A semantic-based methodology for the management of document workflows in e-government: a case study for judicial processes

Trial excessive duration is a common problem in Juridical systems worldwide, even if some countries seem to be more affected by it than others. The European Council has provided metrics and statistics to identify this problem and has pointed out solutions, such as the simplification of norms and the digitization of Juridical procedures. The Italian Telematic Civil Process (TCP) is an example of this digitization effort that has surely positively influenced the duration of Trials, their traceability and general complexity. However, there are still many possible actions that can be taken to simplify the work of Judges and Chancellors, and to support their daily operations in dealing with several Trials at once, and with the consistent number of documents that are involved in them. This paper presents a toolchain and a related methodology for the management of documentation attached to Trials, based on semantic technologies and Natural Language Processing techniques, which will help Judges in faster assessing the situation of each Trial they follow, and will also provide the means to identify potential correlations among different Juridical procedures. The methodology is tested against a case study, i.e. the compensation requests related to road accidents, which has been provided and described by Domain Experts from the Italian Ministry of Justice.