Governance is nothing but the implementation of those acts and rules which are made by the people for themselves. Currently, this is done by the publication of rules by the government in a human readable format. These rules are designed to be converted into logic for human consumption, reading, understanding and writing software. Let us consider an example. A government rule reads: “Shoes that do not have a high retail selling price ₹1,000 per pair attracts 5% GST. “In the current scenario, footwear businesses across the country convert this human readable government rule into a machine readable ‘if’ loop and use it in their sales systems. The problem with this is, it leads to conversion error, subjectivity, and misrepresentation. is prone to translation. It may not be entirely clear with this simple ‘if’ loop example, but as the rules get complicated, it leads to significant translation gaps and resultant legal disputes. Instead , what if the government itself publishes its rules as arguments other than natural language? This interpretation will significantly reduce errors, avoidable legal entanglements, and facilitate a common intended reading of the rules for all parties. This conversion of rules from language to machine readable format is called “rules as code”, or RAC.
The old model of creating rules and publishing them in a PDF format on a static website doesn’t really work well with the current IoT (Internet of Things) enabled world. For example, you do not personally diagnose what is wrong with your washing machine. The new smart washing machine diagnoses itself and sends a report to the technician over the Internet. As more and more data is consumed by connected devices, the system’s interaction with the government becomes commonplace and hence the government’s rule-making process itself needs to be updated. With the advent of blockchain, we are already seeing examples of commercial contracts between private parties becoming smart and executed in code. Governance is also nothing but a contract specifying a set of fixed rules between private individuals or businesses and the government. Here too, these contracts need to be smart.
In some areas of governance, RAC is already being practiced. Take for example the Income Tax Portal. Every year, the portal updates itself with the logical version of the amendments to the Income Tax Act. Since we no longer file paper-based returns, it is imperative that the portal understands the change in rules every year and calculates the tax for us with the given inputs. However, such codification may not have happened in all departments of the government.
Not all rules are suitable for RAC. For example, this can be easily applied to tax rules that have a degree of algorithmic built-in, but not to something like rules against hate speech, because they require a certain degree of human judgment. . However, in today’s digital world, even such rules are ultimately based on precise programmable logic. Governments around the world are experimenting with RAC to bring about uniformity, certainty in their rules. New Zealand is doing this through its initiative called Better Rules. The UK publishes its Acts in XML format which is a structured language for computers to interpret the data. In India too, NYAY, an open access, digital resource platform, took some effort to convert our laws into Acoma Entoso, a globally recognized XML based format specially designed for legal documents . But the initiative to make machine readable rules has to be from the government itself. RAC is not just a transformation of a rule into an algorithm. This requires a rethinking of the entire process behind making government rules, so that they are seen as digital products and services from their very conception.
However, since the first British India Law Code in 1772, we have inherited quadruple negative, pejorative expressions in our laws, such as ‘notwithstanding’ in our laws and adopted specific statutes intended to provide certainty and stability. . Significant effort will have to be made to repurpose all of them into machine consumable format ready for use in the digital age. Laws and rules should be fair and simple so that even a common citizen can understand.
I’ll leave you with an actual government rule to decide if it’s readable to machines, and maybe even humans.
Notwithstanding anything contained in these rules, the registered person shall not use the amount available in the electronic credit ledger to discharge his liability towards output tax in excess of 99%. Such tax liability, in cases where the value of taxable supplies other than exempt supplies and zero-rated supplies in a month exceeds fifty lakh rupees.
Mahesh Singrapu is an Indian Revenue Service officer and Deputy Director in the Enforcement Directorate. thoughts are personal.
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