OASIS latest 'Technical Committee' (TC) wants to promote a common legal document standard, 'creating a world-wide best practice that helps in the dissemination of the usage of XML within the parliaments' document management processes as well as the courts document management'.  

To extend and refine Akoma Ntoso, this TC is calling for the participation of stakeholders that manage legislative and legal documents. OASIS aims this will start a community that will promote the standard, and that will help developers of tools and software applications by providing documentation and technical specifications. 

Akomo Ntoso started being developed with funds from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). The UN started working on XML schemas with parliaments in African countries. The second version of Akoma Ntoso was made public in November 2011.  

Closely related to the development of Akomo Ntoso is the open source XML editor Bungeni. It is based on OpenOffice, and like Akomo Ntoso it is funded in part by DESA. 

Akoma Ntosa is used by, for example, the Senate in Brazil and the European Parliament. Several other parliaments and public administrations in the EU are working on tools to help create and update legal texts. Some of them are considering to use both Bungeni and Akoma Ntoso. 

Further information:  

• Original news article - Joinup
• Presentation on Akoma Ntoso to OASIS
• Akoma Ntoso
• Bungeni
• Related Joinup news article - Parliaments across Europe using open source XML tools to write laws