Digital Extraordinary Administrative Advisory Committee Working Group Legal Affairs digitalization Study Team (Fourth)

Overview

Date and time: Wednesday, April 13, 2022 (2022) from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Location: Online
Agenda:
1. Opening
2. Proceedings
  1. Digital Extraordinary Administrative Advisory Committee ・ Results of reporting to the Working Group
  2. Process Chart (Draft) for digitalization of Legal Affairs
  3. Status of the digitalization for legal work in the ROK
3. Adjournment

Materials

References

Progress of the cross-sectional review of regulation based on the Digital Principles and Issue (Third Digital Extraordinary Administrative Advisory Committee Materials) (PDF / 1,572 kb)

Related Information

The fourth meeting of the Digital Extraordinary Administrative Advisory Committee Study Team of the digitalization Working Group Legal Affairs Office was held.

Minutes

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your Now that it is time, we would like to hold the 4th meeting of the "digitalization Review Team for Legal Affairs".

My name is Yagyu from Digital Agency. I will be the moderator for today. Nice to meet you.

Members and observers are invited to participate online today. Thank you very much.

First of all, I would like to ask for a few words from Parliamentary Senior Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Kobayashi, who is the chair of the Working Group. Thank you very much.

Parliamentary Senior Vice-Minister: Hello, . Nice to meet you all.

As this is the fourth session, I would like to thank all the members of the digitalization Study Team of the Legal Affairs Department for their continued cooperation.

At the end of March, the third Digital Rincho was held without incident, and I was able to report on the progress of the team's discussions. We have received solid support from the Prime Minister, so I would like to finish it together with everyone.

In addition, a wide range of people concerned are participating as observers, including the people of Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and private business, and I hope that we can work together to build something together.

When we think about the future, I think it is important to be able to constantly update law in real time. Even after the entire review of law is completed at once, considering that law will be reviewed in accordance with the progress of technology as needed, it will be necessary to update and check law not only by humans but also by machines and technology. Toward that end, I think it is necessary to finish up what kind of data collection method should be used and how to optimize the process of creating Mt. Fuji.

I would like to receive a lot of wisdom from you today, and I would like to steadily move forward. Thank you very much.

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your , thank you very much.

In addition, Parliamentary Senior Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs will attend the meeting for about 30 minutes at the beginning and then leave the room in the middle of the meeting. I hope all members will be aware of this.

In addition, as the Senior Vice-Minister mentioned earlier, we have decided to invite you to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Regional Administrative Bureau as an observer. I would like to ask you a few words, Mr. Onishi, Director-General of the Regional Administrative Bureau. Thank you very much.

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Administrative Office. I have been asked to participate as an observer.

As I believe the person in charge of e-LAWS at the Secretariat has already talked about this several times, there was originally a problem of errors in the bill, and at that time, the legislative process was working mainly on paper. I am aware that it was given the Issue that it is necessary to review it to make it more efficient by using digital technology.

Originally, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Regional Administrative Bureau was in charge of e-LAWS before the establishment of the Digital Agency. In addition, the entire process of legislative work is quite extensive, and a considerable number of related organizations are involved. Since it will affect the entire way of work of the organization, it will be quite difficult to coordinate during the review.

Since we, the Administrative Management Bureau, are in the position of planning and drafting the operation of the Administrative organization, we have been conducting consideration together with Digital Agency to review the legal affairs. We would like to participate as observers this time and make our best contributions. Thank you very much.

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your Onishi, Administrator.
In addition, Mr. Gyosei Co., Ltd., which is entrusted by the Secretariat to investigate the digitalization of legal affairs in foreign countries, is also attending this time, so I would like you to be aware of this.

Now, I would like to introduce today's agenda, which is currently projected on the screen. There are three main points. The first is the results of the report to Digital Extraordinary Administrative Advisory Committee made on March 30 last month, the second is the draft of the schedule for the digitalization of legal affairs, and the third is the status of the digitalization of legal affairs in the ROK.

Now, I would like to move on to the first item on the agenda. During the Digital Consultation held on March 30, and at the Working Group meeting held on March 23, I reported on the status of the discussions by the Study Team. Based on the materials that Minister Makishima explained at the Digital Consultation on March 30, I would like to have the Secretariat report on the results, including the situation at that time. Thank you very much.

Mr. Yagyu will continue to explain. What we are showing now is the material that Mr. Makishima actually explained in the Digital Consultation. Please go to page 17 of the slide, which is the relationship between the review team. What we are showing now is the regulation that is becoming visible through the inspection of Issue based on digital principles.

This is the fundamental issue that the Study Team is currently discussing. What should we do with a self-sustaining and efficient confirmation system and process for conformity to the digital principles, and what should we do in order to properly provide digital originals by law and others? In addition, we must build an environment in which the people can more freely and democratically access rules and regulations. I am introducing Issue that the Study Team is advancing discussions based on this.

On the next slide, I would like to talk about the establishment of a process and system to confirm the compliance of law and other cities with the Digital Principles. As the Study Team has vigorously discussed this, we must properly confirm the compliance of new law and other cities with the Digital Principles. In addition, I once again explained the necessity of continuously reviewing existing law and other cities based on the progress of digital technology. In order to rapidly establish the Digital Principles, it is necessary to accelerate discussions on the process of how to specifically proceed and the actual development of the system. This is what I reported.

Next, on the next slide, we are working to establish a system to provide digital originals of law and other cities. We have discussed this, including e-LAWS. One major goal is to quickly realize an environment in which digital originals of law and other cities, which are national infrastructure, can always be referred to, such as the official law database. To that end, I have reported that we will consider completing legal affairs on the same law database.

It is a draft policy and measures for efforts, and we are reporting on what we will do by government and ministerial ordinance. Regarding this, the Secretariat will report on the content of future discussions later on Agenda 2, so I will omit the details.

