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Law × Digital Workshop

On Friday, March 8, 2024, we held the "law × Digital Workshop" to learn about the mechanism of law and the basics of development API so that even people who are not familiar with the law field can services and tools that use law data. law

1. Overview of the Meeting

Digital Agency is working to improve the "law API," which provides data on laws, government and ministerial ordinances, with the aim of developing industry, technology and policy planning by utilizing law and other data. We aim to improve it in fiscal 2024. In order to collect needs for improving the "law API," and to promote the creation of business in development and Legal Tech, legal office support tools using law and other data, we held a workshop with the following contents.

  • Explanation of the mechanism of law and the basis of law API so that even people who are not familiar with the development field can start law of services and tools using law data
  • Sample code using law API development Experience Event
  • Introduction to the actual situation of "legal affairs" and efforts of "law × digital"

It was a hybrid of face-to-face and online participation, and more than 200 people participated in total. In addition, we invited questions and comments using a web form during the event, received many questions and comments from the participants, and responded and introduced them during the workshop.

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2. Report on each program

[Part1] Introduction of law × Digital initiatives: 10:40 to 11:00

Mr. Yamauchi (Digital Agency) explained the history of the Digital Legal Working Group , efforts to promote the utilization of digitalization and law data for legal affairs, experiments on legal affairs assistance using law API and generative AI, and an outline of the "Digital Legal Roadmap" for the future of law × Digital.

Please see Materials law and law Video law for basic information on the mechanism of and API (text).

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[Part 2] Introduction to the actual situation of legal affairs: 11:00 to 12:00

Four officials with experience in legal affairs, such as drafting laws, held a panel discussion and introduced the actual situation of legal affairs.
(Speaker)

  • Mr. Takashi Gaari (Attorney, Digital Agency)
  • Mr. Kenjiro Taniguchi (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications)
  • Yuri Ishii (FSA graduate, Digital Agency)
  • Yuta SASSA (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications)

Below, we introduce the panel discussion for each discussion topic.

Topic: Overview of Legal Affairs

At the beginning, Mr. Gaari commented on the overall flow of law planning, saying, "Legal affairs refers to the overall affairs of law, etc., such as planning, examination, and investigation. In law, planning proceeds in the order of' policy examination,'' preparation of materials,' and' examination of bills.' Since modification work occurs depending on the results of' examination of bills,' the processes of' preparation of materials' and' examination of bills' are repeated, and finally, the procedures for promulgation by official gazettes are performed."

In particular, Mr. Gayu explained, "In law, especially in the drafting of laws, it is necessary to pass through the deliberation of the National Assembly. Therefore, after the bill examination is completed, it is submitted to the Cabinet, and after the Cabinet decision is made, it is submitted to the National Assembly, and when it is passed through the Diet deliberation, it is finally promulgated. Compared to Cabinet Orders and Prefectural Ordinances, there are more processes until the promulgation, and there are more stakeholders, so there are many adjustments in the drafting process. Accordingly, it is necessary to prepare more materials than Cabinet Orders and Prefectural Ordinances, such as materials for examination and materials for submission to the National Assembly, and to check all of them by visual inspection for layout, format, typographical errors, transcription errors, etc. Due to the nature of such work, the burden on employees involved in legal affairs is increasing, and it is considered that there is a high need for efficiency by of digitalization Legal Affairs."

Gayu, a lawyer who served as a facilitator, is seen speaking.

After that, from the perspective of the content of the policy, Mr. Taniguchi mentioned, "The' Policy Review' before the process of preparing materials is important. The Policy Review is at the stage of institutional design, where we consider what kind of provisions exist at present, what kind of purpose and purpose we would like to change them to."
Mr. Taniguchi described it as a "creative work" in that it is truly an essential part of law planning, discussing how the enforcement of the law can affect the rights and obligations of the people.

