4. Responding to change

• Public policy imperatives
• Technical responses - Data held by AustLII
• Technical responses - Distributed data
• Institutional factors

Public policy imperatives

• We must maintain AustLII as an alternative public access source of at least the most important databases of Australian legal information (the `crown jewels'), so as to protect against the loss of such data from public hands. So long as up-to-date databases are held by AustLII as well as SCALE+, Osiris, or a `self-publishing' legal institution, it matters less if that institution's data is suddenly privatised or converted to `user-pays'. There is also far less likelihood of such data being an attractive commercial proposition if AustLII continues to provide free access. AustLII's continuing provision of free access to key databases will continue to be a necessary `insurance policy' for those interested in access to justice, irrespective of the quality of alternatives.
• We must continue to use AustLII's influence to help prevent any public legal information from either (i) monopoly provision by institutions or (ii) paid access where there is no free access.

Technical responses - Data held by AustLII

We think that databases on AustLII will be continued on this basis:

• We will maintain and extend those databases that are needed for AustLII's key tasks, which includes each of the following:
  (i) the provision of key technical facilities on which other valued AustLII services depend (for example legislation is needed for us to provide `noteups' of caselaw);
  (ii) for public policy reasons (the `crown jewels in public hands' approach discussed above);
  (iii) to maintain sufficient data for research into computerisation of legal information; and (iv) because the data is valuable and otherwise unavailable, even though it is only valued by a minority audience (subject to available funding).
• We will help develop standards of data preparation by data sources, as this reduces the costs and increases the quality provided by all publishers that use that data. At the same time, we will increase the quality of our own data collection and preparation, while still relying almost entirely on automated processing of data.
• We will develop new means of obtaining important legal databases on AustLII where the data is also available elsewhere on the web, by methods using ftp or mirroring which rely on standards being observed by the data source.
• We will continue research and development of new forms of legal services via the web using knowledge-based technologies and delivery of data according to user-specified needs.

Technical responses - Distributed data

• We are developing a combination of an intellectual index and a targeted web spider as a means of overcoming the research problems of distributed legal data which is not held on AustLII (see Part B of this paper). This applies to Australian data as well as `world' data.
• We will help develop standards for distributed legal data provision via the web.
• We will develop SINO as a consistent search engine across all legal information, local on AustLII and remote (Australian and international). A single search of AustLII will produce results from AustLII's databases, legal databases for which every word has been indexed by our web spider, and other databases only identified in our intellectual index. This is already being done in reverse in our use of the search engine to search remote databases in Project DIAL, where users are given the option to repeat the search over AustLII's databases, AustLII's links, Alta Vista or Yahoo.

• We will `export' the main features of AustLII's hypertext markup and hypertext/search integration to enhance remote (ie non-AustLII) data, by means such as:
  (i) `remote noteups' (markup before indexing of web spider data); or
  (ii) encouraging other to use AustLII's markup tools by making them more readily available.

Institutional factors

• Obtain funding from academic and other sources for research and development of better access methods to distributed materials across the web, both Australian and international.
• Obtain funding from a broader range of stakeholders: (i) institutions who do not wish to self-publish their own legal materials, but would like us to do so; (ii) corporate representatives of categories of users who wish to fund access to particular types of materials.
• Develop international alliances and involvement, both so as to promote the value of public legal information institutes world-wide, and as to increase the range of possible funding sources for AustLII.