Last but not least, I received instructions from Prime Minister Kishida at the Digital Consultation on March 30, which is precisely related to the Review Team. We are reviewing the existing law, but in addition to identifying the remaining law, which is currently being reviewed, we are receiving instructions from Prime Minister to compile a comprehensive review plan by May, led by Minister Makishima, including responses at the time of new legislation. Therefore, we would like to focus our work on incorporating the discussions of the Review Team into the comprehensive review plan, and we would like to ask for your continued cooperation.

Regarding agenda 1, that's all for my explanation.

If you have any comments or questions on this matter, I would like to ask you to summarize them after explaining up to Agenda 3.

Next, I would like to move on to the second item on the agenda. I would like to have the Secretariat explain about the proposed schedule for the digitalization of legislative affairs in about 10 minutes.
Thank you very much, Mr. Okubo.

Secretariat (Ohkubo): Mr. Yagita Secretariat. I would like to explain Material 1, a proposed roadmap for the digitalization of legal affairs.

First of all, as you stated in your opening remarks, the discussions up to the third review team were reported to the Working Group and the main body of the Digital Rincho toward the end of March. First of all, before introducing the draft process chart, I would like to review the discussions so far.

First of all, the major goal is to create environments in which the people can always refer to the digital originals of the national infrastructure, such as the law. Regarding this issue, first of all, it is important to immediately update and provide the law database in a format and content that is easy for the people to use, but in order to realize this, it is ultimately necessary to convert the entire legal affairs of the law Amendment into a database that can be completed digitally.

In the two figures at the bottom of this page, the left-hand side is the current flow of the update of the law database. The work of the law Amendment itself until the promulgation of the official gazettes is, in a sense, a separate flow from the update of the law database, in the form of word processor files and data for composition.

In updating the law database and providing it in e-Gov, it takes a lot of manual work to integrate law, so the revision work and the database update will proceed as one in the same database. In the figure on the right, I draw a picture centered on the database, but isn't it necessary to take a view of efficiency to such a figure? Therefore, I would like to point out that by making it a digital base, the work of the law revision itself can be converted at the same time.

On the other hand, in changing to focusing on such a database, we recognize that it will be a very long-span Issue in terms of systems and technology, so it is important to conduct a PoC first while picking up the points of discussion and advance to agile, so I have listed them as points of discussion on the next page.

My first question is whether it would be possible to update the law Database at the same time as the promulgation of the Act in a way that minimizes manual data conversion in the process of updating and creating the law Database.

First of all, with regard to my first question, in the current process, there is a part that is to be converted into XML structured data in order to register the promulgated law and the penetration articles in e-LAWS. On the other hand, there are places where the revised law promulgated in official gazettes, which is the original, is separately converted into data for printing in official gazettes as data for composition. Therefore, these three points are currently created manually. Therefore, from the perspective of preventing time lags and mistakes during work, it is desirable to avoid such data conversion as much as possible.

My second question is 0. From such a perspective, we would like to consider the possibility of integrating the data generated by official gazettes with the law data of e-LAWS in the form of structured data as much as possible, and at the stage of formulating the revised bill, it would be desirable to accelerate the update of the revised bill while aiming for efficiency by automatically creating the revised bill to a certain extent by directly editing the text of after amendment.

Therefore, as the direction of such consideration, in addition to the flow of digitalization in official gazettes, I believe it is also important to consider the format of unifying the common law data format with structured data. In addition, it is mentioned that a data structure to realize direct editing of after amendment data and an editor to edit XML can be implemented as a proof of concept at the level of government and ministerial ordinances.

On the next page, another issue is the provision of data in a format and content that is easy for the people to use. Considering that it is human beings who create the revision proposal, and that it is also human beings who create this data in a highly readable data format, and that it is also machines who update it on data, what kind of data should be held for that purpose? In addition, how is it desirable to combine the revision method performed by human beings with the data format? These are raised as issues.

In that regard, first of all, I would like to point out the method and background of the revision of law in the current form of the revised text. In addition, for example, in the case of complex cases in which multiple effective dates are assigned at the same time, we would like to consider improving the revision method so that it is easy for both humans and machines to understand by maintaining the retained information in the form of some data.

At the same time, the second point I would like to ask is whether it would be possible to further consider the idea of using a data format that is easy for the people of law to use, since the revision will actually be promulgated in official gazettes.

Through such efforts, we will efficiency the work by optimizing the division of roles between humans and computers in a sense, and while paying attention to maintaining and improving the ability of officials to draft bills, we will publish it in an easy-to-use data format. As for this, we have been discussing whether it is important to conduct PoC while considering the data structure and the revision method in parallel.

Please go to the next page, and based on these points, I have summarized the parts up to the points you discussed last time as matters to be validation in the PoC.

First, as a major goal of the PoC, from the level of government and ministerial ordinances, the text of the after amendment will be edited directly, and it will be promulgated as an amendment, and the law database will be immediately updated. In a sense, I think the goal is to demonstrate whether and how the entire series of legislative affairs can be realized. As matters to be considered in order to do so, I have circled four below.

First of all, it is written that it is a survey of legal affairs, but in the case of bringing the data of the articles themselves or the bills for amendment as structured data, it is necessary to sort out what kind of supplementary information and annotation information is desirable or necessary to be retained in such data while investigating the accumulation of existing amendment methods.

In addition, in parallel with this, in order to make them structured data, how can the format of the text data or the revised bill data itself hold such information? For example, in the text data, the date of enforcement is intricately specified, or it is specified in the supplementary provisions, or it is a delegation relationship, and there are various ways of writing the text, so how can such information be structured as related information? I believe that it is necessary to consider expanding the definition of law XML or adding some kind of extended information to the law database.

In addition, as stated in the first goal, it is important to provide such information in an easy-to-use data format and content, so I would like to consider what kind of API design will be used to provide this information and what kind of public-private sharing will be possible in adding annotation information to the API.