Topic: The Complexity of Materials Produced in Legal Affairs

First of all, there was a topic about the old / new balance sheet.
Mr. Gayu explained, "After repeating the policy review, the next step is to prepare materials. The first material to be prepared is called the' New and Old Comparison Table.' As a result of the partial revision, the current' old' pre-revision text will be rewritten into the' new' after amendment text in a two column table format."

Next, the topic shifted to the so-called "Anbun (Kaibun)."
Mr. Gayu explained about the draft (revised text), "For example, if the character' AAA' in Article 1 of a certain law is revised to' BBB,' the operation of the character' AAA' in Article 1 is revised to' BBB'' is described in the draft (revised text). The draft (revised text) that performs such operation of the character will be submitted to the Diet as a partial revision bill and will be subject to deliberation."

Mr. Taniguchi of Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is shown in the film.

Furthermore, Mr. Gayu mentioned the difficulty of creating a draft (revised text), saying, "It is said that the draft (revised text) has advantages in that it is possible to pinpoint the target part that you want to revise and uniquely specify what kind of change and effect you want to produce in the text, and that the amount of text can be reduced compared to the old and new comparison tables. On the other hand, if you make a mistake in writing the revised text by even one character, it will be an unintended revision."

In addition, Mr. Taniguchi pointed out that "Depending on the text, there are difficulties such as being required to use a special notation (*) at the time of editing." He then introduced an example in which "When multiple ministries and agencies were dividing the work to revise the text, a single line gap occurred in my editing part, and I kept calling staff members of other ministries and agencies to reflect the page gap."

*As an example of special notation, the following procedure may be used.

  1. When a part of a text in a tabular form is revised, the ruled line of the table itself may be described by dividing it in the middle of a line as if it were a part of the text, and the connection before and after the division may be adjusted manually (see Fig. 1). However, this method is not a normal description method for word processing software, and therefore, it is necessary to manually reflect the deviation of characters each time characters are added or deleted.
  2. The figure in the lower grid (see Fig. 2) shows what kind of work actually occurs in the case where a modification to add a new character "●" is added to the table showing the content of the after amendment during the creation of the draft (revised text). In this case, the character "" is added to the place indicated by the arrow in ①, the character "ru" is added to the place indicated by the arrow in ②, the character "" is added to the place indicated by the arrow in ③, and so on. It is necessary to repeatedly modify the characters by the number of rows affected by the deviation, one by one, by the addition of "●". In this way, every time an employee in charge of legal affairs adds or deletes a character in the table, he or she manually modifies the position of the character and the ruled line of the table one by one.

(Figure 1)
Image of the editing screen of a word processing software in which vertical text is displayed over two pages, the right page and the left page. The document being edited has a table showing the contents of the revision, and a line feed occurs in the middle of the table at the bottom of the page. The line feed explains that

(Figure 2)
Editing screen image when

Finally, in addition to the "New and Old Comparison Table" and the draft (revised text), we moved on to the topic of the need to prepare various materials for consideration within the government and as final public materials.

Mr. Gayu explained about the materials prepared by the government, "For example, in the case of the' Bill to Partially Amend the Basic Act on digital society Formation, etc. to Promote regulatory reform to Form digital society' enacted in the ordinary Diet session in 2023, (1) Draft and Reasons (page 74), (2) Comparative Table of Old and New Textbooks (about page 170), (3) Explanatory Materials (about page 250), (4) List of Examples (about page 50), and (5) Reference Materials (about page 1,120) were prepared as materials to be examined within the government. As for (1) and (2), (6) Outline (page 32), (7) Reference Materials (page 72), and (8) Outline Materials (Punch Drawings) were prepared as same as above."

Next, Mr. Taniguchi explained about the Book of Examples, "At the stage of finalizing the wording of the article, there is also the work of examining' Examples,' which are similar expressions in existing law. For example, if the same word is used in a different sense in a different law, it may cause confusion in the interpretation of law, so it is necessary to specify it by following the wording of existing law so that it does not contradict existing law. The material that summarizes these examples is ④' Examples.'"

