Global AI Initiative Database

The Law as Code approach aims to represent rules or legal texts in the form of formalized and executable logic-based rules, using methods of symbolic AI. Such a representation ensures transparency, explainability and predictability of the execution of the underlying regulations, and hence is especially suited for procedures of public administration. The Law as Code-initiative aims to create a basis for such an approach in the context of Austrian public administration.

Following the žLaw as Code-approach (or rules as code approach), several international initiatives aim to introduce transparent and explainable methods for the creation and execution of regulations and legal texts in public administration. Examples include initiatives in Canada, social benefit calculators in Barcelona or New Zealand, or a recently established research centre for Computational Law in Singapore. Advantages of this approach are in particular increased transparency and explainability of the computations and evaluations based on these regulations in public administration, as well as the possibility of automatized procedures based on the underlying logic-based formal rules using methods of symbolic Artificial Intelligence.The successfully completed žLaw as Code for procedures of public administration-initiative aimed to provide a basis for such an approach in the context of Austrian public administration. This included both a theoretical analysis of current approaches and their suitability in this context, as well as a proof of concept implementation of an end-to-end workflow. The workflow started with a tool for extracting a logic-based formal rule representation close to the logic programming paradigm from legal texts given in natural language, followed by a tool for viewing these rules, comparing them to the original texts and modifying the extracted formal rules where needed. The resulting rule base could then be used for evaluating business cases using a rule execution engine.When employed on a broader basis, the formulation of legal texts and regulations in a logic-based language as envisioned in this initiative would enable a high degree of automation of processes in public administration with transparent, explainable and predictable results. In addition, it would enable also a more comprehensive analysis of laws and regulations with respect to their mutual relations as well as possible overlaps and conflicts. Ideally, such a formal representation would be developed already in the law-making process itself, to ensure that the intent of the texts is captured exactly.Wherever possible, the initiative employed standardised representations and methods. Standards are a prerequisite for optimal cross-border cooperation between European Member States, companies and developers. The Austrian government therefore endorses and participates in the development of international standards and reference systems for symbolic AI programming languages such as ISO/IEC 13211-1:1995 (Prolog) which are needed to implement AI services reliably, and to ensure digital sovereignty and vendor independence.

Federal Chancellery of Austria, Directorate General for Digitalisation and E-Government