Legislative knowledge base systems for public administration - Some practical issues

Abstract

This paper looks at three aspects of the use of knowledge base systems which model provisions of legislation: The first part of the paper suggests that knowledge base systems can be viewed simply as a means of changing the medium in which legislation is presented to administrative decision-makers for their consideration. When viewed as a delivery vehicle for a body of rules, rather than as a reasoning decision-making tool, knowledge base systems which reliably model legislation offer major benefits in the administration of complex legislation. The second part of the paper looks at some of the practical issues which arise when building a production version of a large-scale knowledge base which models legislation. We suggest a methodology, which we use in constructing and maintaining large-scale systems. The issues discussed in this section have profound implications for the selection of the tools used to build large knowledge bases from legislation: the tool must provide facilities which allow reliable methods of construction, verification and maintenance. Finally, we suggest that generalist shells are usually structurally inappropriate for the development of large expert system applications in the legal domain. As has happened in other domains, the legal domain must develop domainspecific tools for the creation of large knowledge base systems.