The Potential Positive Impact of e-Government Projects The Flemish Environmental Legislation Navigator: Conclusions of An Inquiry about the Use and the Benefit of an On-line Legal Environmental Expert System

Geert De Meyer, L. Lavrysen, and G. Van Eetvelde

Abstract:

Government, industry and citizens have to deal with an increasing body of law. The complex amount of legal texts affects various aspects of our daily activities. The Flemish environmental legislation is a typical example of this complexity due to its technical nature as well as its embedding in the legal structure of Belgium.

To make the Flemish environmental legislation more transparent, VITO developed in 1998 a legal environmental expert system: the Flemish Environmental Legislation Navigator, briefly the Navigator.

This paper presents the results of a large-scale inquiry to evaluate the success rate of the Navigator.

The results show a split view on the visitors profile. On the one hand there are ‘professionals’ who consult the Navigator weekly till daily, mainly to know the relevant rules for specific sectors or products, to find out the latest law changes or to monitor the environmental legislation. On the other hand there are ‘occasionals’ who browse through the Navigator monthly or even less. A third category doesn't use the Navigator since not aware of the existence of an expert system or not needing environmental legislation during their job. The most satisfied users are those who are in charge of enforcing environmental regulation.

Professional users consult the Navigator by searching in the full text versions. Vice versa, less frequent users rely upon the expertise behind the system and particularly use the keywords. In general 3 out of 4 clients make use of the thematical juridical indexation made by the legal staff of the Navigator.

Furthermore, the results of the inquiry indicate that the Navigator is not a helpful instrument for making legislation more transparent or coherent, neither for enhancing the legal security or helping strategic decision makers.

With respect to the cost-effectiveness of the Navigator, frequent users are obviously convinced of the time-saving value of the Navigator from a professional point of view. Based on a more detailed inquiry into the use by inspection officers, the Navigator proves to reduce the annual total inspection cost with half a million EURO.

In the near future the Navigator will be redeveloped into a user-friendly reference database for environmental legislation in Flanders. Furthermore the Navigator will investigated in the use of artificial intelligence in order to automate the indexing process.