solution could nevertheless be acceptable for already published
documents.
In any case, whatever the method adopted is, new documents produced in
XML format compliant with the relative DTD/XMLSchema, should express
references through the uniform name of the document referred to.
2. Specification Template
2.1. Namespace ID
"lex"
2.2. Registration Information
Version Number: 1.0
Date: 2009-07-01
Declared registrant of the namespace:
Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques (ITTIG)
Italian National Research Council (CNR)
Via de' Barucci, 20
50127 Florence
Italy
e-mail: lex at ittig.cnr.it
2.3. Syntax Used in this Document
This document uses the syntax common to many Internet RFCs, which is
based on the BNF (Backus-Naur Form) meta-language. In particular:
â?? elements are included between angle brackets ("<" and ">");
â?? an element is separated from its specification by the string "::=";
â?? alternative elements are separated from each other by a vertical slash
("|");
â?? character strings are enclosed in quotes (" and ");
â?? optional parts are enclosed by square brackets ("[" and "]");
â?? a group of elements is enclosed by round brackets ("(" and ")");
â?? a symbol or an expression following an element or a group of elements
indicates a factor of repetition, and, as in the regular expressions,
takes the following formats:
â?? ? : 0 or 1 time;
â?? + : 1 or more times;
â?? * : 0 or more times;
â?? {n} : <n> times;
â?? {n,m}: from <n> to <m> times.
2.4. Identifier structure
The identifier has a hierarchical structure as follows:
"urn:lex:"<NSS>
where NSS is the Namespace Specific String composed as follows:
<NSS>::=<country>":"<local-name>
where:
<country> is the part providing the identification of the country where
the source of law was issued;
<local-name> is the uniform name of the source of law in the country
where it is issued; its internal structure is common to the already
adopted schema. It is able to represent all the aspects of an
intellectual production, as it is a legal document, from its initial
idea, through its evolution during the time, to its realisation by
different means (paper, digital, etc.).
The element <country> is composed of two specific fields:
<country>::=<country-code>[";"<country-unit>]*
where:
<country-code> is the identification code of the country where the source
of law is issued. This code follows the standard ISO 3166 Alpha-2 [6]
(it=Italy, fr=France, dk=Denmark, etc.). In case of multi-national (e.g.,
European Union) or international (e.g., United Nations) organizations the
Top Level Domain Name (e.g., "eu") or the Domain Name (e.g., un.org,
wto.int) is used instead of ISO 3166 code;
<country-unit> are the possible administrative hierarchical sub-
structures defined by each country according to its own organisation.
This additional information can be used where two or more levels of
legislative or judicial production exist (e.g., federal, state and
municipality level) and the same bodies may be present in each
jurisdiction. Then acts of the same type issued by similar authorities in
different areas differ for the country-unit specification. An example can
be the following: "br:governo:decreto" (decree of federal government),
"br;sao.paulo:governo:decreto" (decree of São Paulo state) and
"br;sao.paulo;campinas:governo:decreto" (decree of Campinas
municipality).
Examples of law sources identifiers are:
urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2003-09-21;456 (Italian act)
urn:lex:fr:etat:lois:2004-12-06;321 (French act)
urn:lex:es:estado:ley:2002-07-12;123 (Spanish act)
urn:lex:ch;glarus:regiere:erlass:2007-10-15;963 (Glarus Swiss Canton
decree)
3. General Syntax of the "lex" Identifier
3.1. Allowed and Not Allowed Characters
These characters are defined in accordance with the RFC 2141 "URN Syntax"
[2]. For various reasons, later explained, in the "lex" <NSS> only a sub-
set of characters is allowed. All other characters are either eliminated
or converted.
For the full syntax of the uniform names in the "lex" space, please see
Attachment A.
3.2. Reserved Characters
These characters must always and uniquely be used for the assigned
purpose.
The first category includes those characters bearing a specific meaning
in the general creation of the URI (Uniform Resource Identifier)[3]:
"%" "/" "?" "#"
The following characters instead are reserved in the specific "lex"
namespace:
â?? "@" separator of the expression, that contains information on version
and language;
â?? "$" separator of the manifestation, that contains information on
format, editor, etc.;
â?? ":" separator of the main elements of the name at any entity;
â?? ";" separator of level. It identifies the introduction of an element
at a hierarchically lower level, or the introduction of a
specification;
â?? "+" separator of the repetitions of an entire main element (e.g.,
multiple authorities);
â?? "," separator of the repetitions of individual components in the main
elements, each bearing the same level of specificity (e.g., multiple
numbers);
â?? "*" and "!" are reserved for future expansions.
3.3. Case sensitivity
The specific name <NSS> of the URN, as with URLs, is case-sensitive.
Since the case does not change the logical identification of the source
of law, the names belonging to the "lex" namespace are considered
functionally equivalent independently from the case. To take advantage of
memory caching, the specific name is always created in lower case.
(e.g., "Ministry" will be recorded as "ministry")
3.4. National Characters and Diacritic Signs
In order to keep editing and communication more simple and to avoid
character percent-encoding, it is strongly recommended that national
characters and diacritic signs are turned into base characters (e.g., the
Italian term "sanità " converted into "sanita", the French term
"ministère" converted into "ministere"). Otherwise, the characters have
to be percent-encoded according to the UTF-8 character encoding [STD63]
(e.g., "sanità " encoded into
"sanit%C3%A1").
Anyway each country decides the uniform names encoding modality of all
the sources of law issued within its territory.
3.5. Replacement of Spaces, Connectives and Punctuation Marks
All the language connectives (e.g., articles, prepositions, etc.), the
punctuation marks and all the special characters (as apostrophes, dashes,
etc.) are eliminated. The words left are connected each other by a dot
(".") which substitutes the "space".
