- 4. Project DIAL - A challenge for internet law indexing

4. Project DIAL - A challenge for internet law indexing

The Asian Development Bank has engaged the authors of this paper as consultants on `Project DIAL' (Development of the Internet for Asian Law)[12]. It is a feasibility study[13] of the potential use of the internet to assist those involved in the development of legislation in the developing member countries (DMCs) of the Bank[14]. This paper only describes a prototype under development.

Two aspects of the prototype are discussed in this paper:

DIAL Index - an intellectual index of legislative and other resources already on the world-wide-web, intended to provide ready access to comparative legal materials from other countries; and
DIAL Search - a robot index of the full text of selected legislation and related resources, located on web sites around the world, but made searchable using the SINO search engine.

Project DIAL provides the first opportunity to test extensively the relationship between an intellectual index and an index created by a web spider, using the tools which are being developed for AustLII's more general purposes. The `home page' for the Project DIAL prototype is at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/dial/

[12] Barry Metzger, General Counsel of the Asian Development Bank had the inspiration for Project DIAL and has an active involvement in its development.

[13] In the Bank's terminology, a Small Scale Technical Assistance (SSTA). It should be stressed that the Asian Development Bank has not made any decision whether Project DIAL will proceed beyond prototype stage, or about the software, servers etc which might be employed in the final system. This paper only describes a prototype under development.

[14] Project DIAL is a multi-faceted study. Two important elements which will not be discussed further in this paper are:

* DIALogue - an e-mail based facility by which a panel of participants from around the world with knowledge of areas of development law will provide initial guidance on problems of development law to authorised users of the facility (principally draftspersons from developing member countries (DMCs) of the bank);

* A study of the need for, and likely utility of, the types of facilities being developed in the Project DIAL prototype. This study focuses on seven DMCs of the Bank: China, India, Vietnam, Mongolia, Philippines, Pakistan and Indonesia.

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