Pilot Project development under way

I’m pleased to report that last week we received our first funding commitment – from OPSI – sufficient to proceed in earnest with the first phase of development of the FreeLegalWeb Pilot Project.

At the core of FLW will be what we call the Citator – essentially linked data tables identifying and connecting everything we know about the law: both primary resources such as legislation, cases and other official documents, and secondary law resources such as publications and articles. Using the Citator we will be able to request data both internally from FLW and externally from the web via an API which will be made publicly available so that any external website can leverage that information.

In the UK OPSI is the key facilitator of public sector information policy, setting standards and providing a practical framework of best practice for opening up and encouraging the use of PSI. It also has direct responsibility for the publication (inter alia) of legislation and is advanced in its development of a new legislation website which will provide an API enabling direct addressing of legislation data and resources. Via the Citator FLW will both exploit the facilities the new legislation website offers and also help contribute to OPSI’s PSI policy agenda. On this basis OPSI is part-financing the development of the Citator.

A big thanks to John Sheridan at OPSI who has been a leading FLW supporter from the outset. Indeed it was he who first encouraged me to go public with the initiative last autumn.

We have some way to go in securing sufficient funds to commit to development of the full Pilot Project but are nevertheless proceeding with other aspects of development in the expectation that some of our other current funding prospects will come good.

Progress

A small group has been actively progressing the FreeLegalWeb agenda. Here’s an update on our progress:

Active people:

• With me, Robert Casalis de Pury and Harry Metcalfe are now jointly managing the project.
• Francis Davey is actively contributing to the development of the spec and content.
• Rudi Moffit is helping us develop and deliver our funding pitch.
• On the government side, Richard Stirling (Cabinet Office) and John Sheridan (OPSI) are facilitating the project via the POI agenda and have provided Rudi’s services.
• Thanks to William Flack, Nearly Legal, Joe Ury and Stephen Moore for their input as to content.
• Thanks also to all others who have contributed comments here and on the Google Group.

Development status:

A set of about pages and some pre-prototype visuals have been prepared to illustrate and prove concepts and help us develop the spec. Citator development is under way.

Data and content provision:

• The OPSI legislation API is near final.
• BAILII will be providing the judgments metadata we require.
• Stephen Moore of CaseCheck has agreed in principle to us syndicating all case summaries from CaseCheck (which are licensed on a CC by-nc-sa basis). Currently CaseCheck publishes about 4,000 (Scottish/UK) case summaries; these are to be complemented in April by about another 5,000 (E&W/UK) sourced from Law Brief Update.
• Francis Davey, Nearly Legal and William Flack are already involved re content for the Housing pilot. I will be pursuing others in this and other areas once we’ve finalised our pitch.

Current priorities are:

• Incorporate a Community Interest Company
• Complete the Funding Proposal
• Complete the Functional Spec

We should in the next few weeks be in a position to seriously tout for some funding and move this on.

Meeting 15/01/2009

6 attended the meeting to address organisational issues on 15/01/2009 at the MoJ meeting room kindly provided by John S and in the pub afterwards.

Thanks to those who attended.

We agreed the next steps required which are broadly:

• Set up a charitable organisation
• Set up an executive
• Develop a strategic road map
• Develop a pitch proposal for potential contributors / sponsors
• Develop the spec
• Develop a prototype incorporating Housing content

Some progress has already been made on all these fronts.

A fuller report and related documents will be posted shortly to the Google Group and decisions will be taken at an open meeting of supporters on a date tba.

BarCamp report

In London on 18 October 24 enthusiastic souls gave up their Saturday to share their ideas on how we might achieve our seemingly impossible task.

My intro attempted to define the project: in essence, better, joined-up, value-added access to the law via a) direct access to the law itself and b) expertly authored commentary; and to identify the main obstacles: which for me boil down to two: addressability of law sources and incentivising and “certifying” sufficiently expert contributions.

John Sheridan of OPSI then described what the government could do to support a project such as ours and the prospective merging of OPSI legislation and the SLD which will rationalise access. Joe Ury pointed to tools that could be applied to gain better access to BAILII resources and also clarified the murky issue of copyright in High Court judgments which stands in the way of fully open access to them.

Several barristers, solicitors and students contributed experiences and ideas, particularly as to incentivising others to contribute authoritative content.

Members of the TSO team contracted to OPSI gave us information on the OPSI programming interface being developed and several others of a technical bent described how lightweight technologies might be applied – in particular, several associated with the mySociety information democracy project who have already done great work with projects related to the cause such as TheyWorkForYou and WhatDoTheyKnow.

