Project Description

Canarėno (Computer-aided analysis of electronically available legal norms) and simpLEX (Simplification of the creation and processing of electronic documents with the help of machine-readable standard texts and document modules) are two scientific projects investigating ways to simplify and accelerate the digitization of access to digital administrative services. In order to create forms from legal texts (laws, legal norms, etc.) and later incorporate the data collected into administrative processes, the texts must be interpreted (understood) and integrated with existing processes.

The digitization of this process begins with making already machine-readable legal texts machine-understandable as well. This involves assigning the text modules to known concepts and relating them to one another. Currently, however, this is done manually and therefore time-consuming. Canarėno investigates the use of modern text analysis methods, including machine learning, to support manual editing with suggestions and thus speed it up.

In addition to understanding the texts, a corresponding description of the existing interfaces and processes in the administration is important to decide how data collected can be used effectively. This is not always easy. For example, while one system works with birthdays, for another the current age is important, but both are obviously related. Another example is the term “income” (“Einkommen”) that has different meanings in different contexts.

Since there is mainly administrative expertise and less IT experience in the respective municipal administrations, tools that are easy to use are essential. simpLEX investigates whether easy-to-use programming methods (low-code or no-code) can be used in administration and how an appropriate architecture design might look like.

Press release April 2022
Press release December 2022

Involved Partners

Friedrich Schiller University Jena
German Aerospace Center – Institute of Data Science
University of Bielefeld
Municipality of Jena