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Laws and ordinances × Digital Workshop

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On Friday, March 8, 2024, we held the "laws and ordinances × Digital Workshop" to learn about the structure of laws and ordinances and the basics of laws and ordinances APIs so that even those who are not familiar with the laws and ordinances field can develop services and tools that utilize laws and ordinances.

1. Summary of the Meeting

Digital Agency is working on upgrading the laws and ordinances APIs, which provide information on laws, government and ministerial ordinances, etc., with the aim of developing industries, technologies, and policy-making through the use of laws and ordinances APIs, etc., and aims to renovate them in fiscal 2024. In order to gather information on the needs for upgrading the laws and ordinances APIs, and to promote the development of legal affairs support tools and legal tech business creation using laws and ordinances APIs, workshops were held on the following topics:

  • Explanation of the mechanism of laws and ordinances and the basis of laws and ordinances APIs so that even those who are not familiar with the laws and ordinances field can start developing services and tools that utilize laws and ordinances Database
  • Hands-On experience with sample code development using laws and ordinances APIs
  • Introduction of the actual situation of "legal affairs" and "laws and ordinances × Digital" initiatives

More than 200 people participated in the workshop, which was a hybrid of in-person and online participation. We also invited questions and comments using a web form during the workshop, and received many questions and comments from participants, which were answered and introduced during the workshop.

In the video, he is seen

2. Report on each program

[Part1] Introduction of laws and ordinances and Digital Initiatives: 10:40 to 11:00

Mr. Yamauchi (Digital Agency) gave an explanation on the history of the Digital Legislation Working Group , initiatives to promote the use of digitalisation and laws and ordinances data in legal affairs, experiments on legal affairs support using laws and ordinances APIs and generated AI, and an overview of the "Digital Legislation Roadmap" for the future of laws and ordinances and digital.

Regarding the introduction of laws and ordinances × digital initiatives, please see Materials and Video .

It shows

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

Four staff members with experience in legislative affairs, such as drafting legislation, held a panel discussion and introduced the actual situation of legislative affairs.
(Speakers)

  • Takashi Gayu (Attorney, Digital Agency)
  • The Kenjiro TANIGUCHI clan (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications)
  • Yuri Ishii (from Financial Services Agency, Digital Agency)
  • The Suketa SASSA clan (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications)

Below, we will introduce the panel discussion for each discussion topic of the day.

Topic: Overview of Legal Affairs

At the beginning, Mr. Gayu gave an explanation on the overall process of drafting the laws and ordinances, saying, "Legislative affairs refers to the overall work of drafting, examining, and investigating the laws and ordinances, etc. In the laws and ordinances, drafting proceeds in the order of' policy consideration,'' preparation of materials,' and' examination of bills.' Of these, since the results of' examination of bills' lead to revision work, the processes of' preparation of materials' and' examination of bills' are repeated, and finally, procedures for promulgation by the official gazette are carried out."

In particular, Mr. Gayu explained, "In laws and ordinances, especially in the drafting of laws, it is necessary to pass the bills through the Diet's deliberations. Therefore, after the bill is reviewed, it is submitted to the Cabinet, approved by the Cabinet, submitted to the Diet, and finally promulgated when it is passed through the Diet's deliberations. Compared to Cabinet Orders and Cabinet Orders, there are many steps before the bill is promulgated, and there are many stakeholders, so there are many adjustments in the drafting process. As a result, it is necessary to prepare more materials than Cabinet Orders and Cabinet Orders, such as materials for review and those to be submitted to the Diet, and to visually check the layout, format, typographical errors, transcription errors, etc. for all of them. Due to the nature of such work, the burden on officials involved in legal affairs is increasing, and it is considered highly necessary to improve the efficiency of legal affairs in by digitalisation ."

Lawyer Gayu, who acted as a facilitator, is seen speaking.

Subsequently, from the perspective of policy content, Mr. Taniguchi said, "The' policy review' before the process of preparing materials is important. The policy review is the stage of system design, in which we consider what kind of provisions exist at present and what kind of purport and purpose we would like to change them to."
Mr. Taniguchi described it as "creative work" in that it was an essential part of laws and ordinances's plan to discuss how the implementation of the law could affect the rights and obligations of citizens.