(e.g., "Ministry of Finances, Budget and of Economic Planning" becomes
"ministry.finances.budget.economic.planning")
3.6. Abbreviation Expansion
All abbreviations indicating institutions (e.g., Min.), structures (e.g.,
Dept.), or legal measures (e.g., reg.), must be expanded.
(e.g., "Min." must be reported as "ministry")
3.7. Acronyms
The use of acronyms might be confusing and encourage ambiguity in uniform
names (the same acronym may indicate two different institutions or
structures), therefore their expansion is strongly recommended.
(e.g., "FAO" is to be expanded as "food.agriculture.organization")
3.8. Date Format
Dates are expressed by numbers in the ISO-8601 format:
yyyy-mm-dd
(e.g., "September 2, 99" will be written as "1999-09-02")
3.9. Ordinal Numbers
Any ordinal number in a document (e.g., in the description of an
institution body) must be indicated in Arabic numerals, regardless to the
original expression: whether in Roman numerals, or with an adjective, or
in Arabic numeral with apex, etc. (IV, third, 1°, 2^, etc.).
(e.g., "Department IV" becomes "department.4")
4. Creation of the Source of Law "lex" Identifier
4.1. Basic Principles
The uniform name must identify one and only one document and is created
in such a way that it is:
â?? self-explanatory ;
â?? identifiable through simple and clear rules;
â?? compatible with the practice commonly used for references;
â?? able to be created by references in the text, automatically (by
parser) or manually;
â?? representative of both the formal and the substantive aspects of the
document.
.
4.2. Model of Sources of Law Representation
According to FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records)
model developed by IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations
and Institutions), in a source of law, as in any intellectual production,
4 fundamental entities (or aspects) can be specified.
The first 2 entities reflect its contents:
â?? work: identifies a distinct intellectual creation; in our case, it
identifies a source of law both in its being (as it has been issued)
and in its becoming (as it is modified over time);
â?? expression: identifies a specific intellectual realisation of a work;
in our case it identifies every different (original or up-to-date)
version of the act over time and/or language in which the text is
expressed;
while the other 2 entities relate to its form:
â?? manifestation: identifies a concrete realisation of an expression; in
our case it identifies realizations in different media (printing,
digital, etc.), encoding formats (XML, PDF, etc.), or other publishing
characteristics;
â?? item: identifies a specific copy of a manifestation; in our case it
identifies individual physical copies as they are found in particular
physical locations.
4.3. The Structure of the Local Name
The <local-name> of "lex" namespace must contain all the necessary pieces
of information enabling the unequivocal identification of a legal
document.
In the legal domain, at the "work" level, they are essentially four: the
enacting authority, the type of measure, the details and possibly the
annex.
It is often necessary to differentiate various expressions, that is:
â?? the original version and all the amended versions of the same
document;
â?? the versions of the text expressed in the different official languages
of the state or organization.
Finally the uniform name allows a distinction among diverse
manifestations, which may be produced in multiple locations using
different means and formats.
In every case, the basic identifier of the source of law (work) remains
the same, but information is added regarding the specific version under
consideration (expression); similarly a suffix is added to the expression
for representing the characteristics of the publication (manifestation).
All this set of information is expressed in the jurisdiction official
language; in case of more official languages, more names (aliases) are
created.
Therefore, the more general structure of the national name appears as
follows:
<local-name>::=<work>["@"<expression>]?["$"<manifestation>]?
However, consistent with legislative practice, the uniform name of the
original provision becomes the identifier of an entire class of documents
which includes: the original document, the annexes, and all its versions,
languages and formats subsequently generated.
4.4. Structure of the Document Identifier at Work Level
The structure of the document identifier is made of the four fundamental
elements mentioned above, clearly distinguished one from the other in
accordance with an order identifying increasingly narrow domains and
competences:
<work>::=<authority>":"<measure>":"<details>[":"<annex>]*
where:
<authority> is the issuing authority of the measure (e.g., State,
Ministry, Municipality, Court, etc.);
<measure> is the type of the measure (e.g., act, decree, decision, etc.);
<details> are the terms associated to the measure, typically the date and
the number;
<annex> is the identifier of the annex, if any (e.g., Annex 1);
In case of annexes, both the main document and its annexes have their own
uniform name so that they can individually be referenced; the identifier
of the annex adds a suffix to that of the main document. In similar way
the identifier of an annex of an annex adds an ending to that of the
annex which it is attached to.
The main elements of the national name are generally divided into several
elementary components, and, for each, specific rules of representation
are established (criteria, modalities, syntax and order).
For the details regarding each element, please see the Attachment B.
Examples of <work> identifiers are:
urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2006-05-14;22
urn:lex:uk:ministry.justice:decree:1999-10-07;45
urn:lex:ch;glarus:regiere:erlass:2007-10-15;963
urn:lex:es:tribunal.supremo:decision:2001-09-28;68
4.5. Aliases
In the states or organisations that have more than one official language,
a document has more identifiers, each of them expressed in a different
official language, basically a set of equivalent aliases. This system
permits manual or automated construction of the uniform name of the
referred source of law in the same language used in the document itself.
(e.g., "urn:lex:eu:council:directive:2004-12-07;31",
"urn:lex:eu:consiglio:direttiva:2004-12-07;31", etc.)
Moreover, a document can be assigned more than one uniform name in order
to facilitate its linking to other documents. This option can be used for
documents that, although unique, are commonly referenced from different
perspectives. For example, the form of a documentâ??s promulgation and its
specific content (e.g., a Regulation promulgated through a Decree of the
President of the Republic).
