Experiences with Environmental Laws on a Web Server

Lorenzo Moretti, ENEA, Dipartimento Ambiente, Bologna

ENEA is the Italian National Agency for New Technology, Energy and Environment. Internet use is intense within ENEA which is supporting several WEB-servers from the principal server at the address http://www.enea.it/. Here we talk about one field of environmental communication: the legislative aspect.

The Web server at the address http://amblor.bologna.enea.it/ contains a wide range of environmental information from different sources and a large environmental laws database.

In 1988 the ENEA environment department has started a legislative references catalogue emanated from European Community, Italian Parliament, Italian Regions and jurisdictional sentences from several Courts.

The site has started to operate in October `95: the Italian Internet growth had need of this "environmental tool".

The approach has been absolutely innovative in the Italian Web sites. This fact gave my site the opportunity to improve the users' number with encouragements and congratulations from them.

My colleague updates the database and every months is available on the Web.

Up to this moment there are about 8000 legislatives references (20% from EC, 40% from Italian Parliament and 40% from Italian Regions) and more than 400 subjects.

The type of request interface is completely graphical and the user can search all the emanated laws entering these fields:

the Law Number or the act number;

the kind (EC, Italian or Regional law);

the Data (more over a Data range);

the Subject (the keyword: one law can contain several subjects e.g. food, public green, Venice, glass, etc.);

the Region (if the law is emanated from an Italian region);

a brief description of the law.

It is possible to choose the maximum number of records to return in a range from 20 to 100.

Click here for simple search form

There is a complete form with the subjct list (more than 400). This is the most used.

Click here for complete search form

Example:

Search any law passed by the Italian Parliament about "water protection".

You can choose one of two forms. In the complete form select the "Nazionale" button, as National law, and scroll the subjects list to select the "tutela delle acque", as water protection. Choose the maximum number of records from pop-up menu: 100 is good. Now you must push the Search button "Esegui" . It's done. It's very easy.

After a few seconds you'll see the list of records found. Some references have a link with the whole text. In this example the URL on the law "319" goes to the Bologna city Web server. Every law has the right reference in the description field: number, type, publisher, etc. for finding it.

Click here for example for search result

The whole text is stored in another Web server (e.g. : the Bologna City Web server).

Click here for example for whole text

We are doing agreements with some Italian Regions for connecting the whole laws texts from our database to their Web servers.

Thanks to the users' requests I would like to do some suggestions for improvement of the environmental legislative field:

Connection to the whole law text (EC, Italian and district). The connection software has already been created (see fig.5). I have entered some texts. The URL link can be connected to a text which can be found in no matter web site (e.g. one EC law can be found in Belgium). This means the acquisition of CD-ROM or an agreement with the institutions (EC, Official Gazette, Regions, ...). The laws have not copyright.
Translation of the whole database into English in order to have two versions (the italian one and the english one). The non-Italian users (researchers, business men, administrators, ...) may be interested in knowing environmental normatives and limits tables.
Create a european network dealing with the legislative aspect in the environmental field. Each country enters its own environmental laws using two version (the national language and English).

This last point is the most difficult to realize but the most useful. It may really improve the Internet use in the environmental field.

Also non-specialized users can have a closer contact to the legislator. Moreover, they could know which laws on one subject have been enacted (e.g. air pollution, waste, water, etc.) all over Europe.

The users want to know the laws and the limits tables for their daily work.

This is an ambitious program but not very expensive. It can be created only through Internet.

Requirements:

laws texts from every country and EC; (perhaps there are CD-ROM)
peoples who can enter the laws texts;
computers with great hard disk for laws texts.

Similar experiences have been made in France, Austria, Germany. Thus, cooperation would be a good idea.

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