Know where to find: ATP review for 2010

Almost every day we take actions that are regulated by regulatory documents and legislative acts. Whether it's downloading a movie, buying groceries or installing an air conditioner. And the better we are prepared and informed, the easier it is for us to protect our rights and interests.

Reference legal systems are a special category of programs designed to work with databases of regulatory documents and search through their texts. Professional categories of users such as lawyers, accountants, business leaders, economists, and financial professionals work with them. However, ATP is also useful for ordinary non-professional users, as it allows them to quickly find the necessary documents. What is important, these documents are collected in one source - in the absence of a single database, you would have to search the Internet, performing a search on the websites of various authorities that have adopted a particular act.
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The creators of the ATP do the work of collecting documents, organizing them, and also provide the user with the ability to search through their text and other details. Laws and other regulations are the category of information that literally everyone may need. Confirmation of this is the popular wisdom that appeared long before computers, calling for “not to repay prison”. Most of the legal issues facing non-professional users are not so dramatic, but all the same - the need for access to legislation is beyond doubt. Another “pre-computer” popular wisdom says that a real lawyer is not the one who knows everything, but the one who “knows where to find”. Simply put, a lawyer should be aware of the system of regulations, and approximately know how and with what documents a particular issue is regulated, and these documents themselves are not necessarily remembered by heart.

Reference legal systems, which contain legislation in an orderly and sorted form, endow any user with this quality of “real lawyer”. Of course, a simple database search will not replace a qualified legal aid, however, it is quite possible to use ATP to clarify the simplest legal issues. In addition to the "standardization", they also contain articles and comments from the legislation, so that ATP can be used for self-education.

ATP market

The history of legal reference systems in Russia dates back to 1975. It was then that the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR "On Measures for the Further Improvement of Economic Legislation" was issued. It recognized the need to introduce accounting for the regulations of the USSR and the Union republics, as well as to organize centralized information about such acts. The resolution was adopted on June 25, that is, most recently the history of legal reference systems exceeded the thirty-five year limit.

Later, a legal information scientific center was created at the Ministry of Justice, which still exists today. The center was engaged in the development of the first Soviet ATP, "Etalon", which was intended for use in government. But the first commercial ATP in our days is known to very few people. It was called "YUSIS", later the name was changed to "AWP" Lawyer "." The study of the site of the company "Intraleks" , the manufacturer of "Lawyer" shows that it was last updated a long time ago, and in what state the development is now - it is not clear ...

The first program, which successfully survived to our days, was the SPS “Garant” , which was developed by the scientific and production association “Computational Mathematics and Computer Science”. The development began in 1990, and two years later, NPO VMI began to produce the SPS Consultant Plus, while the developers of Garant separated and formed the company Garant-Service. Thus, the two largest programs originate from the same source. At the same time, the “Consultant” overtook its predecessor, and became the most popular ATP in Russia: according to regular research, about seventy percent of users use it. Now there are more than five million documents in its database, while the Garant’s counter has exceeded only four million.

In 1992, another ATP appeared, Codex . Its main difference from other similar programs is a large number of regulatory and technical documents in the database, various state standards, “sanitary standards”, design documentation, and other similar documents. Now in its base - more than 4,800,000 acts. In 1996 began the spread of ATP "Referent . " Already then, the possibilities of simultaneous work with a local database of documents and Internet servers were implemented in it, and even now one of the main ways of providing services at Referent is to provide Internet access to the database. The cheapest option costs a thousand rubles for thirty days of access, it is possible to purchase “premium” and “additional” licenses, which provide, respectively, expanded capabilities and the right to work in the system to several employees. The creators of the "Assistant" made an attempt to write something like a "knowledge base", which focuses on the comments of experts.

And, finally, the Pravo.ru SPS, which appeared this year, is focused on working primarily on the Internet, it does not even have a regular client application, the developers have so far limited to creating programs for the iPhone and iPad. In the future, there are programs for all software. Now the system is booming, new opportunities and improvements are constantly emerging. At the time of this writing, there are already about three and a half million documents in the system. The developers promise that access to the database will remain free, and additional features will be available for a reasonable fee, about five hundred rubles per month.

ATP updates

“Consultant”, “Garant”, as well as other ATP manufacturers, distribute their software through regional representatives. The cost of the program in each case depends on the installed information blocks, in addition, the seller often offers discounts, the value of which, as a rule, is inversely proportional to the number of competitors in the region. In addition, the practice of “trial installations” is common, when the user is given the opportunity to work free of charge with the full version, and not with the usual demo.

Most ATP documents are divided into separate units that can be combined during installation. This concept is rather arbitrary and each manufacturer understands by “block” or “document bank” something different. The number of documents in the "bank" is also individual: someone breaks up the base into many small parts, someone into a few large ones. By the name of the block, it is often impossible to determine which documents are present in it. No, if it is called the “Legislation of the Bryansk Region”, then everything is clear, but by the name “Assistant personnel officer: Expert” (one of the “Code” tariffs), the uninitiated can only determine the subject matter of the documents.