Topic: The Complexity of Materials Produced in Legal Affairs

First, we talked about Comparative table of the current and amended provisions.
Mr. Gayu explained, "After repeating the policy review, the next step is to prepare materials. The first material to be prepared is a material called' Comparative table of the current and amended provisions.' As a result of the partial revision, how the current' old' pre-revision provisions will be rewritten into the revised' new' provisions will be shown in a two row table format."

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

Mr. Taniguchi of Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, who explains, is shown.

In addition, Mr. Gayu mentioned the difficulty of preparing draft (revised) sentences, saying, "It is said that draft (revised) sentences have advantages in that they allow you to pinpoint the parts you want to revise and uniquely identify the changes and effects you want to cause to the sentences, and in that they require less sentences than Comparative table of the current and amended provisions. On the other hand, if you make even one mistake in writing the revised sentences, you will end up with unintended revisions."

In addition, Mr. Taniguchi pointed out that "some articles are difficult because they require special notation (*) when they are edited." He then introduced an example in which "when several ministries and agencies were working separately to revise the articles, a one line gap occurred in one's own editing section, and I kept calling the staff of other ministries and agencies to reflect the page gap."

*As an example of a special notation, you might use the following procedure.

  1. When revising a part of a tabular text, the ruled line of the table itself may be described by dividing it in the middle of the line as if it were a part of the text, and the connection before and after the division may be adjusted by hand (see Figure 1). However, this method is not a normal description method for word processing software, so it is necessary to manually reflect the deviation of characters each time a character is added or deleted.
  2. The figure in the grid below (see Figure 2) shows what would actually happen if, during the preparation of the draft (revised text), an amendment was made to add a single character, "●", to the table that shows the content of the revised text. In this case, the characters "do," "ru," and "tsuki" would be added to the points indicated by the arrows ①, ②, and ③, respectively. In this case, it would be necessary to repeat the amendment, one by one, by the number of lines affected by the addition of "●." In this way, each time a person in charge of legal affairs adds or deletes a character in the table, he or she manually corrects the position of the character and the ruled line of the table one by one.

(Figure 1)
An image of the editing screen of a word-processing program showing two pages of vertical text, one on the right and one on the left. The document being edited contains a table showing revisions, and there is a line feed in the middle of the table at the bottom of the page. The line feed explains that

(Figure 2)
An image of the editing screen when

Finally, in addition to the "Comparative table of the current and amended provisions" and the revised draft, there was a discussion on the need to prepare a variety of documents for consideration within the Government and for final publication.

Mr. Gayu explained about the materials prepared by the Government, "For example, in the case of the' Bill for Partial Revision of the regulatory reform to Promote the Basic Act on the Formation of a Digital Society to Form a Digital Society' enacted in ordinary Diet in 2023, the following materials were prepared for consideration within the Government: ① Draft Text and Reasons (74 pages), ② Comparative table of the current and amended provisions (approximately 170 pages), ③ Explanatory Materials (approximately 250 pages), ④ List of Examples (approximately 50 pages), and ⑤ Reference Articles (approximately 1,120 pages). As for the published materials, for ① and ②, the same as above, ⑥ Outline (32 pages), ⑦ Reference Articles (72 pages), and ⑧ Summary Materials (ponchi-e) were prepared."

Next, Mr. Taniguchi explained about the collection of examples, saying, "At the stage of working out the specific wording of the articles, there is also the task of examining' examples,' which are similar expressions in the existing laws and ordinances. For example, if the same word is used in a different meaning in a different laws and ordinances, the interpretation of the laws and ordinances will be confused, so it is necessary to follow the existing laws and ordinances's wording so as not to contradict the existing laws and ordinances. The material that summarizes these examples is' Examples'."