In addition, in order to automatically create the amended bill by holding it in structured data, it is of course necessary to evaluate the parts that are technically difficult. I believe that it will be important to consider how much automation can be done through such data, and to determine the division of roles between humans and digital computers.

Now, based on each of the two ○ s, in the flow of directly editing such XML law data, of course, it is important to have an editor that can edit it in some form, such as development. Therefore, we would like to aim for a form that is easy for both humans and machines to understand and that properly contains necessary information through, for example, what kind of user interface such an editor has, so I think it is important to consider such functions.

Last but not least, institutionally, such a law Amendment will actually be realized by the promulgation in official gazettes, so I would like to point out what kind of digitalization there will be in order to circulate the flow in common with as much unified technical data as possible while also looking at the flow of Issue in official gazettes.

The matters that I have just introduced on this page are shown as a line chart as a proposed process chart. This is the line chart on the next page.

First of all, I would like to write about my vision for the next three years. First of all, I would like to draw a line between the three points, which are the investigation of legislation, the examination of data structures, and the XML editor development, which is based on these two. First of all, I believe that it is necessary to clarify the requirements for the editor, which are derived from the investigation of legislation and the examination of data structures, with the image of requirements definition and technical examination, which are a kind of premise for PoC.

In addition, as I explained earlier as the goal of the initial proof-of-concept, I believe that it will eventually be necessary to validation the flow from the creation of the draft to the promulgation and the update of the database as a flow at the level of a government and ministerial ordinance.

In the middle of this part, there are some square boxes, but in the implementation of PoC, Digital Agency will take the lead, and from this time, Mr. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Administration and Management Bureau will participate as an observer. From the perspective of reviewing the business flow of the entire legal affairs through PoC, we have been working with Mr. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications as a medium - to long-term effort to eliminate as many errors as possible in the creation of bills. From this perspective, Mr. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and Digital Agency will take the lead in advancing PoC with the cooperation of relevant organizations such as the Cabinet Office and ministries.

In addition, we have in mind that this will actually result in an editor that can be used in the operations of each ministry as a proof-of-concept, so in terms of usability and editor technology, I think it is desirable to continue the form that the Review Team is discussing this time, and proceed with the review while having a mechanism to obtain some knowledge from external experts.

In addition, as I said, the line chart is also parallel to each other, but the survey of legal affairs, the organization of information to be included in annotations, the data structures that realize it, and the development of the editor are interrelated, so I think it is desirable to solve the Issue while organizing the existing revision methods little by little by repeating this multiple times in an agile process.

Last but not least, as I mentioned in the "Others" at the end of this line chart, first of all, in the study of data standardization with the official gazettes system, there is a cooperation problem in terms of how to keep consistent data up to the promulgation process while looking at the flow of digitalization in official gazettes. In addition, there is one place with a blue filled arrow feather. This fiscal year, e-LAWS is considering efforts to upgrade the database on a provision basis, but in fact, when it comes to how to structure and bring this annotation information, we recognize that it is closely related to a certain expansion of the law database, so I have referred to it for reference.

On the next page, I would like to discuss the creation of an actual editor through PoC. As a draft for a certain kind of discussion, I am afraid it is a sketch or a draft, but it shows an image of what an editor should be as a reference.

First of all, I have written several bullet points as a way of thinking, but as the Review Team has discussed so far, I recognize that it is an important point that the information in the amended law includes not only the text of the amended article itself, but also the method of change, including complex ones.

If we think about editing the text of the after amendment on the editor and automatically converting it into a revised text or a revised bill, it may be necessary to take data including the content of such changes and the conditions for such changes. If we think about an editor that edits such things, it may be a kind of integrated development environment if we think about it in analogy with a kind of programming. For example, editing the text as it is may be compared to programming, it may be a source code editor, and further, it may be compared to debugging to preview how the text will change due to the conditioning after the text has changed.

In addition, if I take it that way, the way of change expressed in the revised text is like a compiler in terms of source code management, and I think it will be easier to understand the original role of the revised text.

Therefore, when editing the text of after amendment and how it will be changed, I think it is necessary to express the text of after amendment's text and how it will be revised in the same user interface.

Therefore, on the right side, Scratch and SwiftUI are shown as images. In some form, the text of after amendment itself is written, and the way of change is declared there. This is also shown as an image because it can be understood in analogy with programming.

On the next page, based on this way of thinking, I have shown it as an image, although it is really just a sketch, a rough sketch. In the middle of this picture, I think there is a part surrounded by a yellow frame, which is a kind of image of text editing. I apologize for the small letters, but for example, if there is a condition that multiple enforcement dates are divided in the same amended law, if the provisions of the enforcement date are edited as a condition in the text of the after amendment itself, it will be easy for people to recognize, and at the same time, it will be a picture that shows how we can have such information in data behind the scenes.

Finally, if you could go to the next page and include the method of revision in data, it would be possible to automatically express the method of revision, apart from the form of the article in after amendment or the form of a revised text. Conversely, in the article editing editor, by checking each view separately, it would be possible to realize such article editing without errors, so I have shown you a simple picture.

That is all for the content of Material 1.

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your .

I would like to move on to the third item on the agenda. I would appreciate it if Mr. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications could give us an explanation of the status of legal affairs in the ROK, including digitalization, in about 15 minutes.

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications: Administrative Management Office. Now, I would like to explain based on the materials.

First of all, I would like to say that our research is centered on literature research, so there are some parts that are slightly lacking in depth, so based on this discussion, we would like to continue to investigate the necessary parts.

Then, from our side, please take a look at page 2 for the appearance of the ROK legal system. In terms of legal work, there are some similar to the Japanese system, such as the partial revision of law by the written method, but there are also quite unique aspects that are different from the Japanese system. In the yellow shaded area in the middle is the organization called the Ministry of Legislation. The Ministry of Legislation is engaged in the examination of bills submitted by the government and the compilation of law, including the development of databases, which will be described later. Therefore, it is considered that the Ministry of Legislation has the same functions as the Cabinet Legislation Bureau and the Judicial System Department of the Ministry of Justice. I understand that the Ministry of Legislation is the core of the digitalization of legal work and the provision of databases.

