IST-2004-027655
ESTRELLA European project for Standardised Transparent Representations in order to Extend Legal Accessibility Specific Targeted Research Project Information Society Technologies
Press Release
Due date of deliverable: Actual submission date:
Start date of project: 1 January 2006
January 2006
Duration: 30 months
University of Amsterdam V03 FINAL
Project co-funded by the European Commission within the Sixth Framework Programme (2002-2006) Dissemination Level PU Public X PP Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission Services) RE Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the Commission Services) CO Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission Services)
Estrella press release On January 1st 2006 a European project called Estrella started within the 6th Framework Programme. This acronym stands for European project for Standardized Transparent Representations in order to Extend Legal Accessibility. The project coordinated by the Leibniz Center for Law of the University of Amsterdam includes 15 partners out of 5 European countries. The aim of the Estrella project is to develop a platform which allows public administrations, citizens and businesses to develop and exchange legal knowledge. This should allow governments to provide better legal services. Nowadays citizens and business expect to receive answers to their legal questions in a fit to purpose way. In order to provide these services governments are in a process of reorganising their business processes, integrating their services and sharing data collections. This leads to an increased control complexity. The project should provide a solution that allows better collaboration between governments and reuse of their legal knowledge. Besides governmental organisations, the consortium consists of different knowledge based solutions vendors. Their participation will guarantee the usability of the knowledge exchange format in practice. Furthermore we aim at developing an open standard solution which allows other vendors to adapt to that format and prevents users of these vendors products from a vendor lock-in situation. It should allow businesses to provide additional services using the legal knowledge provided by others including other governments. The citizens and businesses will benefit from the raised number of services that will be developed for them by service providers, either governments or private organisations. They will be able to connect to services through more natural channels, instead of always having to turn to the government for certain services. This will both lead to improved services and to lowered costs for these services. More information about Estrella can be found on our website: http://www.estrellaproject.org
