2. AustLII's achievements - building blocks of one pLII

• Technical / content
• Political - the public policy aspects
• Institutional

Technical / content

AustLII's most significant technical achievements have been:

• The quantity of data provided, now amounting to over 3.2 gigabytes of legal texts (before processing). There are over 50 separate searchable databases[5]http://www.austlii.edu.au/databases.html], nearly half a million sections of legislation, and about 65,000 cases. Given that virtually nothing was available via internet when AustLII started this is an achievement in itself. The provision of data in such quantities has been achieved through large scale automated and reliable processes.
• The reliability of the AustLII service has been very high, with very little down-time, high access speeds (relative to other internet providers), and high levels of data integrity and security. This has been achieved despite constantly increasing user demands on our servers (detailed below).
• The quality and sophistication of the data mark-up, has been very unusual, particularly the unique provision of dense hypertext linkages (over 13 M automated hypertext links), and features such as automated `Noteups' of every legislative section. This is discussed in `Managing Large Scale Hypertext Databases'[6]http://ltc.law.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/LegInfo/97_2gree/paper2.htm] in the AustLII Papers.

• A powerful and user-friendly search engine, SINO[7]http://www.austlii.edu.au/do2/form.pl], gives a consistent search interface over disparate data, with boolean and proximity searching, and relevance ranking of results. SINO exemplifies AustLII's control of its own software.

• Speed of provision has been very significant with some data, particularly the daily provision of High Court decisions, and rapid provision of NSW legislation, Federal Court decisions and some other important databases. With some other databases, there is room for improvement!
• A more comprehensive index to Australian law on the internet ^{8http://www.austlii.edu.au/links/Australia/} than otherwise available has been provided by AustLII, now being expanded into a world law index[9]http://www.austlii.edu.au/links/World/].
• An effective start to the development of legal inferencing software which can have knowledgebases distributed across the internet, and is integrated with the hypertext and text retrieval aspects of AustLII. It is explained in `New Legal Services via the Web' in the AustLII Papers[10]http://ltc.law.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/LegInfo/97_2gree/paper5.htm], and there are running examples available on AustLII, some of which demonstrate all these features[11]http://sandpit.austlii.edu.au/~aial/foitest/foi_s11.html].

Political - the public policy aspects

AustLII's impacts in this area have been:

• At the practical level, we have had near-universal success in obtaining free public access to data from government and court sources that were often very reluctant to provide the data, or in some cases forbidden by governments to do so. There were no free sources of legal data when AustLII started, whereas now the decisions of dozens of courts and tribunals, and legislation from all jurisdictions but two are available free or in the process of being made so available.
• Creation of a public expectation of free access to primary legal materials means that it is now much more difficult for governments or courts to try to charge for internet access to primary legal materials. No government or court has yet dared to charge for internet access. However, it is premature to assume that this is irreversible. Nothing in Australian constitutional or administrative law prevents government agencies from making a profit from sale of such information.
• The creation of a market for legal information on the internet - free and charged - is probably one of our achievements. AustLII's development of a critical mass of users, particularly from law firms, demonstrated that the internet was a viable medium for legal publishing made it easier for commercial publishers to justify a business case. More important, the continuing existence of `the AustLII alternative' helps ensure that commercial legal publishers moderate their charges, particularly to sectors such as the educational market which can realistically decide to `make do' with what AustLII provides.
• Encouragement of the development of standards is important in the medium to long term. AustLII has taken a leading role in encouraging debate about a `Court-designated citation standard' (sometimes known as `medium neutral and vendor-neutral citation') within the courts, and has also joined a committee of legal publishers to discuss the issue. We are also participating in the establishment of a NSW Legal Information Council.

Institutional

• A constantly expanding user-base has provided proof of the value of AustLII to providers of data and funds, and has constituted AustLII's support base in the community. AustLII's servers are now providing almost 2 million hits per month (over 87,000 per business day), to over 5,000 users per day (peaking at 230 concurrent users).
• We have established relatively stable medium term funding (ie to 2000) sufficient for AustLII's current operations, from a mix of academic research funding (various Australian Research Council grants) and support from `stakeholder' representatives (NSW Law Foundation, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, Australian Business Chamber and others). AustLII's `stakeholder model' has proven its worth, but is capable of greater diversification. However, stakeholder funding cannot be taken for granted from one year to the next, and we have no certain sources of funding beyond 2000.
• We have found a supportive University base in its Law Faculty and University hosts because of its mix of academic research and community service.
• AustLII has obtained a great deal of public and institutional support and goodwill (often expressed in the media, and in awards), which is a valuable asset in influencing public policy and in obtaining funding.

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[13] The United States and Germany are the other countries that could mount such a case.