4.6. Structure of the Document Identifier at Expression Level
There may be several expressions of a legal text, connected to specific
versions or languages.
Each version is characterized by the period of time during which that
text is to be considered as the valid text (in force or effective). The
lifetime of a version ends with the issuing of the subsequent version.
New versions of a text may be brought into existence by:
â?? changes in the text (amendments) due to the issuing of other legal
acts and to the subsequent production of updated or consolidated texts;
â?? correction of publication errors (rectification or errata corrige);
â?? entry into or departure from a particular time span, depending on the
specific date in which different partitions of a text come into force.
Each such version may be expressed in more than one language, with each
language-version having its own specific identifier.
The identifier of a source of law expression adds such information to the
work identifier, using the following main structure:
<expression>::="@"<version>[":"<language>]?
where:
<version> is the identifier of the version of the (original or amended)
source of law. In general it is expressed by the promulgation date of the
amending act; anyway other specific information can be used for
particular documents. If necessary, the original version is specified by
the string "original" (for the details regarding this element, please see
the Attachment C);
<language> is the identification code of the language in which the
document is expressed, according to ISO 639-1 [7] (it=Italian, fr=French,
de=German, etc.); in case the code of a language is not included in this
standard, the ISO 639-2 (3 letters) is used. This information is not
necessary when the text is expressed in the unique official language of
the country.
Examples of document identifiers for expressions are:
urn:lex:ch:etat:lois:2006-05-14;22 at originel:fr (original version in
French)
urn:lex:ch:staat:gesetz:2006-05-14;22 at original:de (original vers. in
German)
urn:lex:ch:etat:lois:2006-05-14;22 at 2008-03-12:fr (amended version in
French)
urn:lex:ch:staat:gesetz:2006-05-14;22 at 2008-03-12:de (amended vers. in
German)
4.7. Structure of the Document Identifier at Manifestation Level
To identify a specific manifestation, the uniform name of the expression
is followed by a suitable suffix describing the:
â?? digital format (e.g., XML, HTML, PDF, etc.) expressed according to the
MIME Content-Type standard [RFC 2045], where the "/" character is to be
substituted by the "-" sign;
â?? publisher or editorial staff who produced it;
â?? possible components of the expressions contained in the manifestation.
Such components are expressed by "body" (the default value),
representing the whole or the main part of the document, or by the
caption of the component itself (e.g. Table 1, Figure 2, etc.);
â?? other features of the document (e.g., anonymized decision text).
To indicate possible features or peculiarities, each principal element of
the manifestation may be followed by a further specification.
The <manifestation> suffix will thus read:
<manifestation>::=<format>[";"<specification>"]*
":"<editor>[";"<specification>]*
[":"<component>[";"<specification>]*]?
[":"<feature>[";"<specification>]*]?
(e.g., the original version the Italian act 3 April 2000, n. 56 might
have the following manifestations with their relative uniform names:
â?? PDF format (vers. 1.7) of the whole act edited by the Parliament:
"urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$application-pdf;1.7:parliament"
â?? XML format (version 2.2 DTD NIR) of the text of the act and PDF format
(version 1.7) of the Picture 1 contained in the body, edited by the
Senate:
"urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$text-xml;dtd-nir-
2.2:senate.republic"
"urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$application-
pdf;1.7:senate.republic:
picture.1").
Furthermore, it is useful to be able to assign a uniform name to a
manifestation (or to a part of it) in case non-textual objects are
involved. These may be multimedia objects that are non-textual in their
own right (e.g. geographic maps, photographs, etc.), or texts recorded in
non-textual formats, such as image scans of documents.
In these ways, a "lex" name permits:
â?? exploitation of all the advantages of an unequivocal identifier that
is independent of physical location;
â?? a means to provide choice among different existing manifestations
(e.g. XML or PDF formats, resolution degree of an image etc.) of the
same expression.
4.8. Sources of Law References
References to sources of law often refer to specific partitions of the
act (article, paragraph, etc.) and not to the entire document. Therefore,
for allowing applications to manage this information (e.g., pointing a
specific partition on the browser), it is necessary that a partition
identifier within the act is present (i.e. an unequivocal label or ID).
The syntax of a reference is:
<URN-reference> ::= <URN> ["#" <partition-id>]?
For enabling the partition ID construction between different document
collections, this label should be defined, within each country, for any
document type (e.g., for legislation, the paragraph 2 of the article 3
could have as ID the value "art3-par2").
5. The Procedure of Uniform Names Assignment
5.1 Specifying the <country> element of the URN "lex"
Under the "lex" namespace, each country or international organization is
assigned with a country code, which characterizes the URNs of the source
of law of that country. This code is assigned according to the ISO 3166
Alpha-2 (as well as TLDN or DN for the organizations) representation and
it is the value of the <country-code> element, which preserves cross-
country uniqueness of the identifiers.
5.2. National Registrar for Names Assignment
Any country, who intends to adopt this schema, identifies a National
Registrar, an organization which shares and defines the structure of the
optional part (<country-unit>) of the name, according to the organization
of the state. For example, in a federal state a <country-unit>
corresponding to the name of each member state (e.g. "br;sao.paolo",
"br;minas.gerais", etc.) may be defined.
The process of assigning the <local-name> will be managed by each
specific country under the related <country> element.
In any country the National Registrar shares and defines the assignment
of the primary elements (issuing authority and type of legal measure) of
the local names considering the characteristics of its own state
organization.
