Within a framework for enriched on-line discussion forums for e-government policy-making, pro and con statements for positions
are input, structurally related, then logically represented and evaluated. The framework builds on current technologies for
multi-threaded discussion, natural language processing, ontologies, and formal argumentation frameworks. This paper focuses
on the natural language processing of statements in the framework. A small sample policy discussion is presented. We adopt
and apply a controlled natural language (Attempto Controlled English) to constrain the domain of discourse, eliminate ambiguity
and unclarity, allow a logical representation of statements which supports inference and consistency checking, and facilitate
information extraction. Each of the policy statements is automatically translated into first-order logic. The result is a
logical representation of the policy discussion which we can query, draw inferences (given ground statements), test for consistency,
and extract detailed information.
Keywords Policy-making - eGovernment - first-order logic