Towards a Scalable Architecture for Legal Ontologies Integrated into Digital Twins of Administrative Law

Florian Schnitzhofer; Christoph Georg Schütz

Towards a Scalable Architecture for Legal Ontologies Integrated into Digital Twins of Administrative Law

Florian Schnitzhofer^*
, Christoph Georg Schütz

^*Corresponding author for this work

Institute of Business Informatics - Data & Knowledge Engineering

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference proceedings › peer-review

Abstract

Administrative-law provisions are still published almost exclusively in natural language, forcing every stakeholder to translate identical rules into bespoke code bases—a practice that invites inconsistency, hampers transparency, and inflates maintenance costs. Recent work on Digital Twins for Administrative Law (DTAL) suggests that legislation be issued together with machine-readable ontologies and executable logic, yet guidance on how to architect such systems remains scarce. In this work we propose a layered reference architecture that separates (i) the natural-language statute, (ii) a core ontology expressed in OWL, (iii) a configuration layer for mutable policy parameters, and (iv) an executable-rule layer exposed through a RESTful and MCP façade. Grounded in design science research, we implemented a proof-of-concept twin of the Upper-Austrian tourism-levy statute and qualitatively evaluate the twin with legal, software, and public-administration experts. Early results suggest that ontology-driven twins can reduce duplicate implementations, streamline updates, and enhance legal certainty, thereby strengthening the Rule of Law in automated decision-making.

Keywords: Legal Ontologies, Semantic Interoperability, Automated Decision-Making, Digital Twins

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Joint Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Semantic Systems (SEMANTiCS 2025), Vienna, Austria, September 03-05, 2025, Joint Proceedings of Posters, Demos, Workshops, and Tutorials
Editors	David Chaves-Fraga, Ivan Heibi, Daniel Garijo, Diego Collarana, Angelo A. Salatino, Sahar Vahdati
Number of pages	6
Volume	4064
ISBN (Electronic)	1613-0073
Publication status	Published - Sept 2025

Publication series

Name	CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)

Fields of science

102030 Semantic technologies
502050 Business informatics
102010 Database systems
102035 Data science
503008 E-learning
502058 Digital transformation
509026 Digitalisation research
102033 Data mining
102 Computer Sciences
102027 Web engineering
102028 Knowledge engineering
102016 IT security
102015 Information systems
102025 Distributed systems

JKU Focus areas

Digital Transformation

Access to Document

https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-4064/SEMDEV-paper5.pdf

Cite this

Schnitzhofer, F., & Schütz, C. G. (2025). Towards a Scalable Architecture for Legal Ontologies Integrated into Digital Twins of Administrative Law. In D. Chaves-Fraga, I. Heibi, D. Garijo, D. Collarana, A. A. Salatino, & S. Vahdati (Eds.), Joint Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Semantic Systems (SEMANTiCS 2025), Vienna, Austria, September 03-05, 2025, Joint Proceedings of Posters, Demos, Workshops, and Tutorials (Vol. 4064). (CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)). https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-4064/SEMDEV-paper5.pdf

Schnitzhofer, Florian ; Schütz, Christoph Georg. / Towards a Scalable Architecture for Legal Ontologies Integrated into Digital Twins of Administrative Law. Joint Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Semantic Systems (SEMANTiCS 2025), Vienna, Austria, September 03-05, 2025, Joint Proceedings of Posters, Demos, Workshops, and Tutorials. editor / David Chaves-Fraga ; Ivan Heibi ; Daniel Garijo ; Diego Collarana ; Angelo A. Salatino ; Sahar Vahdati. Vol. 4064 2025. (CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)).

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abstract = "Administrative-law provisions are still published almost exclusively in natural language, forcing every stakeholder to translate identical rules into bespoke code bases—a practice that invites inconsistency, hampers transparency, and inflates maintenance costs. Recent work on Digital Twins for Administrative Law (DTAL) suggests that legislation be issued together with machine-readable ontologies and executable logic, yet guidance on how to architect such systems remains scarce. In this work we propose a layered reference architecture that separates (i) the natural-language statute, (ii) a core ontology expressed in OWL, (iii) a configuration layer for mutable policy parameters, and (iv) an executable-rule layer exposed through a RESTful and MCP fa{\c c}ade. Grounded in design science research, we implemented a proof-of-concept twin of the Upper-Austrian tourism-levy statute and qualitatively evaluate the twin with legal, software, and public-administration experts. Early results suggest that ontology-driven twins can reduce duplicate implementations, streamline updates, and enhance legal certainty, thereby strengthening the Rule of Law in automated decision-making. Keywords: Legal Ontologies, Semantic Interoperability, Automated Decision-Making, Digital Twins",