Such a Registrar should establish, according to the guidelines indicated
in the current document, a uniform procedure within the country to define
<local-name> elements, to take decisions upon normalizations and finally
to solve and avoid possible name collisions as well as to maintain
authoritative registries of various kinds (e.g., for authorities, types
of measures, etc.). In particular, accurate point-in-time representations
of the structure and naming of government entities are important to
semantically-aware applications in this domain.
Moreover, the Registrar shares and defines the rules to construct
partition IDs for each document type.
Finally, the Registrar will develop and publish the rules and the
guidelines for the <local-name> construction as well as the predefined
values and codes.
5.3 Identifier Uniqueness
Identifiers in the "lex" namespace are defined through a <country>
element assigned to the sources of law of a specific country, and a
<local-name> assigned by the issuing authority. The main elements
(authority and type of measure) of the <local-name> are defined by the
national Registrar, so that it is ensured that the constructed URNs are
unique. The national Registrar should provide clear documentation of
rules by which names are to be constructed, and should update and make
accessible its registries.
Any issuing authority is responsible to define formal parameters to
guarantee local name uniqueness by attributing, if necessary, a
conventional internal number, which, combined with the other <local-name>
components (authority, measure and date), builds an unequivocal
identifier. Uniqueness is achieved by checking against the catalogue of
previously assigned names.
5.4 Identifier persistence considerations
The persistence of identifiers depends on the durability of the
institutions that assign and administer them. The goal of the "lex"
namespace schema is to maintain uniqueness and persistence of all
resources identified by the assigned URNs.
In particular, CNIPA and ITTIG-CNR, as proposers, are responsible of
maintaining the uniqueness of the <country> element; given that the
<country> is assigned on the basis of the long-held ISO 3166 Alpha-2
representation of the country (or the TLD name of the organization) and
that the country or organization associated code is expected to continue
indefinitely, the URN also persists indefinitely.
The rules for the construction of the name are conceived to delegate the
responsibility of their uniqueness to a set of authorities which is
identified within each country.
Therefore, each authority is responsible of assigning URNs which have a
very long life expectancy and can be expected to remain unique for the
foreseeable future. Practical and political considerations, as well as
diverse local forms of government organization, will result in different
methods of assigning responsibility for different levels of the name.
Where this cannot be accomplished by the implementation of an
authoritative hierarchy, it can and should be done by creating consensus
around a series of published rules for the creation and administration of
names by institutions and bodies that operate by means of collaboration
rather than compulsion.
Issuing authorities that operate in more localized scopes, ranging from
the national down to the very local, must equally take responsibility for
the persistence of identifiers within their scope.
6. Principles of the Resolution Service
6.1. The General Architecture of the System
The task of the resolution service is that of associating a "lex"
identifier with a specific document address on the network. By contrast
with systems that can be constructed around rigorous and enforceable
engineering premises, such as DNS, the "lex" resolver will be expected to
cope with a wide variety of â??dirtyâ?? inputs, particularly those created by
the automated extraction of references from incomplete or inaccurate
texts. In this document, the result is a particular emphasis on a
flexible and robust resolver design.
The system has a distributed architecture based on two fundamental
components: a chain of information in DNS (Domain Name System) and a
series of resolution services from URNs to URLs, each competent within a
specific domain of the namespace.
Through the NAPTR records of the DNS (described in RFC 3403 [4]), the
client identifies the characteristics (protocol, port, site) of the
service capable of associating the relative URLs with the URN in
question, thereby allowing access to the document.
A resolution service can delegate the resolution and management of
hierarchically-dependent portions of the name.
Delegation of this responsibility will not be unreasonably withheld
provided that the processes for their resolution and management are
robust and are followed.
For the "lex" namespace, CNIPA and ITTIG-CNR will maintain the root zone
"lex.urn.arpa" and, in correspondence with the adhesion of a new country
(e.g., "br"), will update the DNS information with a new record to
delegate the relative resolution. This may be obtained by a regular
expression that matches the initial part of the URN (e.g., "urn:lex:br")
and redirects towards the proper zone (e.g., "lex.senado.gov.br").
Likewise the institution responsible for the country uniform names (e.g.,
"urn:lex:br") has the task of managing the relative root in the DNS
system (e.g., "lex.senado.gov.br" zone) and routing the resolution
towards its resolvers on the basis of parts of the uniform names. In
similar way it can delegate the resolution of country sub-levels (e.g.,
"urn:lex:br;sao.paolo") towards the relative zone (e.g., "lex.sao-
paolo.gov.br").
The resolution service is made up of two elements: a knowledge base
(consisting in a catalogue or a set of transformation rules) and a
software to query the knowledge base itself.
6.2. Catalogues for Resolution
Incompleteness and inaccuracy are rather frequent in legal citations, and
incomplete or inaccurate uniform names of the referred document are thus
likely to be built from textual references (this is even more frequent if
they are created automatically through a specific parser). For this
reason, the implementation of a catalogue, based on a relational-
database, is suggested, as it will lead to a more higher flexibility in
the resolution process.
In addition the catalogue must manage the aliases, the various versions
and languages of the same source of law as well as the related
manifestations.
It is suggested that each enacting authority implements its own
catalogue, assigning a corresponding unambiguous uniform name to each
resource.
6.3. Suggested resolver behaviour
First of all the resolution process should implement a normalization of
the uniform name to be resolved. This may involve transforming some
components to the canonical form (e.g., filling out the acronyms,
expanding the abbreviations, unifying the institution names,
standardizing the type of measures, etc.). For this function authorities
and types of measure registers are useful.
The resolver should then query the catalogue searching for the URN which
corresponds exactly to the given one (normalized if necessary).