There is a timeline on the next page. On the left side is the flow of legal affairs in digitalization, and on the right side is the provision of databases to the people. For your convenience, I divided it into two parts. Both started around 1998. We started to build an OA system for examination, maintain a database, and provide it to the people.

However, when I read various documents, I found that the OA system was not used very much at first, partly because the system was divided into functional aspects or examination and legislative work.

On the other hand, it seems that the system has been carefully improved. As you will see on the screen later, it seems that this system is always used when requesting the Ministry of Legislation to examine bills. As you will see on the right side, the law Information is quite rich in content and is provided to the people and companies free of charge.

Please look at the next page.

On the left side, it says Government Legislative Support Center, but this seems to mean that the center is positioned as a component of various systems related to legal affairs. The editor you will see later seems to be used not only by government agencies but also by local public authorities. In addition, this application is actually available for anyone to download from the site.

The information provision system on the right is the National law Information Center, which is widely provided free of charge to the general public. What I thought was unique here is, as written in * on the lower side, originally it was done in the form of a revised text, as I mentioned earlier, and the promulgation is also done in the form of a revised text. Therefore, in the scene of the compilation of law, it is necessary to integrate it. Regarding this integration work, we have created a program to do it automatically, but it seems that in the end, people have to do various work, and it seems that the work is done not only by internal staff but also by using external resources.

In Japan, the Ministry of Justice, which is in charge of the compilation of law, has decided to develop the e-LAWS law database. It has been learned that external resources are being used for this. It has become clear that a similar process is being carried out in the ROK.

The next page is the editor screen. It is divided into three parts. On the left side, the current law database is dropped from the database, and the modified version is in the middle. The work of creating the new and the old is performed on the screen. After the new is completed, if you press the Execute button, it is converted into the sentence form again and appears on the right side. This is automated.

When I read the literature, it was written that at first, this was quite difficult functionally. There were individual differences in the expression method of the revised text, and there were such difficulties, and it was written that various trials and errors were made to determine how to standardize it.

Another thing that I thought was characteristic was that there was a "Hangul tool" in the fourth place from the left in the blue circle above. This is Area Hangul, which is Ichitaro Yamazaki if I were to say Japanese, and there is Korean word processing software, and I had the impression that it was made in cooperation with it. I need to dig a little deeper, but maybe it is a flow that works well by using not only an editor but also such word processing software.

It seems that there was a discussion on the part of the study team, but I think there was a problem with the table as a representative example of what is not very suitable for digitalization. Everyone can create it freely with creativity, so to be honest, it is difficult to drop it into the database, but it has been dealt with. Mr. Tsunoda may know that in the past, in the case of the table, I heard that it was all replaced, but when I look at the current system, it seems that the partial revision of the table can be handled by this system, so I thought it had been improved later.

According to the Legislative Examination Standards issued by the Ministry of Legislation, the number of the list is assigned so that the address can be specified. However, it would be difficult to change all of our current assets all of a sudden, and as it is written, "In the case of the establishment of a new Appended Table or the revision of all of the Appended Tables," it seems that changes will be made depending on the timing.

The next page is for information provision. The URL is written at the bottom, so if you are interested, you can see that it is quite substantial in terms of content. It is not only displaying law, but also the citation relationship between law, and it is managed by carefully attaching annotation information. I think that it takes considerable time and cost to maintain such a database. In addition, it is provided in the same way as e-LAWS, but it is provided in the API in a form that is easy to use secondarily.

Now, in regard to the future efforts for the digitalization of legal work, Digital Agency has just mentioned an editor or a proof-of-concept. Of course, such parts are naturally important, but considering the process of the entire legal work, it is necessary to examine the actual situation of the entire work flow, not limited to that part, and to determine how to optimize the entire work based on the rhythm needs of those engaged in the work.

Taking the opportunity of the error problem, we are investigating the actual situation together with the Administrative Management Bureau and Digital Agency. For your reference, on the next page, I believe that Digital Agency explained that in the process of work at the Printing Bureau, which Issue submitted as an explanatory material last time, manual data conversion is risky and time-consuming, so how to optimize it is what Tokyo is about. On page 11, what is the actual situation at the site?

This document has been made by deliberately omitting detailed parts in order to make it easier to understand, but it is a cut out of the process until the bill is finalized and the manuscript for Cabinet decision is made.

Once the bill is completed, the Cabinet Office and each Ministry submit it to the Printing Bureau via e-LAWS. It seems that the bill is created using word processing software, usually a Ichitaro Yamazaki, but when the bill is inserted into the "general editing system" of the Printing Bureau, the Printing Bureau takes care of converting the word processing data into text data and inserting it into the general editing system.

Since the form of the bill that was originally sent is broken once and remade, confirmation work is required between the Printing Bureau and each Ministry. If there is a typo error in the middle of the process, the bill will be revised, and the revision will be confirmed. In addition, after the submission of the bill, the bill may be revised due to coordination within the Government, so the draft will be revised each time, and each Ministry will confirm the revision within a short period of two weeks, so I believe that the process is high in the risk of errors.

In addition, after the bill is passed by the Diet, we will enter the process of promulgation by official gazettes. This time, we will submit a manuscript for promulgation by official gazettes to the Printing Bureau. The work to edit the official gazettes manuscript is performed by a system other than the general-purpose editing system mentioned earlier, so as mentioned earlier, manual conversion and confirmation work are also performed, so this is the actual situation. We need to consider how to optimize this process by using digital well. The function of the editor is also important, but we need to review the entire process, including the process parts before and after it. This is shown as a sample.

That's all from me.

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your .

