Estrella (project)

Estrella was a European project coordinated by the Leibniz Center for Law, Faculty of Law of the University of Amsterdam. The acronym stands for European project for Standardized Transparent Representations in order to Extend Legal Accessibility (Estrella, IST-2004-027655). As a Specific Targeted Research Project (STReP) and part of the Information Society Technologies (IST) in the Sixth Framework Programme for Research (FP6; Subprogramme Area: ICT Research for Innovative Government) of the European Commission, the project was funded with €2.596.255 (total costs: €3.811.943) by the European Union (January 1, 2006−June 30, 2008; duration: 30 months). The project stopped on September 30, 2008.

Estrella Consortium

Experts of the legal knowledge systems field from the private as well as the public sector congregated in this consortium consisting of the following members:

  • Hungarian Tax and Financial Control Administration
  • Corvinus University of Budapest
  • National Centre for Informatics in Public Administration
  • Consortium Pisa Research
  • Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems at the Frauhofer Society for the Promotion of Applied Research
  • Haley Limited
  • Interaction Design Limited
  • KnowledgeTools International GmbH
  • Italian Ministry of Economics and Finance
  • RuleWise B.V.
  • Italian General Society of Informatics
  • University of Liverpool
  • Interdepartmental Centre for Research in History, Philosophy and Sociology of Law and Legal Informatics of the University of Bologna

There were also other parties involved, such as the Italian Ministry of Reform and Innovation of Public Administration and the German Federal Ministry of Finance.

Aims and objectives

Estrella's goal was to design and establish a standard facilitating the access and the intercommunication of legal information, independent of jurisdiction, hierarchy, geographical or other provenance and software producer. By doing so, a platform should arise that those creating and applying the law could consult in order to obtain and grasp legal information, use and process as transboundarily exchange it.

The intention was to devise and validate "an open, standard-based platform allowing public administrations to develop and deploy comprehensive legal knowledge management solutions, without becoming dependent on proprietary products of particular vendors". This should contribute to eGovernment, eAdministration and eParticipation in terms of standardising, accessing and processing, integrating and communicating legal information and knowledge in the European Union. The addressees of the platform and its key technologies are, in fact, those seeking access, comprehension or application of legislative and regulative provisions.

Estrella wished to assist citizens as well as its governments and administrations since legislation and regulations are augmenting in terms of quantity and complexity, also considering the European framework in many areas. Legal document management and legal knowledge-based systems should be combined in order to create holistic solutions for the users. Interoperability, especially at the international level, is needed with regard to various XML (Extensible Markup Language) legislative formats and publishers (danger of "vendor lock-in").

Estrella's main technical objectives are:

  • development of a Legal Knowledge Interchange Format (LKIF);
  • achievement and demonstration of vendor neutrality and independence;
  • demonstration and validation of the Estrella platform, using tax legislation as an example.

Estrella also supported research and the publication of correspondent papers. Three Periodic Activity Reports were delivered.

Progress

2006

The Estrella project was launched on January 1, 2006. In the belief of knowledge-based systems being the key technology for legal knowledge management, European commercial market leaders were assembled with representatives of public administration in order to ensure usability and comprehensive answers. In the awareness that these technologies would have to be introduced to potential users, promoted and, of course, constantly developed, the project was tackled to create an open platform for existent as well as new applications in the legal field, without having to rely on a particular commercial vendor.

First, an initial version of the LKIF language was developed using OWL and SWRL, two Semantic Web technologies. The components of this version were an ontology and a layered language, combining OWL DL, DLP, and DL-safe subset of SWRL with LKIF rules customisable to the particular user's wishes and needs. In the course of the research, it became clear that the interoperability of the different formats used by the commercial stakeholders with the new language could pose problems due to specific purposes of their products. Additionally, Estrella compiled an ontology of basic legal concepts using OWL (LKIF Core Ontology).