Since the names coming from the references may be inaccurate or
incomplete, an iterative, heuristic approach (based on partial matches)
is indicated. It is worth remarking that incomplete references (not
including all the elements to create the canonical uniform name) are
normal and natural; for a human reader, the reference would be
â??completedâ?? by contextual understanding of the reference in the document
in which it occurs.
Lacking more specific indications, the resolver should select the best
(most recent) version of the requested source of law, and provide all the
manifestations with their related items.
A more specific indication in the uniform name to be resolved will, of
course, result in a more selective retrieval, based on any suggested
expression and/or manifestations components (e.g. date, language, format,
etc.).
7. Considerations
7.1. Conformance with URN Syntax
No special considerations.
7.2. Validation mechanism
The national Authority (or those it delegates) of each adhering country
is responsible of the definition or acceptance of the uniform nameâ??s
primary elements (issuing authority and type of legal measure).
7.3 Scope
Global interest.
7.4. Namespace Considerations
In collaboration with the legislative XML community, registrants carried
out a preliminary study of the URI alternatives to satisfy the key
requirements.
The options analysed were: a private URI scheme, URL, PURL and URN.
URN was considered the most appropriate URI given the requirements
analysis.
Advantages we would emphasize are:
â?? greater flexibility in building the identifier;
â?? the capacity to represent name components that are not strictly
hierarchical;
â?? the potential for clear division of the identifier into macro parts,
main elements and components, using different separators;
â?? ease of managing optional parts of a name.
7.5. Community Considerations
The use of the "lex" namespace facilitates the interoperability of
information systems used in the Public Administration at the national and
international level. Moreover it allows the distribution of the legal
information towards a federated architecture. In such an architecture,
documents are directly managed by the issuing authorities, with resulting
benefits in information authenticity, quality and currency. A shared
identification mechanism resources guarantees that a distributed system
will be as efficient and effective as a comparable centralized system.
Creators of Internet content that references legal materials â?? including
publishers operating well outside the traditional arenas of legal
publishing - benefit by the registration of the namespace because
facilitates the linking of legal documents, whether by manual or
automated means, and reduces the cost of maintaining documents that
contain such references.
Any citizen or organisation with Internet web browser capability will be
entitled to access the namespace and its associated application,
registers, and resolution services, to facilitate document access.
7.6. IANA Considerations
This document includes a URN NID registration for "lex" for entry in the
IANA registry of URN NIDs (see RFC 5226 [5] for more information).
7.7. Security Considerations
This document introduces no additional security considerations beyond
those associated with the use and resolution of URNs in general.
8. Acknowledgments
The authors of this document wish to thank all the registrants for giving
suggestions and comments.
They are also grateful to the Legislative XML community for the
interesting discussions on this topic and to the Working Group
"Identification of the legal resources through URNs" of Italian
NormeInRete project for the provided guidance [9].
The authors owe a debt of gratitude to Tom Bruce, director of the Legal
Information Institute of the Cornell University Law School, for his
contribution in revising this document and sharing fruitful discussions
which greatly improved the final result. A special thank goes also to
Joao Alberto de Oliveira Lima, legislative system analyst of the
Brazilian Federal Senate, and to Attila Torcsvari, information management
consultant, for their detailed comments on the first drafts of this
document, which provided significant hints to the final version of the
standard. Finally, many thanks go to Loriana Serrotti who significantly
contributed to the drafting of this document.
9. References
[1] Daigle, L., van Gulik, D., Iannella, R., and P. Faltstrom,
"Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespace Definition Mechanisms",
BCP 66, RFC 3406, October 2002.
[2] R. Moats, K. R. Sollins, "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.
[3] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC 3986,
January 2005.
[4] M. Mealling, Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS)
Part Three: The Domain Name System (DNS) Database, RFC 3403, October
2002.
[5] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA
Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 2434, October 1998.
[6] ISO 3166, "Country name codes", ISO 3166-1:1997.
[7] ISO 639, "Codes for the representation of names of languages"
- Part 1: alpha-2 code - Part 2: alpha-3 code. (1998, 2002)
[8] R. Daniel, "A Trivial Convention for using HTTP in URN", RFC 2169,
June
1997
[9] P.L. Spinosa, "The Assignment of Uniform Names to Italian Legal
Documents", May, 2006
http://www.nir.it/sito_area3-ap_stan_assegnazione_nomi.htm
[10] E. Francesconi, "Technologies for European Integration. Standards-
based
Interoperability of Legal Information Systems", ISBN 978-88-8398-050-
3,
European Press Academic Publishing, 2007.
[11] N. Freed, N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
(MIME)
Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies", RFC 2045, November
1996.
10. Address of the authors
PierLuigi Spinosa, Enrico Francesconi
Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dellâ??Informazione Giuridica (ITTIG)
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR)
Via de' Barucci, 20
50127 Firenze
Italy
Telephone: +39 055 43995
e-mail: {pierluigi.spinosa, enrico.francesconi} at ittig.cnr.it
Caterina Lupo
Centro Nazionale per l'Informatica nella Pubblica Amministrazione
(CNIPA)
Viale Carlo Marx, 31/49
00137 Roma
Italy
Telephone: +39 06 85264262
e-mail: caterina.lupo at cnipa.it
Attachment A
Summary of the syntax of the uniform names of the "lex" namespace
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* General Structure of a Uniform Resource Name (URN)
* NID = namespace
* NSS = specific name
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
<URN> ::= "urn:"<NID>":"<NSS>
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of a Uniform Resource Name (URN)of the "lex" space
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
<NID> ::= "lex"
<URN> ::= "urn:lex:"<NSS-lex>
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of a specific name of "lex"
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
<NSS-lex> ::= <country>":"<local-name>
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the element <country>
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
<country> ::= <country-code>[";"<country-unit>]*
<country-code> ::= <lowercase>{2,4}
<country-unit> ::= <alfanum>[<normal>]*
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the element <national-name>
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
<national-name> ::= <work>["@"<expression>]?["$"<manifestation>]?