Such a characteristic of the ATP as the “number of documents” is just as conditional: some manufacturers consider “separate documents” different editions of the same text ... All ATP provide access to their databases via the Internet. "Consultant" with the "Guarantor" while not taking money at all, but limit the viewing time. The "Consultant" full access to all the capabilities of the Internet version, you can get only on weekends and on holidays, in addition, you will have to use Internet Explorer.

In general, for modern web services such a restriction is not typical: it prevents users of alternative browsers and almost excludes fans of alternative operating systems from among users. Which, however, is small, but their number is constantly growing. As for the "Guarantor", then he has full access to all documents of the Internet version is provided only during non-working hours. At other times, you can use a truncated version containing the basic regulations. It should be enough for the most common situations.

The Internet services policy of Codex is reminiscent of the Referent approach: you can use the system for a fixed fee. Tariff plans, however, more, the cheapest of them will cost a little less than two thousand rubles, and the payment is not time-based, but “for traffic”: each document is estimated at a certain amount, which is removed from the account when it is viewed - and so on as long as the score does not go "to zero" ...

The main way to replenish the ATP with new documents is agreements on the provision of information with government agencies. Another source is various publications recognized by the official publishers of the relevant acts. Most of the authorities have their own departmental publications, which publish the adopted acts. At the same time, the receipt of their texts from the relevant authority directly allows for the inclusion in the database of texts that are not subject to publication (as a rule, these are various information letters and other non-regulatory documents). Recently, an increasing number of documents are published on the official websites of the authorities.

As a rule, such publications do not have official status, however, it is quite possible to use them for reference. For example, in Pravo.ru, this method of replenishment is the main one. In addition, this legal system has the most complete collection of documents from arbitration practice: its developers are engaged in the work of creating a database of court decisions, so that Pravo.ru receives all this information first-hand. You can subscribe to updates on a specific lawsuit. In addition, Pravo.ru created a website with a schedule of meetings of arbitration courts.

Updates to the ATP database are usually distributed via the Internet, although the old, “old-fashioned” method, which involves a regional representative approaching a client with a flash drive, is also practiced. The frequency of updates is set flexibly: for example, the “Consultant” can even be put on a daily basis, if not lazy. Internet versions of this question are not worth it at all: the added document appears there immediately.

ATP features

The main characteristic of a help system after the completeness of its base is the convenience of searching. Each system in this area has its own characteristics, but there is a general tendency to simplify search forms. Although the "Consultant" is still the main way to search "advanced" when the user is offered a form with many fields to enter a variety of details of the document. In fact, the same search is the main one in “Guarantor”.

At the same time, in the rest of the ATP, the user does not need to think where and what to enter: the search forms in them are extremely simplified and consist of one line. The developers of “Code”, who call their search “intellectual”, are especially proud of this: according to them, you can enter inquiries in a free form, close to natural expressions. A useful feature is present in “Pravo.ru” - this is the “expand” button, allowing you to view those excerpts of found documents that contain words from the query. Something similar is in the "Code".

Search results in some ATPs may be filtered. For example, in the “Consultant” you can select documents from each information bank. In Pravo.ru, filtering is carried out according to the types of documents, from “federal legislation” to “comments and consultations”. One of the standard features of the ATP is the so-called “search by situation”, where documents are grouped according to the situation in which they may be needed. This is very similar to grouping documents by the so-called "tags", with the only difference that the tags are put less orderly.

In addition, documents are also sorted by subject, in the “Consultant” the tool of such sorting is called “legal navigator”, and in the “Guarantor” the subject is determined directly in the search card. The possibilities of almost any ATP include the selection of documents with the inclusion in the "favorites", setting comments and bookmarks, navigation through the content of the document, view its various versions.

In Pravo.ru, there are some features specific to the Internet, for example, getting a link to a specific part of a document or sending it by e-mail. In addition, this system attempts to create a social network: users can exchange messages, comment on documents, add each other to "friends", keep blogs. The Prava.ru interface is made specifically for use on the Internet: it uses modern web technologies, it works in most modern browsers and operating systems.

The development of reference legal systems is influenced by the development of computer technology and legislation. The emergence of commercial PCA was caused by the proliferation of available personal computers, most of the more or less prominent programs in this category appeared in the early nineties. In addition, it was after the collapse of the USSR that many new regulatory acts began to appear, and the need for their systematization, as they say, has matured.

In the future, the spread of the Internet has had an impact on the development of legal reference systems: services rendered via the Web appear, and the search interface begins to “mutate” from cumbersome “cards” with fields for entering a set of document details, to a simple search string, requests into which are entered natural language. An increase in the power of computers and their ability to process large amounts of information for reasonable periods of time played a role in simplifying the search, which made it possible to improve the quality of the search.

Recently, web-based applications have become equal partners with ordinary desktop programs, while netbooks and tablet computers allow them to be used, if not on the go, then on the knee, for sure. In such conditions, the advantage is given to systems that are created more lately, such as Pravo.ru. The legacy of the past in the form of obsolete interfaces and technologies does not dominate them. In other words, the future is in the field of working with documents for new ATPs that keep up with the times and meet the requirements of the latest trends.