During the same year, attempts in examining and describing the user's needs were undertaken which led to the foundation of an Observatory Board representing the relevant actual stakeholders. Moreover, Estrella started collaborating with the European Committee for Standardization (CEN)/ISSS. In workshops, they developed a general XML format for the management of legal sources.

2007

The year 2007 saw the launch and the testing of LKIF. On February 2, Version 1.0 was released, although soon two relevant bugfixes were necessary that led to Version 1.0.1 (February 23) and 1.0.2 (March 22).

The reference inference engine for LKIF (Carneades) was deployed. Further, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for interacting with LKIF knowledge bases and translators were developed and tested. The work on an Open Source content management system was continued. Moreover, a training manual and document was being written.

The collaboration with CEN/ISSS led to various translators and the intention to update the MetaLex/CEN standard concerning an improved MetaLex XML-schema for describing legal sources and Legal Metadata Interchange Format (LMIF).

2008

On May 1, 2008, Version 1.0.3 of LKIF was published. Carneades was essentially improved by implementing a built in ontology reasoned for the dialect of description logic and a prototype graphical user interface. Next, HARNESS and eXistrella were added. In this final phase of the Estrella project, a business model and exploitation plans were composed with the aim of promoting LKIF as a CEN standard.

The collaboration with CEN/ISSS was again continued. This resulted in a new version of CEN MetaLex and improved translators as well as LMIF (Legal Metadata Interchange Format, an interchange format for metadata of sources of law).

The project stopped by September 30, 2008. However, the ideas were advanced in the projects AGILE (Advanced Governance of Information services through Legal Engineering) and IMPACT (Improving Access to Texts).

Projects within Estrella

The platform provides a language (LKIF), an ontology (LKIF Core Ontology), an architecture (HARNESS), a content management system (eXistrella) and an argumentation engine (Carneades).

The Legal Knowledge Interchange Format (LKIF) is a Semantic Web based language designed for legal applications. It is built upon emerging XML-standards, amongst them Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language (OWL), and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for interacting with the inherent legal knowledge systems. Translators between the LKIF and already existing proprietary formats are also available. The format was tested on tax legislation and regulations but is designed to be applicable in all legal areas.

An open source inference engine supporting all of LKIF as its native format, called Carneades, initially developed in the ESTRELLA project, is available. Carneades was used to validate the LKIF format in a number of pilot applications.

LKIF Core Ontology

The LKIF Core Ontology is a core ontology of basic legal concepts or a "library of ontologies relevant for the legal domain". The contributors are FOKUS, the Universities of Amsterdam, Liverpool and Bologna. It aims at a standard vocabulary allocating approximately 200 abstract as well as concrete concepts and their definitions. They are classified into 15 modules. Five abstract concepts refer to top, place, mereology, time and spacetime. Four basic-level concepts are added with process, role, action and expression. Three modules legal action, legal role and norm constitute the legal ontology. Two frameworks are provided by modification and rules. The abovementioned modules are integrated in the LKIF-Core ontology module solely functioning as an entry-point to the ontology library.

Carneades

The Carneades argumentation system is an argument mapping application (with a graphical user interface, GUI) as well as a software library for building applications supporting manifold argumentation tasks using LKIF. Amongst these are argument (re)construction, argument evaluation, argument visualisation and argument interchange. Using a functional programming language, argumentation schemes can be integrated into the Semantic Web. The Carneades argumentation system is named after the Greek skeptic philosopher Carneades.

Hybrid Architecture for Reasoning with Norms Exploiting Semantic web Services (HARNESS)

Hybrid Architecture for Reasoning with Norms Exploiting Semantic web Services (HARNESS) is a knowledge-based system for legal assessment using a OWL 2 DL language. It shall become applicable for legal planning and argumentation as well.

eXistrella

eXistrella is a reference Open Source legal content management system. It is based upon eXist.

See also

  • Knowledge-based systems
  • Knowledge management
  • Sixth Framework Programme
  • Web Ontology Language

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