Model the structure of legislation

Modeling legislation involves firstly determining what parts of the legislation to model, and then using a combination of indentation and structural elements to model the in scope structure of the legislation. Modeling legislation is typically done using Word rule documents.

What do you want to do?

Use the Ignore and Commentary styles to identify parts of the legislation that won't be modeled

Use structural elements to model legislative structure

Use keywords to customize automatic structural attributes

Model conditions without structural rule elements

Use Heading styles to organize rules

Use the Ignore and Commentary styles to identify parts of the legislation that won't be modeled

The scoping phase of rulebase construction requires deciding which areas of the rules are relevant to the application and the level of detail to which each area should be modeled.

The outcome of this analysis is captured in a Scoping Document. The Scoping Document consists of a copy of the source material marked with comments and coloring to indicate areas which will and will not be included in the source rules. The following styles should be used in this phase:

Comments and footnotes can also be added to justify each scoping decision. This assists review and rulebase maintenance.

Use structural elements to model legislative structure

The structural elements in legislation (section, paragraph, subparagraph etc) or policy (guidance, chapter, criterion) can be captured in rules.

During compiling, Oracle Policy Modeling will automatically generate structural attributes based on the numbering system used in your rules. The default form of these automatic attributes is "section x is satisfied".

A single tab character ( ) is used before any conclusion or condition to define structural rule elements. You cannot use the tab character anywhere in your rules except for this purpose.

 

4the claimant is eligible for living allowances if

(a)both

the claimant is living alone and

either

(i) both

the claimant is aged over 65 and

the claimant is a man

or

(ii) both

the claimant is aged over 65 and

the claimant is a woman

 

Compiling this rule will result in the following structural attributes being automatically generated:

section 4 is satisfied

section 4(a) is satisfied

section 4(a)(i) is satisfied

section 4(a)(ii) is satisfied

 

In any transformation to Oracle Policy Modeling format, the representation of structural elements should isomorphically model the structural elements from the source material. Altering the numbering conventions will make it impossible to cross-reference your rules against the original material.

It is possible to customize these automatic attributes to more accurately reflect the source material you are modeling (see below).

Use keywords to customize automatic structural attributes

Attributes of the form "section x is satisfied" do not always provide a satisfactory reference to the source material you are modeling, so Oracle Policy Modeling provides a number of ways to customize these automatic attributes.

Default Structural Element

You can specify a default structural element, such as "regulation", "ruling", or "provision" in your rules to override "section", which is the default element used if none is specified.

This needs to be declared in your Word document using the following syntax:

Default_structural_element[Regulation ]

This results in automatic structural elements in the following form:

Regulation 1 is satisfied

Regulation 1(a) is satisfied

To add this, you must use the Configuration style above the rules which are to use the new element (click on the Configuration button on the Oracle Policy Modeling toolbar to set this style).

You can add multiple configuration lines in your document to customize sections of your document.

You may also wish to add the name of the instrument, or source document for greater clarity in your source rules, for example:

Default_structural_element[Tax Regulations 1996 regulation ]

NOTE: This configuration setting is "space-sensitive". If you don’t add a space after the element, one will not be added.

Default Structural Global Proof

You can specify a default structural global proof, such as "applies" or "has been met" to replace the default "is satisfied" for global structural attributes using the following syntax:

Default_structural_globalproof[^x applies]

This results in automatic structural elements in the following form:

Section 2 applies

Section 23(a) applies

Default Structural Entity Proof

You can specify a default structural entity proof, such as "applies to" or "has been met" to replace the default "is satisfied" for entity-level structural attributes using the following syntax:

Default_structural_entityproof[^x applies to ^entity]

This results in automatic structural entities in the following form:

Section 2 applies to the claimant

Section 23(a) applies to the claimant

NOTE: This will apply to all entities in the text following the declaration.

Ignore

Your rules can be configured to ignore specific word combinations.

The following syntax will ignore propositions in the form "this paragraph is satisfied ":

Ignore[this paragraph is satisfied]

This is useful for providing placeholder text in rules, so that they make sense when read from within the Oracle Policy Modeling document, but extra attributes and rule layers are not created.

Replace

Your rules can be configured so that certain word combinations will be replaced with automatic structural terms. This is used in conjunction with the substitution token "^x". The syntax is:

Replace[<text to be replaced>, <replacement text including structural element ^x>]

Replace Entity

The Replace syntax can also be applied to entity-level attributes. This is used in conjunction with the substitution tokens "^x" and "^entity". The syntax is:

Replace[<text to be replaced>, <replacement text including structural elements ^x and ^entity>]

Model conditions without structural rule elements

We often model conditions in a rule that do not reflect structural elements within the rule section that we are modeling. The following are some examples of where this occurs:

 

Oracle Policy Modeling format deals with this by using structural elements where they are explicit, and otherwise by representing additional conditions without structural elements. The following example illustrates this:

 

38 the company is an eligible company if

(a) the company is registered in Australia and

(b) the company's annual turnover is less than five million dollars and

(c) the company is a private company and

the company is not disqualified under section 39

 

This example shows a situation in which one section has three paragraphs, but another section forms an implicit additional premise, that must be added to the rule. In this case, a,b,c and the additional premise need to be true in order to prove that 38 is true.

Use Heading styles to organize rules

Headings should be used to break your rules into discrete, manageable sections. There are three heading styles in the Oracle Policy Modeling template in Word. These can be applied by using the Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3 styles in the Oracle Policy Modeling toolbar.

When Oracle Policy Modeling compiles your rules, it automatically places rules within folders and sub-folders based on your headings and their corresponding levels.