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Third: "laws and ordinances" x "Digital" Hackathon

Published:

Digital Agency

The "laws and ordinances" × "Digital" Hackathon (hereinafter referred to as the "Hackathon") was held from February 5 (Wed) to March 6 (Thu), 2025 as the third part of the Ideathon Hackathon series. Details of the event and award-winning works are introduced on this page. For information on the program of the event and other information available at the time of recruiting participants, please refer to the "laws and ordinances" × "Digital" Hackathon will be held. We were able to collect feedback on the laws and ordinances APIs prototype, etc. through the opinion form published on the event page of .

Contents

  1. Overview
  2. Event Details
  3. Introduction of works
  4. Related Information

1. Overview

The "laws and ordinances × Digital" Hackathon was held with the aim of increasing the efficiency of legal affairs, providing easy-to-understand laws and ordinances information to the public, and creating new businesses using laws and ordinances information.
On the first day of the Hackathon held on February 5 (Wed), 2025, Digital Agency introduced examples of "laws and ordinances x Digital" initiatives, explained the laws and ordinances APIs prototype, and announced initiatives utilizing generated AI. In addition, a workshop was held in which participants interacted with administrative personnel, lawyers, engineers, and other staff working in Digital Agency to come up with and brush up on development ideas.
In this hackathon, a total of approximately 130 participants engaged in short-term intensive development over a period of approximately one month, 28 teams submitted works, and each team made a presentation on Thursday, March 6, 2025.

A group photo of Mr. Taira, Minister for Digital Transformation,, three judges, and the hackathon participants. Mr. Taira, Minister for Digital Transformation, and three judges are seated in the front row, with Mr. Taira, Minister for Digital Transformation, and Mr. Yagita, the judge, holding a board marked

Judge

  • Takahiro Yasuno, GK Machinery Management Representative
  • Shinsei Honda, Section Chief, laws and ordinances Examination Section, General Affairs Division, Children and Families Agency Director
  • President and CEO, Yagita Tree Co., Ltd.

Award Results

Each award, the name of the work and the name of the team are listed in parentheses.

Grand Prize

  • Lawsy(Lawsy)

Excellence Award

  • Legal Camera Assistant (NPClouder)
  • Commons LawScopeAI Prototype (Government Innovators)
  • Legal Definition Finder (Team and Yusuke Momochi)

Category award

  • Legal Document AI Editor (Panda)
  • Laws and ordinances Data Provision Award Notice and Circular Lawtext Extended (Pseudo)
  • Laws and ordinances Data Utilization Award Building generation AI in compliance with the Building Standard Act (automatic generation of optimal buildings in compliance with two laws, the City Planning Act and the Building Standard Act, using original AI)

2. Event Details

[Day 1]

  • Date: February 5, 2025 (Wed)
  • Holding method: Hybrid format of in-person venue and online venue
  • Content of the day: Details are as follows:

The hackathon opened with an opening address from Tomiyasu of Director-General, Digital Agency.

Director-General Tomiyasu of Digital Agency gives the opening address at a hackathon.

Mr. Nakano of Director for Policy Planning, Digital Agency, explained the "laws and ordinances" × "Digital" initiative.
The concept of "Rules as Code" (RaC), which aims to make policy planning and administrative operations more efficient and streamlined by describing laws and ordinances in a machine-readable format, is currently being studied and verified in other countries. I explained how current Japanese legislation is prepared and how laws and ordinances and other information is provided, including the "Digital Legislation Roadmap" proposed by Digital Agency.

For more information on the "laws and ordinances × Digital" initiative, please refer to the laws and ordinances document used in the " × Digital Workshop" held on Friday, March 8, 2024.

A picture of the Digital Agency's Nakano Director for Policy Planning introducing its efforts. On the screen next to the Nakano Director for Policy Planning, the Digital Legislation Forum is projected.

Mr. Ueda, Attorney at Law Digital Agency, gave an introduction to Digital Agency's efforts to generate draft articles using the generative AI. Mr. Ueda, Attorney at Law, mentioned the situations in which the generative AI can be used when national government officer drafts bills, the points that were devised when the draft articles were generated using the latest generative AI model, the results of the outputs, and future issues.

A screen next to Mr. Ueda, an attorney from Digital Agency, shows an example of the results of the generated AI.

Kiei Co., Ltd., a contractor of Digital Agency, reported on the development of a legal affairs support tool using generated AI, and explained the development carried out with Digital Agency in fiscal 2024, including the demonstration of the use of generated AI in the Analog Regulatory Inspection Tool β Version provided by Digital Agency.

