Open and Accessible Legal and Legislative Documents
There are fundamental issues associated with accessibility of legal and legislative documents in the Republic of Zambia. Masson and Tahir report that the barriers associated with providing open and accessible legal information relies on two factors: ease of access and the capacity to interpret the documents (Masson & Tahir, 2016). The National Assembly of Zambia is mandated by law to “To execute the legislative, oversight, representative and budgetary functions for enhanced democratic governance” (About National Assembly, n.d.). In the 2022-2026 strategic plan (National Assembly of Zambia, 2021), the “Strategic Objective 2.2” aims to “Enhance Public Perceptions of the National Assembly” by making parliament open and accessible to the public and, additionally strengthening ICT platforms for public engagement. This project is about the analysis of legal and legislative documents using Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques; and, additionally, designing and implementing usable software tools for facilitating ease of access to such documents. Classic contemporary effective software tools that have the potential to facilitate ease of access include AI-based tools for automatically summarising legal documents such as Acts of Parliament. Additionally, other example tools include data management tools for aggregating and indexing such documents.
Project Members
Project Publications
Kambunji, Martin, Emmanuel Phiri, Castridah Nachibinga, and Ernest Sinyangwe. 2023. “Automatic Summarisation Of Zambian Legislative Documents”. Lusaka, Zambia: University of Zambia. |
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