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the element <work>
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
<work> ::= <authority>":"<measure>":"<details>[":"<annex>]*
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the element <authority>
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
<authority> ::= <issuer>["+"<issuer>]*
<issuer> ::= (<institution>[";"<body>]*[";"<function>]*) | <office>
<institution> ::= <alfanum>[<normal>]*
<body> ::= <alfanum>[<normal>]*
<function> ::= <alfanum>[<normal>]*
<office> ::= <alfanum>[<normal>]*
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the element <measure>
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
<measure> ::= <measure-type>[";"<specification>]*
<measure-type> ::= <alfanum>[<normal>]*
<specification> ::= <alfanum>[<normal>]*
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the element <details>
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
<details> ::= (<dates>|<period>)";"<numbers>
<dates> ::= <date>[","<date>]*
<period> ::= <alfanum>[<normal>]*
<numbers> ::= (<document-id>[","<document-id>]*)|<number-lex>
<document-id> ::= <alfanum>[<normal>|<other>]*
<number-lex> ::= "lex-"<digit>+
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the element <annex>
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
<annex> ::= <annex-id>[";"<specification>]*
<annex-id> ::= <alfanum>[<normal>]*
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the element <expression>
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
<expression> ::= <version>[":"<language>]?
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the element <version>
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
<version> ::= (<amendment-date>|<specification>)
[";"(<event-date>|<event>)]*
<amendment-date> ::= <date>
<event-date> ::= <date>
<event> ::= <alfanum>[<normal>]*
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the element <language>
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
<language> ::= <lowercase>{2,3}
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the element <manifestation>
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
<manifestation> ::= <format>[";"<specification>"]*
":"<editor>[";"<specification>"]*
[":"<component>[";"<specification>]*]?
[":"<feature>[";"<specification>]*]?
<format> ::= <alfanum>[<normal>|"-"]*
<editor> ::= <alfanum>[<normal>|"-"]*
<component> ::= <alfanum>[<normal>|"-"]*
<feature> ::= <alfanum>[<normal>|"-"]*
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the date
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
<date> ::= <year>"-"<month>"-"<day>
<year> ::= <digit>{4}
<month> ::= <digit>{2}
<day> ::= <digit>{2}
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Allowed characters
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
<allowed-lex> ::= <normal> | <other> | <reserved> | <future>
<normal> ::= <alfanum> | "."
<alfanum> ::= <lowercase> | <digit> | <encoded>
<lowercase> ::= "a" | "b" | "c" | "d" | "e" | "f" | "g" | "h" | "i" |
"j" | "k" | "l" | "m" | "n" | "o" | "p" | "q" | "r" |
"s" | "t" | "u" | "v" | "w" | "x" | "y" | "z"
<digit> ::= "0" | "1" | "2" | "3" | "4" | "5" | "6" | "7" | "8" |
"9"
<encoded> ::= ("%" (<digit> | <hex-let>)){1,6}
<hex-let> ::= "a" | "b" | "c" | "d" | "e" | "f"
<other> ::= "-" | "_" | "'" | "=" | "(" | ")"
<reserved> ::= ":" | "@" | "$" | "+" | ";" | ","
<future> ::= "*" | "!"
Attachment B
Specific Syntax of the Identifier at Work Level
B1. Element <authority>
B1.1. Indication of the Authority
The element <authority> of the uniform name may indicate, in the various
cases:
â?? the actual authority issuing the legal provision. More specifically,
the authority adopting the provision or enacting it;
â?? the institution where the provision is registered, known and
referenced to, even if produced by others (e.g., the bills identified
through the reference to the Chamber where they are presented);
â?? the institution regulated (and referred to in citations) by the legal
provision even when this is issued by another authority (e.g., the
statute of a Body).
B1.2. Multiple Issuers
Some sources of law are enacted by a number of issuing parties (e.g.,
inter-ministerial decrees, agreements, etc.). In this case, the element
<authority> contains all the issuing parties (properly separated), as
follows:
<authority> ::= <issuer>["+"<issuer>]*
(e.g., "ministry.justice+ministry.finances")
B1.3. Indication of the Issuer
Each issuing authority is essentially represented by either an
institutional office (e.g., Prime Minister) or an institution (e.g.,
Ministry); in the last case, the authority is indicated in accordance
with the institutionâ??s hierarchical structure, from the more general to
more specific (Council, Department, etc.), ending with the relative
office (President, Director, etc.).
Therefore, the structure of the issuer is as follows:
<issuer> ::= (<institution>[";"<body>]*[";"<function>]*) | <office>
(e.g., "ministry.finances;department.revenues;manager")
B1.4. Indication of the Body
Depending on the kind of measure, the body within the issuing authority
is unambiguously determined (e.g., the Council for Regional Acts) and
normally it is not indicated in the references.
Just like in practice, the indication of the enacting authority is
limited to the minimum in relation to the type of measure.
(e.g., "region.tuscany:act" and not "region.tuscany;council:act")
B1.5. Indication of the Function
Generally, the component <function> is indicated, sometimes instead of
the body itself:
â?? in case of political, representative or elective offices
(e.g., "university.oxford;rector:decree" instead of
"university.oxford;rectorship:decree");
â?? when it refers to a top officer in the institution (e.g., general
manager, general secretary, etc.) which is not always possible to
associate a specific internal institutional structure to
(e.g., "national.council.research;general.manager").