Two people in charge of Kiei Co., Ltd., a company commissioned by the Digital Agency, are introducing the development of a legal affairs support tool using generated AI.

Hirono, a Digital Agency system engineer, gave an explanation on the laws and ordinances Database (e-Gov laws and ordinances Retrieval) currently provided by Digital Agency and the laws and ordinances APIs Prototype Open Test (Part 3) "laws and ordinances APIs Prototype" that can be tried by participants of and "laws and ordinances" × "Digital" hackathons for development at hackathons. (What is laws and ordinances APIs Prototype: laws and ordinances APIs Prototype Open Test (Part 3) 3. How to use )

Hirono, the system engineer of the Digital Agency, explains the system of Digital Agency. On the screen beside Hirono, an outline of the laws and ordinances API-Protocol is projected.

After that, staff from Digital Agency visited each table of the participants in the hackathon and conducted a workshop in which they came up with ideas for the works to be developed and brushed them up.

Staff from Digital Agency sit down at the participants' tables to help them come up with ideas for their own projects.

The workshop was also held in a hybrid format of in-person and online venues, and in particular, the in-person venue showed a lively exchange of views between Digital Agency staff and participants.

Director Kawano in Digital Agency goes to the tables of the participants of the hackathon and supports them in coming up with ideas for the works to be developed.

Using the workshop sheet prepared by Digital Agency as a hint to come up with ideas, we exchanged opinions on what would be possible if we combined it with current issues and needs, laws and ordinances, etc.

Inside the entire room at the hackathon, participants sit at a table where each team talks about their ideas for the work to be developed.

[Day 2]

  • Date: Monday, February 10, 2025
  • Method: Online
  • Content of the day:
    Digital Agency staff and others conducted online interviews with teams of their choice, introducing existing services and giving advice based on their experience in legal work, etc., in response to concerns about development policies received from participants.

[Day 3]

  • Date: March 6, 2025 (Thursday)
  • Holding method: Hybrid format of in-person venue and online venue
  • Content of the day: Details are as follows:

Each team played a one minute video introducing the work after about one month of development, and judges Mr. Yasuno, Mr. Hoshi and Mr. Yagita commented on the work.

The Yasuno judges are commenting on the works presented at the hackathon.
(Takahiro Yasuno, Representative Director of Godo Kaisha Kikai)

Judge Honda gives comments on the works presented at the hackathon.
(Mr. Fukusei Honda, Section Chief of laws and ordinances Examination Section, General Affairs Division, Children and Families Agency Director-

The Yagita judges are commenting on the works presented at the hackathon.
(Mr. Itsuki Yagita, President and CEO, Legalscape, Inc.)

Mr. Mr. Taira, Minister for Digital Transformation, also attended the award ceremony. In his opening remarks, Mr. Mr. Taira, Minister for Digital Transformation, expressed his gratitude to the participants for developing the artwork. He then stated that it was important to implement the digitalisation AI in the face of the shrinking Japanese population and labor shortages, and that he would like the participants to continue to deepen their friendship through this hackathon community in order to solve social issues.

Minister Hirata delivers a speech from the platform at the hackathon.

After that, the winners were announced for one Grand Prize, three Excellence Prizes, and one category prize (laws and ordinances Administrative Efficiency Prize, laws and ordinances Data Provision Prize, and laws and ordinances Data Utilization Prize), and the judges commented on the reasons for winning.

Finally, in his closing remarks, Mr. Minister Taira said that the hackathon this time was a very meaningful hackathon, and that he would like to adopt the submitted works that can be adopted by the government after confirming their security. He also said that he would like to continue to promote the implementation of digital and AI across the entire government, with Digital Agency playing a central role. Thus, the hackathon ended.

A scene of the entire Hackathon venue where Minister Taira delivered a speech from the platform. Approximately 100 participants were seated and listened to Minister Taira.

About 100 participants came to the meeting venue, and even after the announcement of the results, there was a team that individually asked the judges for feedback, and the event was filled with enthusiasm throughout.

Throughout the event period of this hackathon, the "laws and ordinances" × "Digital" Hackathon will be held. We were able to collect feedback on the laws and ordinances APIs prototype, etc. through the opinion form published on the event page of and the participant questionnaire conducted after the event. Digital Agency will continue to promote the improvement of laws and ordinances and other data while referring to the opinions received from everyone.