Then, I would like to have a Q & A session and an exchange of opinions on agenda items 1 to 3. If you have any questions or opinions, please press the raise your hand button.

So, Mr. Tsunoda, nice to meet you.

Tsunoda Member: .

I have a few questions and comments. With regard to the ROK's survey on the legislative situation in digitalization, I conducted a survey about 10 years ago, and it seems that you referred to it in this survey. What concerns me is that the ROK was ahead of Japan at the time, and as a result, it was better than Japan. Or, if there were any parts that went ahead and were not renovated, or if there were any parts that were shaken back because we did too much new things, I would like to ask you about them.

Another point is to confirm related software. The fact that Area Hangul is used in the ROK means that it is a domestic word processor like the Japanese word processing software Ichitaro Yamazaki, and it seems to be in the same position in that it is used by central government agencies. In fact, in the explanation of the figure on the last page of Material 2, it seems that the Ichitaro Yamazaki is used by each government agency when entering the school. Therefore, I made a proposal as a request at the stage of preparing for the development of e-LAWS, but I think that JustSystem, a Ichitaro Yamazaki development company that is actually used by many ministries and agencies and has a version specialized in administrative work, has also been examined. Therefore, as a result, I would like to ask your prospect on whether it is possible to request an editing function that supports legislative digitalization like Area Hangul with the current functions and performances of Ichitaro Yamazaki. If it is difficult to answer because there are few survey materials, it is fine to tell us that it is such a situation. Ichitaro Yamazaki

I would like to add some details to my first question about the fact that even though the ROK is ahead of us, we overdid it or it did not work. In the survey on digitalization in the ROK that I conducted 10 years ago, which you referred to in Mr. Onishi's talk earlier, for example, the ROK decided that digitalization would not allow partial revision of the law Central Table and that all the tables would be revised together. Therefore, although it was a measure that should have been started in response to the flow of digitalization, it is now a situation in which digitalization has gone backward, like a backlash that allows the original partial revision method. I thought that in the end, it will be necessary to revise the text. What do you think about that? There were many discussions on the pros and cons of the revised text at this meeting, so I would like to know what the ROK is like.

My third question or comment. In the figure at the end of Material 2, I said that there are many times of reading and collation between submission and submission to the Cabinet. I had a workshop with the Legislative Bureau of the House of Councilors on Legislative digitalization, and some members of the Bureau were concerned about the reading and collation. It seemed that the confirmation work itself by the reading and collation was necessary because they were worried even if digitalization made progress, but in the end, it seemed that the burden of manpower would remain.

In that case, I feel that there is a difference in quality between the manual part when we should make a digitalization for the manual part as much as possible and the manual part when we make a digitalization. Therefore, regarding that point, it is good to automate the manual part of data conversion, but I thought I should raise the issue of how to handle the manual part when making a reservation. It was a comment.

One last point. This is also a proposal by Mr. Ohkubo, or in the image of "to be", to check the law with a debugger. This is just my specialty, and it is still like a toy, but I have been development and experimenting with various things for more than 10 years. Thinking about it further, I have found various possibilities in a static law check tool, but I feel that the realization of a dynamic validation tool is quite difficult, or rather, it will be quite a future project.

In the case of a computer, instead of a person, the rules created as a program actually work, so validation can be simulated, and the software can realize the functions intended by the rules. In the case of law, however, since it is the person who moves according to the rules, no matter how many times the rules are simulated by a computer, even if the simulation is successful, it will not be validation that moves as if it functions in the real world. For example, even if there is a rule that a paper application form must be submitted to public office, it does not mean that the paper application form can be exchanged by computer, nor does it generate paper for the application form. In another example, even if there is a rule that a certain violation will be punished by a fine, it does not mean that the computer will pay the fine, so I think it is necessary to decide on a specification that clarifies how much of the real world is assumed to be a dynamically moving world that can be simulated by confining it in a computer.

Now, I am repeating trial and error little by little by narrowing down various conditions, but it is still a difficult situation. Therefore, I think that dynamic debugging is a little difficult to realize at present or in the near future. I think it is good to include it as a medium - to long-term possibility, but I felt uneasy that it might be misunderstood if it is included as a simple list.

That's all from me.

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications: As you said, in Korea, the entire replacement of the table was originally in the form of a revised sentence, so I think it should be changed. I think the technology has not caught up with it. As the functions of the editor have been expanded, what can be done has increased, and the operation aspect will be reviewed. It seems that the technology has caught up with the original form.

As you pointed out, we have not been able to delve deeply into what happened to the initiatives we were originally engaged in, or whether they were stopped because they were not good, but we will continue to monitor this as necessary.

In addition, I do not yet know the details of the situations in which Area Hangul is used. I would like to dig deeper into whether it is used differently or used in completely different places.

However, I believe this is a different matter from what the Ichitaro Yamazaki will do. As stated in the Digital Agency materials, in the future, we will aim for a complete flow centered on a database, so I believe we will think about it in a way that does not depend on external word processing software.

The other issue is how to allocate external resources. In the ROK, we are talking about resources for maintaining the database, such as the integration of the revised text, and as you said, it is a different story from the reading. I believe that what we need to do is to allocate manpower, but I believe it is necessary to have some kind of function to support the efficiency of work on the system side, or to review the flow of work.

Will the rest be Digital Agency? If there is anything additional, please do so.

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your , I will be the moderator, but Mr. Yagyu will be the one to answer your question.

It is the elimination of manual intervention and the collation. There is also the manual for data conversion. On the other hand, if a certain kind of bug occurs due to data change, it is checked whether the manuscript is as it was after all. What the Legislative Bureau of the Diet is concerned about is that the collation in the case that there is a revision in the middle of the manuscript is not to re-create all the wrong data, but to correct only that part, so it is checked whether it is properly reflected.

