Akoma Ntoso is an international technical standard for representing executive, legislative, and judiciary documents in a structured manner using a domain-specific, legal XML vocabulary. The term Akoma Ntoso means “linked hearts” in the Akan language of West Africa.
The Akoma Ntoso standard defines a set of machine-readable electronic representations in XML format of the building blocks of parliamentary, legislative, and judiciary documents. It provides a coherent syntax and well-defined semantics to represent legal documents in a digital format. The standard is composed of:
An XML vocabulary that defines the mapping between the structure of legal documents and their equivalent in XML.
Specifications of an XML schema that defines the structure of legal documents in XML.
A recommended naming convention for providing unique identifiers to legal sources based on the FRBR model.
A MIME type definition.
Akoma Ntoso is designed to be suitable as a common exchange format in all parliamentary, legal, and judicial systems around the world. It is highly flexible and extensible, allowing for modifications to address the individual criteria of organizations or unique aspects of various legal practices and languages without sacrificing interoperability with other systems.