3. Introduction

Points of Attention Regarding Works

  • Neither Digital Agency nor the reviewers shall guarantee the quality or performance of the products developed or submitted by the participants.
  • The services completed through this project are not authorized, published, or distributed by Digital Agency as an official service.
  • The introduction of the work was prepared by the secretariat with reference to the explanatory materials for the work submitted by the participating teams. The images of the work are excerpted from the explanatory materials for the work.

Award-winning work

Grand Prize

Lawsy(Lawsy)
  • Screen shots of the development of the work (excerpted from the explanatory materials submitted by the team)
    A screen shot of the work
  • Outline of the work
    • A Deep Research tool specialized in laws and ordinances for private sector, public officer, and politicians who are not familiar with laws and ordinances. It integrates laws and ordinances information with related information on policies, judicial precedents, and the National Assembly, making it easy to collect, organize, and explain information, and making laws and ordinances research work more efficient.
      Optimizes user queries, performs Web and laws and ordinances searches, organizes relevant information through re-ranking process, and generates reports. Published as open source software.
    • Lawsy GitHub
  • Value created for society
    • Enables appropriate collection, organization, and explanation of laws and ordinances information without relying on experts. Facilitates the promotion of projects requiring laws and ordinances surveys, policy planning, legislation, and regulatory reform, and contributes to accelerating the speed of social reform.
  • Novelty, etc.
    • It is innovative in generating volumetric reports faster and with higher accuracy than the popular Deep Research.
      Using advanced search capabilities and domain-aware generative AI, we leverage laws and ordinances for semantic search and automatic report generation.
  • Auditor Comments
    • A useful tool for solving the needs of the world where there are a large number of articles, such as a large number of laws, and they need to be compiled into a report.
    • We understand the need for more in-depth research on reliable sources in legal work, etc., and it seems to be able to solve various problems. We actually used it and obtained high quality results.
    • It's already open source, and we're excited to see it being customized.

Excellence Award

Legal Camera Assistant (NPClouder)
  • Screen shots of the development of the work (excerpted from the explanatory materials submitted by the team)
    A screen shot of
  • Outline of the work
    • This product provides a AI service to help lawyers search for a laws and ordinances. Just by sharing the interview notes with the client to the app, the AI will consider and suggest the laws and ordinances to be investigated and provide a link to the relevant article in the e-Gov.
  • Value created for society
    • Reduce the burden of laws and ordinances search on lawyers, allowing them to devote more time to their primary professional practice, leading to improved quality of legal services
  • Novelty, etc.
    • Interview memos can be delivered from multiple media, including text files, Excel files, images, and screen captures. laws and ordinances information is obtained through e-Gov laws and ordinances APIs, so the latest laws and ordinances information can be referred to.
  • Auditor Comments
    • It seems like a useful tool for lawyers, too, as they sometimes find it hard to notice unfamiliar laws and ordinances.
    • In that it also supports handwritten notes, it is highly praised for its feature of reducing the trouble of reaching the laws and ordinances.
    • It is submitted as a work for lawyers, but it should be able to be extended to other people who are in contact with legal issues. I think it will be more possible if anyone can suggest what kind of laws and ordinances it is related to when they write a note.
Commons LawScopeAI Prototype (Government Innovators)
  • Screen shots of the development of the work (excerpted from the explanatory materials submitted by the team)
    A screen shot of the
  • Outline of the work
    • This is a work that visualizes current laws and ordinances issues and presents specific revision proposals for government officials, etc., related to the general public and legislation. It displays social issues from user input by integrating AI, official laws and ordinances information, and the latest public opinion information, and identifies related laws and ordinances and presents revision proposals for laws and ordinances, etc.
  • Value created for society
    • By automating and streamlining the "one step ahead" stage from consensus building to actual legal reform, we will realize more effective laws and ordinances improvement proposals and speed up the resolution of social issues.
  • Novelty, etc.
    • APIs, RAGs, and topic clustering technologies are used to acquire the latest full text of the provisions of the e-Gov laws and ordinances APIs, and the APIs are used to present the problems of the laws and ordinances, the degree of deviation from the public opinion, points for revision, and revision proposals.
  • Auditor Comments
    • It is highly evaluated that it shows a consistent process from the incorporation of opinions to the bill to revise the law.
    • The fact that the generated AI is used to compare how far the public opinion and the text are from each other is a unique and wonderful approach.
    • In addition, I think that the strategy of how and to whom this system can be realized will be a key factor in the future, so I would like to see it further developed based on that point.