In the afternoon four discussion groups considered different aspects of the project in more detail:

John Sheridan led a group that considered the target audience, using as a starting point OPSI research on use of the OPSI legislation site. OPSI has profiled four typical classes of user: lawyers, public sector manager, informed layman and the “anti-user” whose attempt to address their problem via the site is entirely inappropriate.

Jeni Tennison of TSO worked with a group to refine OPSI’s proposed permanent URI scheme for legislation which will allow direct addressing of legislation down to the smallest fragment and which will also enable point-in-time queries.

Francis Davey led a group which came up with an ingenious proposed “eco-system” employing several modules: a Google Knol-type environment for authoring contributions (which would be owned by the author and could be syndicated back onto their own site), an authentication module; a Yahoo answers-type module; a legislation/case annotation module; and an API which would resolve references and provide a rich interface to the wider web. All these modules could be based on existing open source tools and shared legal information resources.

Harry Metcalfe’s group extended this discussion, considering several use case scenarios and how the service might meet their needs: practitioner, law librarian and informed user (all within scope) and ill-informed user (without). For example, the mother of a disabled child who had done some initial research and had sufficient direction to pursue her problem would find value; the ill-informed “pub” question would likely draw a blank. The group also discussed how potential authors might self-certify by subscribing to the rules of the “brand”.

At the closing session we agreed on key next steps. Apart from organisational issues, foremost amongst these is to address the question of funding.

We agreed those interested in getting their hands dirty would meet again mid-January.

[Participants please point out any inaccuracies in the above.]

Google Group

I’ve set up a FreeLegalWeb Google Group for development discussion. Request to join if you want to contribute rather than just spectate.

The blog remains the platform for posting news and public discussion.

BarCamp follow up

Thanks to all 24 who participated in Saturday’s FreeLegalWeb BarCamp. I think we made great progress and are fired up to take this further quickly.

Here’s what happens next:

Write-ups. Would all those who presented or led discussions, please prepare a summary. Email me nickholmes [at] infolaw.co.uk or publish on your blog/site and post a link in the comments. I will post a report on a new page, linking to all.

Development groups. Several smaller groups will be formed to develop different aspects of the project. A post about this will follow soon.

Email list. An email list will be set up which will be the main communication channel for development. Details follow.

Next BarCamp. BarCamp FreeLegalWeb2 will be on Saturday 17 January. Details in due course on a new page.

BarCamp timetable

Tomorrow, 18 October!

Arrive at the Adelphi Room, Royal Society of Arts, 8 John Adam Street, London WC2N 6EZ by 09:45 for preliminaries (you’re welcome any time from 09:00)

The sessions will kick off at 10:00 prompt.

Lunch 13:00; Close 17:00; presentations and breakouts in between!

An up to date list of participants is on the BarCamp page.

BarCamp arrangements

It is now just over two weeks till the BarCamp. We already have a good number of participants, but more can readily be accommodated and will be most welcome – please signup on the BarCamp page which has full up-to-date details.

It is expected that all participants will (briefly) present their ideas on how the Free Legal Web can be developed, so please prepare something beforehand. Facilities will include wi-fi access and a back-lit screen, as well as flip charts of course. It will help me to know in advance what aspect of the project your presentation will cover – so please email me with this info or leave a comment on this post.

I’m still hoping for a sponsor for a light sandwich lunch, so if your employer has loose purse strings I’d be delighted to hear.

I will be posting further relevant detail and will attempt to email all patrticipants before the event, but in the unlikely event that you can no longer attend, please do advise.

Progress?

Clearly not much progress of late – in large part because, shortly after launching this initiative, I went off on holiday. Still there and still connected of course, but have found it difficult to work up the requisite impetus.

Thanks to those who have already signed up to the Barcamp and/or posted comments to the blog. But we do need more people to put their heads above the parapet, to express their views and hopefully to participate in the Barcamp.

I will be working on this on my return to normality, but it’s not all up to me folks; that won’t work. This is a group effort. Please do contact those who you know to have an interest in the agenda but who have not yet made themselves known on this blog. Check the Barcamp page and if you’re not already listed as a participant sign up to participate (if you can) via the comments. And please do comment on any of the posts so we get a better feel for divergent opinions on the issues.

Barcamp signup

All – It’s important you make clear in your comments on the Barcamp page if you are signing up to the Barcamp – ie confirming your attendance (and participation). Something like “Count me in” or “I’ll be there” is clear! Offers of help etc may be ambiguous. Additional comments and questions relating to the Barcamp are of course welcome, and especially offers to help organise it or sponsor lunch or any kit we may require.