This is probably what is happening, so if everyone is accessing the same data from the database that we are aiming for, I think that the manpower around them will be eliminated, including the read-across. However, there is a certain aspect that the read-across remains in a cultural sense because Japan's way of thinking is being properly checked. At present, even if the Printing Bureau converts the data, there are no errors, but I think that the read-across is being carried out now, including such things as just in case. You may not have explained it.

Tsunoda Member: Thank you very much.

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your Do any other members have any questions?

Member Yasuno, please.

Yasuno Member: Thank you, Thank you for your talk. I would like to make one comment.

I understand that one of the purposes of this project is to reduce the number of man-hours, and what I am most concerned about is how big this target is.

What I am saying is that if 100% of the efficiency is made in the legal process and no human resources are involved at all, how many hours can be reduced in the end. I think this is a point that will come up if I do a little research. I think the amount of resources to be spent will probably change depending on how long each process takes and whether it is a job for 100 person days or 1,000 person days per year. Therefore, when you do a PoC for requirements definition, you should not only polish the solution part for the editor, but also improve the resolution of the target size.

However, I believe that the Administrative Management Bureau is conducting various hearings and other discussions. The comment was that even if we can reduce the amount by 100% in a quantitative sense, we cannot actually reduce the amount by 100%, so if we can reduce the amount by 50%, the efficiency of resources can be achieved by RI. If there is such an examination, we can proceed with peace of mind.

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications: survey is about, and we need to look at how much man-hours it actually takes. However, there are considerable differences depending on the type of law, so there is a question of what to do about it. I would like to proceed while properly sorting out what kind of work the people working on the site do, how much time they spend on it, how to do it in the future, and to what extent they can improve it. Thank you very much.

Yasuno Member: Thank you, .

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your Next, I would like to ask you, Mr. Fujiwara.

FUJIWARA Member: FUJIWARA. Thank you for everything. I would like to ask two small questions and make two comments.

My question is that I wanted to know if there is anything that needs to be decided at the end of May if we are going to submit it all at once by the end of May. I think we will only be able to decide how to proceed, so I wanted to know one thing.

Second, when I was shown the image screen of the editing editor, I thought it was quite sophisticated, and I was interested in whether anyone had made it. The editor will eventually become very useful, and unless everyone uses it, the whole thing will probably not work at all, and in the end, it will be a process in which someone will continue to work hard, so I thought it would be better to do it fairly properly, including the UI, and I was interested in who made it.

That's all for the questions, and the comments are not that big.

One is the manual work for reading and blending, which has already been discussed by everyone. This is also as Mr. Yagyu said. Basically, everyone manipulates one database. In short, if you always manipulate the final version, you don't have to check it again later. I think this is the basic concept. So, basically, there is no data conversion. What this means is that everything that has been printed so far is very clean and tidy. It is actually several rows down, so it takes a lot of time to adjust the form, including what to do. So, I think it was printed in various formats.

In a sense, it is probably necessary to give up on such things. Japanese society is not very good at such things, and I believe that there was a talk about cultural reasons, but I believe that we must do so on a practical basis. This is my first comment.

The other is a minor comment. In relation to e-LAWS, there is talk of creating a database for each provision, and I think this is probably being done separately. I think this was a little bit of an idea after listening to various people's stories about this matter. I think there are cases where there are two or three sentences in one section or one article, and one sentence and two sentences in the first and second sections. I felt that it would be troublesome if they were not separated. So, I would like to comment on the fact that there are cases where it is necessary to create a database for each sentence, not just for each provision.

That's all.

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your First of all, I would like to ask to what extent the package plan in your first question will be compiled. In that sense, the digitalization of legal affairs that you are currently discussing has a long way to go, so I believe that it will be a place to decide the direction, and at the same time, a place to solidify a road map of what and how we will do in the future.

On the other hand, there are various matters such as the budget. We will also work out what we will do next fiscal year and beyond, which will be linked to budget request in the following fiscal year and beyond. With this in mind, I hope that we will be able to firmly establish the direction we want to take in May.

For the second one, Mr. Okubo, please.

Secretariat (Ohkubo): Mr. Yagita Regarding the image screen that shows the second UI, I am in charge of e-LAWS as well as the secretariat, so I have been creating it through various discussions with UI designers who participate in e-LAWS that are commissioned to improve it.

FUJIWARA Member: Thank you very much. I think designers are very important.

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your Next, Member Horiguchi, nice to meet you.

Horiguchi Member: Thank you for the materials this time. I would like to take a look at the materials and give you some opinions and impressions on the editor part.

This is based on my experience working on the editor development part, and others. I believe that civil servants and users will be expected in the future, and I believe that there will be an increasing number of young people and people who have visited private sector in the future. Therefore, I do not think it is good for the government agency system to cause allergic reactions. As I mentioned earlier, I understand that the UI and other systems that are no worse than the private sector system will be required.

As I always say from the perspective of the private sector, I believe that the validation of usability is extremely important in this sense as well, and the multifunctional ones that were mentioned in the reference materials in the previous materials look very sophisticated.

On the other hand, I believe that there is room for deliberation on the ease of use, whether it is difficult for such software to withstand practical use, and whether the difficulty of the specifications is high. In the field of editing and word processing software, I understand that we receive quite a lot of feedback, and we are in a position to receive feedback at a quite rare level in Japan. In particular, in the field of such editor software, performance is also an important requirement, and to put it in an extreme case, there are many complaints and things that cannot be used, so I believe that development with great attention will be necessary.

My recognition is that editors in Japan have a high degree of difficulty in development. For example, as I mentioned earlier, I have heard that it has been difficult to find an editor since Mr. Ichitaro Yamazaki. However, there are performance issues, including the freedom of tabulation and other freedoms, the composition of sentences, and the freedom of expression. In terms of how to create something that can be tolerated, the perspective of whether validation will be sufficient only during the PoC period, and the perspective that it will be necessary to use existing commercial products at the same time to some extent, was mentioned in the previous discussion about the renovation of Mr. Ichitaro Yamazaki. I understand that there was.