Legal Definition Finder (Team and Yusuke Momochi)

  • Screen shots of the development of the work (excerpted from the explanatory materials submitted by the team)
    A screen image of the award-winning Legal Definition Finder, with a search box at the top for laws, a search box in the middle for definitions, and results at the bottom of the screen.
  • Outline of the work
    • It is a work that provides a function to quickly read the definition regulations in national government officer for legal professionals such as laws and ordinances in charge of legal affairs, legal affairs staff of companies and lawyers.
    • Legal Definition Finder
  • Value created for society
    • The current situation is that the definition rules of the laws and ordinances are described only when the defined terms first appear, and it is not known where the definition rules are provided, and it takes unnecessary time and effort to search for the defined terms. By utilizing this work, the defined terms of each law provided by the "e-Gov laws and ordinances APIs" can be displayed instantly, and the above-mentioned unnecessary time and effort can be reduced.
  • Novelty, etc.
    • This work is innovative in that it intensively extracts and displays definitions in the articles by searching for laws and ordinances names.
  • Auditor Comments
    • The definition regulation is extremely important, and some national government officer spent a lot of time investigating the definition regulation and had a hard time. Therefore, it was excellent and highly evaluated that the definition regulation was clearly approached and solved.
    • The problem is clear and the solution is very easy to use.

Category award

Legal Affairs Efficiency Award
Legal AI Editor (Panda)
  • Screen shots of the development of the work (excerpted from the explanatory materials submitted by the team)
    The screen image of
  • Outline of the work
    • Works such as the "laws and ordinances AI," "Case AI," "Public Comment AI," and "Web Research AI," which provide functions for creating high-quality legal documents through cooperation between multiple AI and people with different abilities, expertise, and positions.
  • Value created for society
    • This work makes it possible to create legal documents while using the power of AI utilizing the latest digital technology such as laws and ordinances APIs and large-scale language models.
  • Novelty, etc.
    • The laws and ordinances APIs are used in the "laws and ordinances AI", a AI that uses RAG (Search Advanced Generation) to make expert remarks while quoting the actual laws and ordinances. laws and ordinances
  • Auditor Comments
    • This is a very creative work from 2025. The idea of an editor in which AI agents with respective strengths and human beings cooperate and discuss was very good.
    • It was similar to the work of administrative officials who gather opinions from various perspectives, and I felt that the AI of collecting cases was highly accurate. It can be used as a supplementary tool to make up for the lack of policy making and to accumulate cases.
Laws and ordinances Data Provision Award
Notice / Circular Lawtext Extended (Pseudo)
  • Screen shots of the development of the work (excerpted from the explanatory materials submitted by the team)
    A screen shot of the
  • Outline of the work
    • Defined an XML schema for notifications for laws and ordinances maintainers, and structured notifications from text documents to XML.
  • Value created for society
    • The open-source software " Lawtext " can convert laws and ordinances that conforms to the laws and ordinances standard XML schema into XML, but it can not convert notifications and notices into XML.
  • Novelty, etc.
    • This work is a continuation of Lawtext , a general-purpose, automated data-processing of public documents. It uses Lawtext to enhance the scalability of laws and ordinances.
  • Auditor Comments
    • This is a new and wonderful work in that it attempts to XMLize notifications and circulars that stipulate actual rules in the social field.
    • It is highly evaluated that it can be provided in a unified format against the current situation where there is no structured data of notifications and notices themselves.
Laws and ordinances Data Utilization Award
Building generation AI in compliance with the Building Standard Law (City Planning Law and Building Standard Law, automatic generation of the optimum building in compliance with the two laws in its own AI)
  • Screen shots of the development of the work (excerpted from the explanatory materials submitted by the team)
    A screen image of the work
  • Outline of the work
    • By simply clicking on a lot number on a map, a building suitable for that lot number (in compliance with the Building Standard Act) is automatically generated, and a plan view and a shadow map of the sun shadow regulation are also output. This work provides a building generation AI that enables real estate developers to instantly generate an optimal building that meets the Building Standard Act in order to estimate the value of the land and verify its feasibility.
  • Value created for society
    • The value of land is determined by what kind of building is built on it, but it requires a high level of expertise in building standards and building design to verify it. This work can instantly simulate the value of land and is expected to improve the transparency of real estate distribution.
  • Novelty, etc.
    • This work is innovative in that it reads the Building Standard Act from scratch and is equipped with a unique building generation AI that uses complex mathematical processing such as diagonal lines, shade and sky.
  • Auditor Comments
    • A mature work with complex back-end processing that captures real-world use cases.
    • It is also meaningful in that it automates the work done by experts manually and visualizes rules from documents, and has a great social impact.

Other works

List of works (PDF/7,659 kb) See from .

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