The Law, the Map and the Citizen: Designing a legal service infrastructure where rules make sense again

Law is being digitalised. When this research started, the notion of digitalisation of law was new. The early attempts were websites that provided legal sources. The question occurred if this would be helpful to the citizen seeking answers for day-to-day problems. The research question evolved from there. Can internet technology help the citizen in navigating law or does the mixing of these worlds create a digital bureaucratic labyrinth? To examine those questions, a lot of exploration and scoping was done. What technology are we addressing and what type of ‘help’ do we mean? And which Law is implied? And if a citizen is not ‘helped’ by the computer, could this affect his or her relationship with government? To investigate the influence of digitalised Law on this relationship, I had to explore theories about legitimacy, bureaucracies, trust and violations of ‘le contrat social’ between citizens and government. Three experiments with digital mapping technology and legal source material were then carried out in a living lab setting. A simple answer to the research question is that technology can indeed help with providing better knowability for citizens, better legal effect planning for legislators and improved co-design of law by stakeholders, thereby increasing the legitimacy of Law. However, it became also clear that a bad design of technology can result in the opposite, which was symbolised by Little Britain in one of their sketches by the phrase: ‘Computer says NO’ (see youtube). It is also made clear by the research results that internet technology requires a learning curve; that professional assistance is therefore still required and that information technology chosen in these experiments can help with harmonisation or mutual alignment of plans of action. The technology tested in this research cannot help in the final legal decision making process. The book ends with a chapter about recommendations for the Dutch digitalisation of the ‘Omgevingswet’.