The POWER-Light Version: Improving Legal Quality under Time Pressure

Abstract

The Dutch Tax and Customs Administration conducts a research program Program for an Ontology-based Working Environment for Rules and regulations (POWER). In this research program that was started in 1999 and is sponsored by the European Commission (E-POWER) since September 2001 an ICT-based methodology has been developed that enables the formalization of legal sources and finally the design of legal knowledge-based systems. The fullscale POWER-method however although much less time consuming than normal software design methodologies is still too elaborate especially if we want to apply this method in legal drafting or policy making processes. We therefore created the POWER-light version, a variant of the POWER-method that helps to improve legal quality and can be used with relatively little effort and in short time. Although the POWER-light version lacks many of the advantages of the regular POWER-method (e.g. its verification, simulation and knowledge-based component generation abilities) it offers a first step. The POWER-light approach offers the tools to get the best possible legal quality given the time restrictions.