Is there a sourceforge-like page for tech volunteer? A list with
desired functionality or bug tracking.
What kind of functionality is CC looking for? text-mining to identify
earmarks, OR machine learning to predict voting pattern that is
dependent on money, OR is there some script that would make a wiki-
workers job easier (rss feed of a guys vote) ?
I can contribute about a night a week (~5hrs) to either implement some
module or script, or just debug the work of others.
thnks (i actually know the person for my district now!)
flod
That's a really great idea! As a tech worker who would like to contribute, I would love to see the features of the Change Congress website released under an open source license such as the GPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html) or perhaps even better, the Affero GPL ( http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html). By releasing the source code and working to create a community of tech workers around Change Congress, the Change Congress site could add features much more rapidly as well as having many more eyes to check and maintain the site code that currently exists. Also, as Change Congress grows into new areas, we could begin to work together to help come up with technological solutions to help make Congress much more transparent to the public.
How many other tech (and non tech!) workers out there would like to see something like this added to CC?
On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 5:10 PM, flod.cc <flod...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
> Is there a sourceforge-like page for tech volunteer? A list with > desired functionality or bug tracking.
> What kind of functionality is CC looking for? text-mining to identify > earmarks, OR machine learning to predict voting pattern that is > dependent on money, OR is there some script that would make a wiki- > workers job easier (rss feed of a guys vote) ?
> I can contribute about a night a week (~5hrs) to either implement some > module or script, or just debug the work of others.
> thnks (i actually know the person for my district now!) > flod
It's always great to see other tech people excited about working on
transparency issues.
I wanted to note that besides helping Change Congress directly, there
are other opportunities to hack on transparency projects. For
instance, my site www.GovTrack.us, which tracks almost everything
going on in Congress and provides RSS feeds for everything (since Flod
mentioned that), is now open source (under the AGPL), and I'd love to
have others hacking on additional features. The data that powers the
site is also made available, including bill status and text, voting
records, etc., and at least I would find a new approach to identifying
earmarks in bills very interesting. (Though, I don't have data on
conference reports yet, which is where a lot of earmarks are, I
guess.)
> That's a really great idea! As a tech worker who would like to contribute, I
> would love to see the features of the Change Congress website released under
> an open source license such as the GPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html)
> or perhaps even better, the Affero GPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html). By releasing the source code and
> working to create a community of tech workers around Change Congress, the
> Change Congress site could add features much more rapidly as well as having
> many more eyes to check and maintain the site code that currently exists.
> Also, as Change Congress grows into new areas, we could begin to work
> together to help come up with technological solutions to help make Congress
> much more transparent to the public.
> How many other tech (and non tech!) workers out there would like to see
> something like this added to CC?
> --Sam Merrell
> On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 5:10 PM, flod.cc <flod...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi
> > Is there a sourceforge-like page for tech volunteer? A list with
> > desired functionality or bug tracking.
> > What kind of functionality is CC looking for? text-mining to identify
> > earmarks, OR machine learning to predict voting pattern that is
> > dependent on money, OR is there some script that would make a wiki-
> > workers job easier (rss feed of a guys vote) ?
> > I can contribute about a night a week (~5hrs) to either implement some
> > module or script, or just debug the work of others.
> > thnks (i actually know the person for my district now!)
> > flod
That is so great to hear you released under the AGPL! Hopefully more transparency websites like yours follow your lead and do the same! I'll definitely take a look at where I can help out.
While I'm thinking about it, it might be a good idea to put up a wiki listing transparency / reform sites such as Change Congress and GovTrack. This way we can centralize information on each site and help people find places in need of their contributions.
--Sam Merrell
On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 7:41 AM, Josh Tauberer/GovTrack <taube...@govtrack.us> wrote:
> It's always great to see other tech people excited about working on > transparency issues.
> I wanted to note that besides helping Change Congress directly, there > are other opportunities to hack on transparency projects. For > instance, my site www.GovTrack.us, which tracks almost everything > going on in Congress and provides RSS feeds for everything (since Flod > mentioned that), is now open source (under the AGPL), and I'd love to > have others hacking on additional features. The data that powers the > site is also made available, including bill status and text, voting > records, etc., and at least I would find a new approach to identifying > earmarks in bills very interesting. (Though, I don't have data on > conference reports yet, which is where a lot of earmarks are, I > guess.)
> So I would say that if you have an itch to try out an idea to improve > congressional transparency, go to it!
> Josh Tauberer
> On May 3, 11:13 pm, "Sam Merrell" <merrell....@gmail.com> wrote: > > That's a really great idea! As a tech worker who would like to > contribute, I > > would love to see the features of the Change Congress website released > under > > an open source license such as the GPL ( > http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html) > > or perhaps even better, the Affero GPL ( > http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html). By releasing the source code and > > working to create a community of tech workers around Change Congress, > the > > Change Congress site could add features much more rapidly as well as > having > > many more eyes to check and maintain the site code that currently > exists. > > Also, as Change Congress grows into new areas, we could begin to work > > together to help come up with technological solutions to help make > Congress > > much more transparent to the public.
