Maryland has become the first state to publish its regulations online with cryptographically secure technology that protects against cyberattacks and ensures long-term digital preservation. This implementation marks a major milestone in a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project featuring University of Wisconsin Law Professor BJ Ard as a principal investigator.
The state is using The Archive Framework (TAF), first introduced in 2019 by Justin Cappos, a professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering, in collaboration with the Open Law Library, a nonprofit that helps governments publish laws and regulations online.
In 2023, the NSF awarded a grant to Ard and Cappos – leading a team from University of Wisconsin Law School, NYU Tandon, and the Open Law Library – to develop TAF further and expand its applications beyond initial municipal deployments in jurisdictions like the District of Columbia and the city of Baltimore.
As the first state-wide TAF deployment, Maryland put its Code of Maryland Regulations (COMAR) — the official compilation of all administrative regulations issued by state agencies — on a dynamic, fully versioned digital platform at regs.maryland.gov.
“This new COMAR publishing platform represents a major, and long-awaited, step forward in how State Government serves the public,” said Maryland Secretary of State Susan C. Lee. “By modernizing how we publish and manage state regulations, we are not only making it easier for citizens, businesses, and public servants to access critical information—we are also implementing a smarter, more cost-effective approach to government.”
Previously, because Maryland's regulations were available in difficult-to-use HTML, citizens, lawyers and researchers who needed to know what regulations said at specific points in time — crucial for litigation and legal compliance — had no reliable way to access that information online.
“That kind of historical access is not just a convenience, but critical for ensuring people can rely on the system,” said Ard, who also serves as associate dean for research and faculty development. “People need to be able to verify exactly what the law said on a given date. The system makes that possible in a way that is newly secure and accessible.”
“In the print era, official legal publications had a physical permanence that people could trust. What we’re doing here is bringing that same reliability to the digital age so that users can have confidence in the authenticity and availability of the law,” said Ard.
The system creates a “single source of truth” that is fully versioned and cryptographically authenticated. Every regulation change is tracked, timestamped, and secured using advanced cryptographic techniques.
“Think of TAF like a high-security bank vault for legal documents,” said Cappos, a professor in NYU’s Computer Science and Engineering Department and faculty member of the NYU Center for Cybersecurity. “Traditional legal websites are like file cabinets, and anyone with the key can change what's inside without leaving a trace. TAF not only makes any attempts to change the law visible so that bad actions can be detected, but also stops bad actors from changing the law in the first place. This matters because in a democracy, citizens need absolute confidence that the laws they're reading are authentic and haven't been secretly altered by hackers or malicious insiders.”
The new system publishes regulations in computer-readable XML and human-readable HTML formats while maintaining PDF versions for printing. The entire code is available on GitHub under a Creative Commons license and accessible via API, making it ready for AI and other emerging technologies.
The successful Maryland implementation paves the way for broader adoption across the United States. The research team is actively seeking additional state and local government partners while also working to engage with educational institutions and libraries.
Submitted by Law School News on December 8, 2025
This article appears in the categories: Faculty, Features
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