On the other hand, as the system becomes cloud-based in the future, and as we try to operate the system as simply and as standard as possible, I think there is room for discussion on whether it is okay to continue to customize the on-premise system or the Ichitaro Yamazaki system.

Amidst these various points, as Mr. Yasuno pointed out, I understand that it is difficult to quantify the improvement effect in terms of the editing mechanism. However, I have studied some of the validation results and validation results of the efforts with Mr. government agency, so I would be happy to give you advice if necessary.

That's all.

Secretariat (Ohkubo): Mr. Yagita .

Dr. Fujiwara also pointed out the significance of the user interface. I think it is very important to validation whether you can actually use it properly in your work and whether you can get used to it, including performance. If it is not possible, it will be illogical that it is not practical. So, I would like to do it properly in the PoC, including validation. I would be very grateful if you could give me your knowledge as needed. Thank you very much.

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your Before moving on to the next one, I would like to ask if you will not make it into a sentence unit in the e-LAWS of the provision unit from the Fujiwara members.

Secretariat (Ohkubo): Mr. Yagita I'm sorry, it was omitted.

We are currently considering this. To give you a technical point, the law database is structured in detail in XML for each provision, so I think the first thing is to bring it in as a DB in the form of a document DB, and assign an ID, for example, to each structure.

On the other hand, as Mr. Fujiwara pointed out, I believe that there are cases where the same provision structure includes semantic structures such as the first half, the second half, and the proviso, and I believe that it will be necessary to consider how to deal with such cases in the future.

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your Next, Mr. Yoneda, I would like to ask you a favor.

In the talk by Mr. Onishi, Administrator of Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, I looked at the table on page 11 in digitalization, official gazettes, and I thought that this detailed exchange figure had finally appeared. Now, I am focusing on the editor's story, but considering the connection between how to spread the output from the editor to the official gazettes outside and how to spread it to the place where we, the people, use it, if we look at manual revision on page 11, it is the Printing Bureau that shows manual revision, and before that, in the upper left part of page 10, which Mr. Okubo explained, manual data conversion is shown in a circle, but the actual reading confirmation is done with the Legislative Bureau, isn't it?

I believe there is a part where the data is changed manually, but is that part currently e-LAWS? Even if it is not, is it not positioned as viewing the same data? In that case, this part will be repeatedly modified by hand and returned to the data, but is it correct that the Legislative Bureau is not working directly by looking at the results of e-LAWS?

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications: I would like to say that at present, e-LAWS is used only for sending documents from the Cabinet Office and each Ministry to the Printing Bureau. After that, e-LAWS is used outside of e-LAWS. For the work you just mentioned, work is being done on paper, and I think it is good to imagine that paper with a red ink pen will be delivered.

Mr. Yoneda: Mr. Watanabe just spoke about the Cabinet Legislation Bureau. I think you will probably agree that in order to digitalization and efficiency the work of the legal system as a whole, other parts related to legislation, including each Legislative Bureau, must be included and involved well. Regardless of whether or not each Legislative Bureau will participate in the team's discussions, I believe that this direction should be included in the final part of the Committee's opinion. It was an opinion. : For efficiency as a whole, in short, it is best to look at the same thing as the database and make it as Mr. Fujiwara said. Right now, we are focusing on the way we work at the government office, so we are focusing on the editor. However, is it correct to understand that unless we systematize the database as an integrated whole, including the Cabinet Legislation Bureau, the Printing Bureau, and the Legislative Bureau, we will not be able to maintain the consistency and accuracy of the database in the true sense of the term?

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications: I think that's right. Actually, not only the planning part, but also the whole process after that, how to make it database-centered will be Issue. As Mr. Yoneda pointed out, it seems that such a perspective is not necessarily sufficient at present, so I think it is important how to design the whole thing in the future.

Mr. Yoneda: Mr. Watanabe just spoke about the Cabinet Legislation Bureau. I think you will probably agree that in order to digitalization and efficiency the work of the legal system as a whole, other parts related to legislation, including each Legislative Bureau, must be included and involved well. Regardless of whether or not each Legislative Bureau will participate in the team's discussions, I believe that this direction should be included in the final part of the Committee's opinion. It was an opinion. Is it correct to believe that the ROK Ministry of Legislation, which you have indicated this time, is acting as a head quarter, and that it has taken leadership in digitalization the whole system and making it more advanced?

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications: It looks that way.

Mr. Yoneda: Mr. Watanabe just spoke about the Cabinet Legislation Bureau. I think you will probably agree that in order to digitalization and efficiency the work of the legal system as a whole, other parts related to legislation, including each Legislative Bureau, must be included and involved well. Regardless of whether or not each Legislative Bureau will participate in the team's discussions, I believe that this direction should be included in the final part of the Committee's opinion. It was an opinion. So, in the ROK, the Ministry of Legislation has a big part to play. Another point of concern is the scope of information to be provided to the people. How much of the past or law data as a whole is included in the system? I would like to know the scope of information that the people can search and obtain as output.

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications: Although I do not have an exact number now, it seems that past data, including data after the establishment of the Republic of Korea and old data before the development of the database, is also stored, although e-LAWS has not been developed to that extent.

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications: That's the way things are.

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications: In the case of e-LAWS, it is generally provided in the form of e-Gov law Search, but we have been providing law, which is currently in effect, based on what kind of people we consider as target users, their needs, and how they will be used. I think we will consider the scope of what we should do in the future, including the needs of users.

This is in Digital Agency.

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your That part is exactly what Digital Agency is aware of, and there are cases where it is actually a repealed law, or "it will continue to be governed by prior laws" or "it will remain in force," and there are probably people who want to see law in the past as a need, so I am aware that there is a way to proceed in the future in terms of where to start. In that sense, the effectiveness and subordination will also be related to the annotation information, so I would like to consider what kind of data is correct to store and bring in e-LAWS, based on the points you pointed out today.

