The Digital Agenda reform which ratified for the Italian legislation the idea of open data is starting to bring results and this time it happened to judiciary data.
At the end of March on the official website of the Constitutional Court an "experimental" open data section (with all the data of the Court are published in XML format) has finally appeared.
The published data include:
Somebody will say: "hey, there is no copyright on verdicts!". Sure, we all agree. But if verdicts are printed on paper and stored in the dusty folders of the courts, how can we make them really open and reusable? Having a digitized entire dataset available is a big step. And remember that in Europe we also have the so complicated database right.
We should greet this decision as an excellent example for all the main Italian courts: the major courts (Court of Cassation and State Council) and maybe also the biggest local courts (Milan, Rome, Naples...).
At the end of March on the official website of the Constitutional Court an "experimental" open data section (with all the data of the Court are published in XML format) has finally appeared.
The published data include:
- The archive of all the verdicts (about 18 thousand texts from 1956 to present);
- The archive of the maxims;
- The identity records of the Constitutional Judges, with the dates of oath, cessation and a brief biographical note;
- The rules pending before the Constitutional Cour.
Somebody will say: "hey, there is no copyright on verdicts!". Sure, we all agree. But if verdicts are printed on paper and stored in the dusty folders of the courts, how can we make them really open and reusable? Having a digitized entire dataset available is a big step. And remember that in Europe we also have the so complicated database right.
We should greet this decision as an excellent example for all the main Italian courts: the major courts (Court of Cassation and State Council) and maybe also the biggest local courts (Milan, Rome, Naples...).
__________________________________
Read the Italian version | Read the Spanish version.
Commenti