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Schnitzhofer, F & Schütz, CG 2025, Towards a Scalable Architecture for Legal Ontologies Integrated into Digital Twins of Administrative Law. in D Chaves-Fraga, I Heibi, D Garijo, D Collarana, AA Salatino & S Vahdati (eds), Joint Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Semantic Systems (SEMANTiCS 2025), Vienna, Austria, September 03-05, 2025, Joint Proceedings of Posters, Demos, Workshops, and Tutorials. vol. 4064, CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org). <https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-4064/SEMDEV-paper5.pdf>

Towards a Scalable Architecture for Legal Ontologies Integrated into Digital Twins of Administrative Law. / Schnitzhofer, Florian; Schütz, Christoph Georg.
Joint Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Semantic Systems (SEMANTiCS 2025), Vienna, Austria, September 03-05, 2025, Joint Proceedings of Posters, Demos, Workshops, and Tutorials. ed. / David Chaves-Fraga; Ivan Heibi; Daniel Garijo; Diego Collarana; Angelo A. Salatino; Sahar Vahdati. Vol. 4064 2025. (CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference proceedings › peer-review

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N2 - Administrative-law provisions are still published almost exclusively in natural language, forcing every stakeholder to translate identical rules into bespoke code bases—a practice that invites inconsistency, hampers transparency, and inflates maintenance costs. Recent work on Digital Twins for Administrative Law (DTAL) suggests that legislation be issued together with machine-readable ontologies and executable logic, yet guidance on how to architect such systems remains scarce. In this work we propose a layered reference architecture that separates (i) the natural-language statute, (ii) a core ontology expressed in OWL, (iii) a configuration layer for mutable policy parameters, and (iv) an executable-rule layer exposed through a RESTful and MCP façade. Grounded in design science research, we implemented a proof-of-concept twin of the Upper-Austrian tourism-levy statute and qualitatively evaluate the twin with legal, software, and public-administration experts. Early results suggest that ontology-driven twins can reduce duplicate implementations, streamline updates, and enhance legal certainty, thereby strengthening the Rule of Law in automated decision-making. Keywords: Legal Ontologies, Semantic Interoperability, Automated Decision-Making, Digital Twins

AB - Administrative-law provisions are still published almost exclusively in natural language, forcing every stakeholder to translate identical rules into bespoke code bases—a practice that invites inconsistency, hampers transparency, and inflates maintenance costs. Recent work on Digital Twins for Administrative Law (DTAL) suggests that legislation be issued together with machine-readable ontologies and executable logic, yet guidance on how to architect such systems remains scarce. In this work we propose a layered reference architecture that separates (i) the natural-language statute, (ii) a core ontology expressed in OWL, (iii) a configuration layer for mutable policy parameters, and (iv) an executable-rule layer exposed through a RESTful and MCP façade. Grounded in design science research, we implemented a proof-of-concept twin of the Upper-Austrian tourism-levy statute and qualitatively evaluate the twin with legal, software, and public-administration experts. Early results suggest that ontology-driven twins can reduce duplicate implementations, streamline updates, and enhance legal certainty, thereby strengthening the Rule of Law in automated decision-making. Keywords: Legal Ontologies, Semantic Interoperability, Automated Decision-Making, Digital Twins

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BT - Joint Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Semantic Systems (SEMANTiCS 2025), Vienna, Austria, September 03-05, 2025, Joint Proceedings of Posters, Demos, Workshops, and Tutorials

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ER -

Schnitzhofer F, Schütz CG. Towards a Scalable Architecture for Legal Ontologies Integrated into Digital Twins of Administrative Law. In Chaves-Fraga D, Heibi I, Garijo D, Collarana D, Salatino AA, Vahdati S, editors, Joint Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Semantic Systems (SEMANTiCS 2025), Vienna, Austria, September 03-05, 2025, Joint Proceedings of Posters, Demos, Workshops, and Tutorials. Vol. 4064. 2025. (CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)).