Mr. Yoneda: Mr. Watanabe just spoke about the Cabinet Legislation Bureau. I think you will probably agree that in order to digitalization and efficiency the work of the legal system as a whole, other parts related to legislation, including each Legislative Bureau, must be included and involved well. Regardless of whether or not each Legislative Bureau will participate in the team's discussions, I believe that this direction should be included in the final part of the Committee's opinion. It was an opinion. , but from the perspective of the degree of enhancement, there is a place like the ROK where the head quarter is solid and law information can be managed collectively, including old information, and it has been realized now. In the case of Japan, it is divided into several parts, so it is understood that the system is such that the data is scattered and many manual operations remain, like this time. Is that correct?

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications: It may be natural to think so. Regarding the development of the law database, the Ministry of Justice has participated this time. It seems that the Legislative Bureau for the law examination and the Printing Bureau for the official gazettes are aiming to optimize it within the scope of their respective jurisdictions, and I think it will be important to consider how to design it in an optimal manner throughout the whole.

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications: I think you are right.

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your Next, Mr. Watanabe, nice to meet you.

Watanabe, Member: Thank you very much for Thank you for your cooperation. My name is Watabe, and I am an attorney. Since there is only a short time left, I would like to share information and ask one question briefly.

First of all, I will post the URL on the chat page of this tool in [Note:] . If you are interested, please see it. In fact, I am very much interested in the example in the ROK. Because last year, as many of you may know, the ROK was the first country in the world to amend the Telecommunications Business Act to prohibit so-called digital platforms that limit themselves to their own payment methods. It was exactly September 2021, but in fact, a few days later, I contacted a lawyer in the ROK and started writing a paper. In the past few days, as described here, the amended article was posted in the Legislative Bureau, and I remember that I was very surprised at that time.

Therefore, it is very timely that Mr. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications introduced the example of the ROK today, and I believe that this is an extremely noteworthy example.

In addition, one of the comments was that the goal of this project is to be a very important tool for us lawyers and other practitioners, as well as foreign companies, in doing business by looking at Japanese legislation.

Second, I would like to ask a question that overlaps with Mr. Yoneda's awareness of the issue. The other day, Mr. National Printing Bureau joined us, and I am very grateful to Mr. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications for joining us today. I understand that it is difficult at this time of the Diet, but I would be grateful if you could tell me the status of Mr. Cabinet Legislation Bureau's commitment and involvement in this discussion to the extent that it does not interfere.

This is short, but these are the two points. Thank you.

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your , I would like to answer about the status of the commitment with the Cabinet Legislation Bureau. In that sense, we are sharing the materials this time, including the fact that we would like to have the Review Team work on these materials one by one and submit them, and we are explaining the key points.

They are also aware of the need to work on matters such as legal affairs in digitalization. On the other hand, they are also concerned about how to prevent legal errors. In that sense, I believe they are paying particular attention to whether there will be such things in digitalization.

In that sense, I believe that we must hold discussions with them in step. Mr. Yoneda also talked about the editor, but how to cooperate not only with the drafting side, but also with the people in the examination department, will lead to the consideration of all work from the law Database in an integrated manner, and I would like to firmly hold discussions with the Cabinet Legislation Bureau in the future.

I gave you a vague answer, but that's all.

Watanabe, Member: Thank you very much for .

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your Next, Member Yagita, nice to meet you.

Yagita Member: Thank you for calling . This is Yagita from Legalscape.

As a prerequisite, I believe that we will be able to make a fairly good one if we proceed according to this process chart with very easy-to-understand materials such as Materials 1 and 2. Thank you very much. Based on that premise, I would like to make a minor comment on the process chart on page 6 of Material 1.

First of all, on page 2 of the draft process chart, the goal is to quickly realize an environment in which the digital original copy, which is the national infrastructure, can always be referred to. I believe that among these goals is to provide data in a format and content that is easy for the people to use.

This is a minor point, but in this process chart, basically, there are talks by the users who are creating the legislation, what the data structures are to realize it, and how to change the legislation. I think it would be better to include a hearing from the perspective of what kind of service and how the people of the other user want to see law. It is better to include a hearing from the perspective of what kind of service and how the people of the other user want to see development.

I am very sorry if this has already been done, but I think there is a possibility that it will come back to the discussion of the data structure. As I mentioned earlier, if there is a story that the people will be in trouble if they do not look at the past history, for example, there is a possibility that feedback will be given that the data structure must be created in this way. So, for reference, I would like to make a minor comment that it would be good to include a hearing from the people in this at an early stage.

Secretariat (Ohkubo): Mr. Yagita , thank you for your comments.

I believe that the point you just pointed out is very important. It is very important that the main goal is to provide annotation information to the people of Japan. To be honest, at present, it is difficult to conduct systematic research on what kind of information is available from such a perspective. Therefore, I would like to advance consideration so that the point you just pointed out can be addressed. Thank you very much.

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your Next, Mr. Yoneda, I would like to ask you a favor.

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your .

It is almost time, but Annen and Nemoto members of the Working Group are also participating. I would like to ask if you have any comments or other comments.

Member of the Safety and Health Working Group: I am Annen . I have no more time, so I was just moved to hear your story, so I would like to ask for your continued support.

Member of the Nemoto Working Group: I am Nemoto . I have no particular comments, but I hope the system can be used by all of you soon, and I am somewhat shocked that the Ichitaro Yamazaki is still alive.

That's all.

Secretariat (Yagyu): Thank you very much for your .

Now that it is time, I would like to conclude today's proceedings.

Regarding today's proceedings, I would like to prepare the minutes and disclose them after everyone checks them. I would also like to disclose all the materials.

With that said, I would like to conclude today's meeting. Thank you very much for joining us today.