It is not indicated when it clearly corresponds to the person in charge
of an institution (typically, a general director); in this case, only the
structure and not the person in charge is indicated
(e.g., "ministry.justice;department.penitentiary.administration").
The function must be indicated when:
â?? it is not the same of the director or the person in charge of the
structure (for example, in case of an undersecretary, a deputy
director, etc.);
â?? the type of measure may be both monocratic or collegial: the
indication of the office eliminates the ambiguity.
B1.6. Conventions for the Authority
The acts and the measures bearing the same relevance as an act, issued or
enacted since the foundation of the State, have conventionally indicated
"state" as authority.
B2. Element <measure>
B2.1. Criteria for the Indication of the Type of Measure
In uniform names the issuing authority of a document is mandatory. This
makes unnecessary to indicate any further qualification of the measure
(e.g., ministerial decree, directorial ordinance, etc.), even if it is
widely used.
When the authority-measure combination clearly identifies a specific
document, the type of measure is not defined through attributes referring
to the enacting authority.
(e.g., "region.tuscany:act" and not "region.tuscany:regional.act")
B2.2. Further Specification to the Type of Measure
In the element <measure>, it is usually sufficient to indicate the type
of a measure. As usual, references to sources of law, rather than through
the formal details (date and number), may be made through some of their
characteristics such as the subject-matter covered (e.g., accounting
regulations), nicknames referring to the promoter (e.g., Bassanini Act)
or to the topic of the act (e.g., Bankruptcy Law), etc..
In these cases, the type of measure may be followed by further
specifications useful in referencing even if the details are lacking:
<measure>::=<measure-type>[";"<specification>]*
(e.g., "regulations;accounting" or "act;bankruptcy")
B2.3. Aliases for Sources of Law with Different Normative References
There are legislative measures that, although unique, are usually cited
in different ways, for example through the legislative act introducing
them into the legal order (Presidentâ??s decree, legislative decree, etc.)
or through their legislative category (regulations, consolidation, etc.).
In order to ensure, in all the cases, the validity of the references, an
alias that takes into account the measure category is associated to the
uniform name, representing the legislative form.
(e.g., "state:decree.legislative:1992-07-24;358" and
"state:consolidation;public.contracts:1992-07-24;358").
B2.4. Relations between Measure and Authority in the Aliases
The sources of law including different normative references are usually
introduced in legislation through the adoption or the issuing of an act,
which they are either included or attached to. It is, therefore,
necessary to create an alias linking the two aspects of the same
document. Specifically, the different measures can be:
a. adopted/issued by an authority different from the one regulated by the
provision (e.g., the statute of a Body); in this case, the correlation
is established between two uniform names each featuring a completely
different element <authority>
(e.g., "italian.society.authors.publishers:statute" and
"ministry.cultural.activities+ministry.finances.budget.economic.plannin
g:
decree");
b. issued by the institution itself either because it has issuing
authority or by virtue of a proxy (e.g., a provision that refers to
the functioning of the Body itself); in this case, the two aliases
share the first part of the authority:
(e.g., "municipality.firenze:statute" and
"municipality.firenze;council:deliberation");
c. issued by the same Body to regulate a particular sector of its own
competence; in this case the element <authority> is the same
(e.g.,
"ministry.justice:regulation;use.information.tools.telematic.process"
and "ministry.justice:decree").
B3. Element <details>
B3.1. Indication of the Details
The details of a source of law usually include the date of the enactment
and the identification number (inclusion in the body of laws, register,
protocol, etc.).
Some measures can have multiple dates; there are also cases in which the
number of the measure does not exist (unnumbered measures) or a measure
has multiple numbers (e.g., unified cases). For these reasons, the set up
of both elements (date and number) includes multiple values.
Some institutions (e.g., the Parliaments) usually identify documents
through their period of reference (e.g., the legislature number) rather
than through a date, which would be much less meaningful and never used
in references (e.g., Senate bill S.2544 of the XIV legislature). In these
cases, the component <period> is used in substitution of the component
<dates>.
Usually details of a measure are not reported according to a specific
sequence; in accordance with the global structure of the uniform name,
which goes from the general to the specific, the sequence date-number has
the following form:
<details>::=(<dates>|<period>)";"<numbers>
(e.g., "2000-12-06;126", "14.legislation;s.2544")
B3.2. Multiple Dates
Some sources of law, even if unique, are identified by more than one
date; in this case, in the field <dates> all the given dates are to be
reported and indicated as follows:
<dates>::=<date>[","<date>]*
(e.g., the measure of the Data Protection Authority of December 30, 1999-
January 13, 2000, No. 1/P/2000 has the following uniform name:
"personal.data.protection.authority:measure:1999-12-30,2000-01-13;1-p-
2000").
B3.3. Unnumbered Measures
Measures not officially numbered in the publications may have a non-
unequivolcal identifier, because several measures of the same type can
exist, issued on the same day by the same authority.
To ensure that the uniform name is unambiguous, the <numbers> field must,
in any case, contain a discriminating element, which can be any
identifier used internally, and not published, by the authority (e.g.,
protocol).
If the authority does not have its own identifier, one identifier must be
created for the name system. In order to easily differentiate it, such
number is preceded by the string "lex-":
<number-lex>::="lex-"[<digit>]+
(e.g., "ministry.finances:decree:1999-12-20;lex-3")
It is responsibility of the authority issuing a document to assign a
discriminating specification to it; in case of multiple authorities, only
one of them is responsible for the assignment of the number to the
document (e.g., the proponent).
The unnumbered measures published on an official publication (e.g., the
Official Gazette), instead of by a progressive number are recognized by
the univocal identifying label printed on the paper.
