Assessing Legislative Alignment - An Ontological Approach: Work in progress

An ontology provides the agreed definitions and describes how the terms in a subject area or domain, are related. It is a model that can be read by humans and coded for use by computers. Across the globe, governments are using ontologies in innovative ways to solve long-standing government problems. The problem is that there is no single approach used by government agencies to assess whether their systems are aligned to the legislation. In a social welfare setting, if there is any misalignment between the legislation and the systems, then, it may result in an unintentional disadvantage to those most in need. This paper outlines the research design using a case study to detect and to compare the ontological patterns existing in legislation and an online claim form relating to a family tax benefit in Australia.