PROGRAM TRANSPARENCY FOR LEGAL MACHINES Vytautas Čyras and Friedrich Lachmayer Associate Professor, Vilnius University Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Naugarduko 24, 03225 Vilnius, Lithuania Vytautas.Cyras@mif.vu.lt; http://www.mif.vu.lt/~cyras/ Professor, University of Innsbruck Innrain 47, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria Friedrich.Lachmayer@uibk.ac.at; http://www.legalvisualization.com Keywords: compliance, informational process, legal requirements, legal visualization, text culture and machine culture Abstract: This paper attempts to define the transparency problem. The context is the changeover from a text culture to a machine culture in law. The paradigm change to electronic procedures reveals new contexts for justice. Note that equal access to e- procedures does not guarantee justice. The transparency of the law leads to the transparency of programs. We formulate two requirements for legal machines: 1) the architecture of the program must be made accessible; and 2) the program must provide legal protection. The implementation of these requirements is a subject for software engineering. A need therefore arises for the requirements to flow down to lower level specifications. In the end we define program transparency as a compliance problem. 1. Introduction There are simple legal machines, such as traffic lights, barriers and vending machines, and complex ones, such as the electronic forms that are used in tax and finance. An example of the latter is FinanzOnline 1 in Austria. A legal machine can be defined as a machine in a system whose actions have legal importance and legal consequences [Čyras & Lachmayer 2012]. Legal machines shift raw facts into institutional facts. The raw facts come from the Is world, whereas the institutional facts come from the Ought. Legal machines contribute to law enforcement, and their programs implement legal norms. Suppose the following two elements: 1. A general norm which is formulated in a legal text such as a law or a by-law; and 2. An individual norm which is formulated in a court judgement or an administrative decision. The following means of legal protection serve the different parties in the context of a text culture: 1. Transparency of law. Legal texts are made accessible to citizens. An example is the Austrian e-government application (portal) HELP, 2 which states the applicable law for various situations and supports ex-ante analysis; and 1 FinanzOnline provides a one-click link to the Austrian tax administration; see https://finanzonline.bmf.gv.at/. 2 HELP.gv.at – a government agency help site on the Internet, which offers necessary information for living and working in Austria.