Such an identifier, even if unofficial but assigned to a document in an
official publication, is to be preferred because it has the clear
advantage to be public and therefore easier to be found.
B3.4. Multiple Numbers
Some legal documents (e.g., bills), even if unique, are identified by a
set of numbers (e.g., the unification of cases or bills).
In this case, in the <numbers> field, all the identifiers are reported,
according to the following structure:
<numbers>::=<document-id>[","<document-id>]*
(e.g., "2000-06-12;c-10-97,c-11-97,c-12-97")
The characters which are not allowed (e.g., "/") or reserved (e.g., ":"),
including the comma, cannot exist inside the <document-id>, and therefore
must be turned into "-".
This conversion may imply that the uniform name of the document is no
more unique (e.g., removal 123-BIS and return 123/BIS of the bill 123
both are identified as "123-bis"); in this case, it is necessary to add a
specific distinctive ending (e.g., "123-bis-removal" and "123-bis-
return").
B4. Element <annex>
B4.1. Formal Annexes
Although annexes are an integral part of the legal document, they may be
referred to and undergo amendments separately from the act to which they
are annexed. It is, therefore, necessary that both the main document as
well as each formal individual annex is univocally identified.
Formal annexes may be registered as separate parts or together with a
legal provision; they may also be autonomous in nature or not. In any
case, they must be given a uniform name, which includes the uniform name
of the source of law to which they are attached, and a suffix which
identifies the annex itself.
The suffix of formal annexes includes the official heading of the annex
and, possibly, further specifications (e.g., the title) which will
facilitate the retrieval of the annex in case the identifier is missing:
<annex>::=<annex-id>[";"<specification>]*
(e.g., "region.sicily;council:deliberation:1998-02-12;14:annex.a;
borders.park")
The characters which are not allowed (e.g. "/") or which are reserved
(e.g. ":") must not be featured in the <annex-id> and therefore must be
turned into ".".
B4.2. Annexes of Annexes
When there are annexes to an annex, their corresponding identifiers are
created by adding to the identifier of the original annex those of the
annexes that are connected with it (that is, attached to it).
(e.g., Table 1 attached to Attachment A of the preceding legal act has
the following uniform name: "region.sicily;council:deliberation:1998-02-
12;14:annex.a;borders.park:table.1;municipality.territories").
Attachment C
Specific Syntax of the Element <version> of the Expression
C1. Element <version>
C1.1. Different Versions of a Legislative Document
The creation of an updated text of a document may have one of the
following forms:
â?? "multi-version": when specific mark-ups which identify the modified
parts of a document (added, substituted or deleted parts) and their
related periods of effectiveness are indicated inside one single object
(e.g., an xml file). Such a document will be able, in a dynamic way, to
appear in different forms according to the requested date of
effectiveness;
â?? "single-version": when, on the contrary, a new and distinct object is
created for each amendment to the text at a given time. Each object is,
therefore, characterized by its own period of validity.
In any case all the versions should be linked one another and immediately
navigable.
C1.2. Identification of the Version
In order to identify the different time versions of the same act, to the
uniform name of the original document has to be added a specific suffix.
Such a suffix identifies each version of a legal provision and includes,
first and foremost, one of the following elements:
â?? the issuing date of the last amending measure taken into account;
â?? the date in which the communication of the rectification or of the
errata corrige, is published;
â?? a specification which must identify the reason concerning the
amendment (e.g., the specific phase of the legislative process), for
the cases in which the date is not usually used (e.g., bills).
Anyway it is possible to add further specifications that will distinguish
each of the different versions of the text to guarantee identifier
unequivocalness. For example with regard to changes of the in-force or
effectiveness of any partition or portion of the text itself (e.g., when
the amendments introduced by an act are applied at different times) or
different events occurring in the same date.
<version>::=(<amendment-date>|<specification>)
[";"(<event-date>|<event>)]*
where:
â?? <amendment-date> contains the issuing date of the last considered
amendment or of the last communication of amendment. In case the
original text introduces differentiated periods in which an act is
effective and the information system produces one version for each of
them, such element contains the string "original";
â?? <specification> any information useful to identify unambiguously and
univocally the version;
â?? <event-date> contains the date in which a version is put into force,
is effective or is published;
â?? <event> is a name assigned to the event producing a further version
(e.g., amendment, decision, etc.).
The issuing date of an amending act was chosen as identifier of a version
because it can be obtained from the heading (formal data).
(e.g., the name "state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12 at 1998-02-19" identifies
the updated text of the "Royal Decree of 30/1/1941, No. 12" with the
amendments introduced by the "Law Decree of 19/2/1998, No. 51", without
any indication of its actual entry into force. The same uniform name with
the additional ending ";1999-01-01" indicates the in-force or effective
version starting in a different date (from 1/1/99).
For a full compatibility, every updating of a text or of the
effectiveness of a "multi-version" document implies the creation of a new
uniform name, even if the object remains only one, containing the
identifier of the virtually generated version, exactly as in the case of
a "single-version" document. A specific meta-data will associate every
uniform name with the period of time during which such a name together
with its corresponding text is to be considered valid.
(e.g., the multi-version document containing the "R.D. of 01/30/1941, no.
12", updated by the amendments introduced by the "D.Lgs. of 02/19/1998,
no. 51", contains the name of the original "state:royal.decree:1941-01-
30;12" as well as the name of the updated version
"state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12
@1998-02-19").
Please note that in case of attachments or annexes, the creation of a new
version (even in the case of only one component) would imply the creation
of a new uniform name for all the connected objects in order to guarantee
their alignment (i.e., the main document, the attachments and annexes).