National Profiles
Akoma Ntoso is designed to be adapted by each jurisdiction. Rather than mandating a single structure, AKN provides the vocabulary and jurisdictions create profiles — subsets or extensions that match their legal traditions. Here are the most significant implementations.
CLML — United Kingdom
Crown Legislation Markup Language is the XML format used by legislation.gov.uk since 2010.
- CLML predates AKN but has been progressively aligned with it
- legislation.gov.uk provides AKN exports alongside native CLML
- Covers: Acts of Parliament, Statutory Instruments, Scottish/Welsh/NI legislation
- Notable: one of the most comprehensive online legislative databases, with full amendment history and "point in time" versioning
- Uses its own URI scheme (
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/id/...) alongside AKN IRIs
USLM — United States
United States Legislative Markup is described as a "second generation" XML format derived from AKN.
- Developed by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel (US House of Representatives)
- Used for the United States Code (USC)
- Based on AKN principles but with a separate schema tailored to US legislative structure
- Supports the US hierarchy: Title → Subtitle → Chapter → Subchapter → Section
- Available at uscode.house.gov
LegalDocML.de — Germany
Germany's federal implementation, officially mandated:
- Based on AKN 3.0 with a restrictive subschema (fewer elements, stricter rules)
- Mandatory for all federal legislation from 2027
- Developed by the Federal Ministry of Justice
- Covers: federal laws, regulations, administrative rules
- Published specification: LegalDocML.de 1.7
- Key difference: much more prescriptive than the flexible AKN standard — where AKN says "you may," LegalDocML.de often says "you must"
LexML-BR — Brazil
Brazil's LexML is a Portuguese-language derivative of AKN:
- Covers: federal, state, and municipal legislation
- Portal: lexml.gov.br
- Provides URN-based identifiers (
urn:lex:br:...) - One of the early and large-scale implementations of AKN principles in Latin America
AKN4EU — European Union
The EU is developing its own AKN profile:
- Used for EUR-Lex, the official EU legal database
- Covers: Regulations, Directives, Decisions, Treaties
- Supports multilingual legislation (all 24 official EU languages)
- Notable challenge: EU legislation uses a unique hierarchy (
Title → Chapter → Section → Article → Paragraph → Subparagraph → Point → Indent) - Published as part of the EU Publications Office standardization effort
Monalisa — France (Senate)
The French Senate adopted AKN directly:
- Monalisa project, in production since 2019
- Direct AKN adoption (not a derivative standard)
- Covers: Senate bills, amendments, committee reports
- Notable for being a direct adoption without creating a national subschema
Other implementations
| Country/Region | System | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Italy | Senate, Chamber of Deputies | One of the earliest adopters; several Italian scholars co-authored the standard |
| Chile | Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional (BCN) | Official debate records in AKN (see cl_Sesion56_2.xml example) |
| South Africa | Parliament | Early piloting of AKN for bills and debates |
| Kenya | National Assembly | Used for bills and debates |
| Uruguay | Parliament | Bills and legislative documents |
| Switzerland | Federal Chancellery | Exploring AKN for multilingual legislation (German, French, Italian, Romansh) |
| Japan | Government | Evaluating AKN for legal informatics |
Comparison of approaches
| Approach | Examples | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Direct adoption | France (Monalisa), Italy, Chile | Use AKN as-is, possibly with proprietary extensions in the <proprietary> element |
| Restrictive profile | Germany (LegalDocML.de), EU (AKN4EU) | Create a subschema that restricts AKN to a mandatory subset |
| Derived standard | US (USLM), Brazil (LexML-BR) | Create a separate schema inspired by AKN but not schema-compatible |
| Conversion layer | UK (CLML) | Maintain a legacy format and provide AKN exports |
The <proprietary> extension point
AKN accommodates national variations through the <proprietary> element in <meta>, which can contain any elements from other namespaces:
<meta>
<proprietary source="#bcn">
<bcn:MetadataBCN xmlns:bcn="http://chile/proprietary.xsd">
<bcn:Materia refParteDocumento="#ds1" rdfLabelMateria="Cultura"/>
</bcn:MetadataBCN>
</proprietary>
</meta>
This is similar in spirit to how AKN Diff extends AKN with the akndiff namespace — though AKN Diff adds elements to the document body rather than just metadata.
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