As a comparison with the case of the revision of a Cabinet Order or a Ministerial Ordinance, Mr. Ishii explained, "In many cases, a revision method called the' old and new comparison table method' is used instead of a revised text in the Ministerial Ordinance, and the Ministerial Ordinance revision is made by the old and new comparison table without writing a revised text."

Mr. Ishii of Digital Agency is in the film to explain.

Topic: Looking ahead

Regarding the materials to be prepared, Mr. Sassa looked back and said, "Legal affairs require a lot of work, and the more people and law involved, the more difficult the work. On the other hand, it is a worthwhile work in which the fun of rule-making can be felt. Among the documents to be prepared in legal affairs, I have the most affection for the' explanatory materials' that explain the necessity of policies and the system design."

It shows Mr. Sassa of Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications explaining.

Mr. Gayu also said, "Legal affairs seems to be a special area, and I felt that it has something in common with document work at private sector companies."

In the future, it is expected that the knowledge of digitalization in other areas will be utilized for digitalization of legal affairs, and that digitalization of legal affairs will lead to digitalization in other areas.

[Part 3] Basic Knowledge of law and law API (Metadata Edition): From 13:30

Mr. Yamauchi gave an overview of the law API (Version1), which is currently being officially provided, followed by a basic understanding of the law mechanism required to use the law API, including the type of law, law ID, law revision and history, and finally, the development method with code.

Please see law Materials law and Materials law and law Video law for basic information on the mechanism of and API (text).

The Yamauchi clan in Digital Agency explains in the film.

[Part 4] Basic knowledge of law mechanism and law API (law text): From 14:45 to 15:15

As a basic understanding of the mechanism of law necessary for using the law API, Mr. Yamauchi explained the outline of the mechanism of the text structure of law, and the "law XML," which is the format of the text of law that can be obtained by the law API and the law search. Finally, he demonstrated the development method with sample code using specific text as an example. e-Gov

Please see the Materials law and law Video law for basic information on the mechanism of and API (text).

[Part 5] law API Prototype Explanation: 15:15 to 15:45

Regarding the "law API Prototype," which is a development for upgrading the law API, Mr. Yamauchi explained the improvements compared to the law API (Version1), which is currently officially provided, and how to use it in the open testing, which was held until March 20.

In addition, regarding the law API Hackathon held in November 2023 using the law API prototype, we introduced the submitted works and introduced the idea of the service law using development data.

[Part 6] law Workshop using development Database: 16:00 to 17:00

As an opportunity to experience law using the basic knowledge of law API and development mechanism explained in [Part 3] to [Part 5], the workshop participants also worked on development, a sample application using law API, using the currently officially provided law API (Version1) and the "API Prototype" development for upgrading the law API. After the development, Mr. Yamauchi explained examples of correct answers to the code and points to be noted. law

3. Materials

[Part 1] Explanatory Materials

[Part 3] [Part 4] Explanatory Materials

In addition, please note the following points when using it.

  • On the e-Gov law Retrieval Site, it is published as a demonstration version (alpha version) rather than an official version, and contains experimental content. Therefore, we aim to improve the content of the posted materials and publish them as an official version in the future. If you have any concerns or opinions about the format, content, and usability of the materials, please contact the law Data Documentation Comment Registration Form .
  • Unless otherwise noted, the contents of the alpha version do not represent the official views of the government. In addition, some of the expressions and business details have been simplified so that they are easy to understand for people other than experts in the law field, and some of the details differ from the actual business. Please understand in advance.
  • Please note that the contents of the alpha version may not always be the latest. In addition, the URL of the alpha version may be changed or deleted without notice.
  • Please note that the use of the sample code in the alpha version is at your own risk and that you will not be responsible for any losses that may arise from the use of the sample code.

4. Video

A video of the event is available on YouTube. (Posted on May 28, 2024)

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