> > How many other tech (and non tech!) workers out there would like to see > > something like this added to CC?
> > --Sam Merrell
> > On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 5:10 PM, flod.cc <flod...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hi
> > > Is there a sourceforge-like page for tech volunteer? A list with > > > desired functionality or bug tracking.
> > > What kind of functionality is CC looking for? text-mining to identify > > > earmarks, OR machine learning to predict voting pattern that is > > > dependent on money, OR is there some script that would make a wiki- > > > workers job easier (rss feed of a guys vote) ?
> > > I can contribute about a night a week (~5hrs) to either implement some > > > module or script, or just debug the work of others.
> > > thnks (i actually know the person for my district now!) > > > flod
Thanks for the encouragement. The proof of the benefit of opening up
the source will be someone else contributing. :-)
I'm going to list some project ideas for contributing to GovTrack
below, but before I do I wanted to note that a good list of
transparency websites (but not reform websites) is Sunlight's Insanely
Useful Web Sites list: http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/resources. I
don't know of a good list of reform websites- that might be a good
project in itself for someone to work on.
Here are some possible things that programmers can work on for
GovTrack:
Scraping more data:
Committee and conference reports, and tying them into the relevant
bills
Finding earmark information out of these reports, though it seems to
often be embedded in images (OCR?)
Scouring for news articles relevant to legislation
Scraping some general information about committees, and organizing
some historical data
Parsing bill text:
Finding earmarks
Relating bills to the laws being amended: showing how the law would
change
Comparing bills (e.g. find where one bill is incorporated into
another, shared provisions)
Tracking the evolution of the text of bills better: Comparing a bill
to itself over time
Improving site features:
New ways to search legislation (e.g. by sponsor)
Visualizations of legislation language and evolution
Tagging bills
Visualization of legislative statistics, generation of new
statistics and charts
Showing some earmark related statistics: total $$$$ allocated
Extending the site to new areas:
The Constitution
U.S. code
Federal regulations
Judicial documents
State-level legislation, etc.
I'm more than happy to help anyone work on these things if you're
interested.
I also think an interesting project not related to GovTrack would be
to start merging conflict-of-interest data sources: campaign
contributions, earmarks, personal financial disclosure statements, and
legislation. Some of these things would need heavy use of OCR or image
processing.
Josh
On May 4, 6:04 pm, "Sam Merrell" <merrell....@gmail.com> wrote:
> That is so great to hear you released under the AGPL! Hopefully more
> transparency websites like yours follow your lead and do the same! I'll
> definitely take a look at where I can help out.
> While I'm thinking about it, it might be a good idea to put up a wiki
> listing transparency / reform sites such as Change Congress and GovTrack.
> This way we can centralize information on each site and help people find
> places in need of their contributions.
> --Sam Merrell
> On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 7:41 AM, Josh Tauberer/GovTrack <taube...@govtrack.us>
> wrote:
> > Flod and Sam,
> > It's always great to see other tech people excited about working on
> > transparency issues.
> > I wanted to note that besides helping Change Congress directly, there
> > are other opportunities to hack on transparency projects. For
> > instance, my sitewww.GovTrack.us, which tracks almost everything
> > going on in Congress and provides RSS feeds for everything (since Flod
> > mentioned that), is now open source (under the AGPL), and I'd love to
> > have others hacking on additional features. The data that powers the
> > site is also made available, including bill status and text, voting
> > records, etc., and at least I would find a new approach to identifying
> > earmarks in bills very interesting. (Though, I don't have data on
> > conference reports yet, which is where a lot of earmarks are, I
> > guess.)
> > So I would say that if you have an itch to try out an idea to improve
> > congressional transparency, go to it!
> > Josh Tauberer
> > On May 3, 11:13 pm, "Sam Merrell" <merrell....@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > That's a really great idea! As a tech worker who would like to
> > contribute, I
> > > would love to see the features of the Change Congress website released
> > under
> > > an open source license such as the GPL (
> >http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html)
> > > or perhaps even better, the Affero GPL (
> >http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html). By releasing the source code and
> > > working to create a community of tech workers around Change Congress,
> > the
> > > Change Congress site could add features much more rapidly as well as
> > having
> > > many more eyes to check and maintain the site code that currently
> > exists.
> > > Also, as Change Congress grows into new areas, we could begin to work
> > > together to help come up with technological solutions to help make
> > Congress
> > > much more transparent to the public.
> > > How many other tech (and non tech!) workers out there would like to see
> > > something like this added to CC?
> > > --Sam Merrell
> > > On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 5:10 PM, flod.cc <flod...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Hi
> > > > Is there a sourceforge-like page for tech volunteer? A list with
> > > > desired functionality or bug tracking.
> > > > What kind of functionality is CC looking for? text-mining to identify
> > > > earmarks, OR machine learning to predict voting pattern that is
> > > > dependent on money, OR is there some script that would make a wiki-
> > > > workers job easier (rss feed of a guys vote) ?
> > > > I can contribute about a night a week (~5hrs) to either implement some
> > > > module or script, or just debug the work of others.
> > > > thnks (i actually know the person for my district now!)
> > > > flod