As a comparison with revisions to government ordinances and ministerial ordinances, he explained, "In most cases, ministerial ordinances adopt a revision method called the' Comparative table of the current and amended provisions method' rather than a revised text, and amendments to ministerial ordinances are made in Comparative table of the current and amended provisions without writing a revised text."

Mr. Ishii of Digital Agency is shown explaining.

Topic: Looking forward

Looking back on the documents he prepared, Mr. Sassa said, "Legal affairs involve a lot of work, and the more people and laws and ordinances involved, the more difficult it is. On the other hand, it is a challenging task that makes rule-making interesting. Of all the documents prepared in legal affairs, I am most attached to the' explanatory materials' that explain the necessity of policies and the design of systems."

It shows the Sassa clan in Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications who explains.

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

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

[Part 3] Mechanism of laws and ordinances and basic knowledge of laws and ordinances APIs (metadata edition): from 13:30

Dr. Yamauchi gave an overview of the laws and ordinances APIs (Version1) that are now officially available, followed by a basic understanding of the laws and ordinances mechanism required to use the laws and ordinances APIs, including the types of laws and ordinances, laws and ordinances IDs, revisions and history of laws and ordinances, and finally a code-based development method.

Regarding the mechanism of laws and ordinances and basic information on laws and ordinances APIs (metadata edition), please see the Materials and Video .

The Yamauchi clan in Digital Agency is shown explaining.

[Part 4] Basic information on the mechanism of laws and ordinances and laws and ordinances APIs (laws and ordinances text edition): 14:45-15:15

As a basic understanding of the mechanism of laws and ordinances required to use the laws and ordinances APIs, Mr. Yamauchi gave an overview of the mechanism of laws and ordinances's text structure, etc., and explained "laws and ordinances XML", a format of laws and ordinances text that can be obtained by laws and ordinances APIs and e-Gov search. Finally, he demonstrated the development method using specific text examples and sample code. laws and ordinances

For the mechanism of laws and ordinances and basic information on laws and ordinances APIs (laws and ordinances text edition), please see Materials and Video .

[Part 5] laws and ordinances API prototype explanation: 15:15-15:45

Dr. Yamauchi explained the "laws and ordinances APIs Prototype," which was developed to advance the laws and ordinances APIs, including the improvements compared to the currently officially available laws and ordinances APIs (Version1) and how to use it in the public test held until March 20.

At the laws and ordinances APIs Hackathon held in November 2023 using laws and ordinances APIs prototypes, submitted works were introduced and ideas for service development using laws and ordinances APIs were introduced.

[Part 6] laws and ordinances Development Workshop: 16:00 to 17:00

From [Part 3] to [Part 5], as an opportunity to experience the development using the mechanism of laws and ordinances and the basic knowledge of laws and ordinances APIs that were explained, the workshop participants also worked on the development of a sample app using laws and ordinances APIs, using each of the laws and ordinances APIs (Version1) that are currently officially provided and the "laws and ordinances APIs prototype" that was developed for the enhancement of laws and ordinances APIs. After the development, Mr. Yamauchi explained the correct examples of the code and points to note.

3. Materials

[Part 1] Explanatory materials

[Part 3] [Part 4] Explanatory materials

In addition, please note the following points when using.

  • On the e-Gov laws and ordinances search site, it is not an official version but a demonstration version (alpha version) and includes experimental contents. Therefore, in the future, we will improve the contents of the posted materials and aim to release it as an official version. If you have any points of awareness or comments on the format, contents, and usability of the materials, please send them to laws and ordinances Data Documentation Registration Form .
  • Unless otherwise noted, the contents of the alpha version do not represent the official views of the Government of Japan. In addition, in order to make it easier for those who are not experts in the field of laws and ordinances to understand, some of the expressions and business contents have been simplified, and there are some differences from the actual business. Please note in advance that the contents of the alpha version do not represent the official views of the Government of Japan.
  • Please note that the contents of the α version may not always be up to date. In addition, the URL of the α version may be changed or deleted without notice.
  • Use of the sample code described in the α version is at your own risk. In the unlikely event that the use of the sample code causes any disadvantage, please note that we do not accept any responsibility.

4. Video

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

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