Wanting to work on "opencities" this weekend (Codeathon)
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Steven Collins
Apr 14, 2012, 5:23:12 PM4/14/12
to Open State Project
Hello,
I am completely brand new to this project. I'm participating in, and
attempting to contribute to, a Codeathon in Austin, Texas this weekend
(http://codeathon.pbworks.com/w/page/48573909/ATX%202012).
Essentially, to be honest, I just wanted to brush up on my Python and
start cutting my teeth on some MongoDB stuff, and so started looking
at projects some other people had suggested to see if there was a good
match.
One veteran codeathon-er had suggested wanting to work on an
"opencities" project - extending openstates to be applicable to city
government. Obviously the openstates technology is a match for my
current interests, so I thought I'd see what I could do in that
direction. Unfortunately the codeathon-er who had suggested it in the
first place has largely succumbed to Austin's legendary allergens this
weekend, so I'm essentially flying solo here, not to mention blind.
I see on this group that there has occasionally been some talk about
adapting the existing code to be applicable to cities as well. I'm
just wondering if anyone can point to me any particular discussions or
thoughts about such an undertaking that I might have missed, and
ultimately, if there are ideas people have of some baby step
contributions I could make in this direction.
One obvious starter question to people who are familiar with the
openstates codebase: is code that is really only applicable to the
legislature of U.S. states already pretty well separated from code
that would be applicable to most any abstract legislative body? Or is
there a refactoring effort that needs to happen? It would seem that
one would want sort of an "abstract base" project that openstates and
"opencities" would both use - does something like this already exist?
Please excuse if this is an ignorant question - in the spirit of the
event, I am really just diving right into the deep end here. I always
figure it's more efficient to ask questions of people who have some
idea of what's going on rather than try to figure out what's going on
completely on my own.
Thanks so much for any advice or ideas you can offer!
- Steven Collins
I am completely brand new to this project. I'm participating in, and
attempting to contribute to, a Codeathon in Austin, Texas this weekend
(http://codeathon.pbworks.com/w/page/48573909/ATX%202012).
Essentially, to be honest, I just wanted to brush up on my Python and
start cutting my teeth on some MongoDB stuff, and so started looking
at projects some other people had suggested to see if there was a good
match.
One veteran codeathon-er had suggested wanting to work on an
"opencities" project - extending openstates to be applicable to city
government. Obviously the openstates technology is a match for my
current interests, so I thought I'd see what I could do in that
direction. Unfortunately the codeathon-er who had suggested it in the
first place has largely succumbed to Austin's legendary allergens this
weekend, so I'm essentially flying solo here, not to mention blind.
I see on this group that there has occasionally been some talk about
adapting the existing code to be applicable to cities as well. I'm
just wondering if anyone can point to me any particular discussions or
thoughts about such an undertaking that I might have missed, and
ultimately, if there are ideas people have of some baby step
contributions I could make in this direction.
One obvious starter question to people who are familiar with the
openstates codebase: is code that is really only applicable to the
legislature of U.S. states already pretty well separated from code
that would be applicable to most any abstract legislative body? Or is
there a refactoring effort that needs to happen? It would seem that
one would want sort of an "abstract base" project that openstates and
"opencities" would both use - does something like this already exist?
Please excuse if this is an ignorant question - in the spirit of the
event, I am really just diving right into the deep end here. I always
figure it's more efficient to ask questions of people who have some
idea of what's going on rather than try to figure out what's going on
completely on my own.
Thanks so much for any advice or ideas you can offer!
- Steven Collins
Steven Collins
Jun 4, 2012, 4:52:01 PM6/4/12
to fifty-sta...@googlegroups.com
Hi Justin,
Actually, thanks for nudging me on this - I was just thinking that I had completely dropped the ball on this project and would like to pick it back up. I'm at work at the moment but I'll write more of my thoughts later this evening. I recall that there was a bit more discussion on the group - I proposed a project to be called General Billy. James pointed out that this is somewhat redundant as generality was one of the main goals in factoring billy out of openstates in the first place but also admitted that (at least at that time) a lot of the actual refactoring and generalizing needed had not yet been done.
More later,
Steven
Actually, thanks for nudging me on this - I was just thinking that I had completely dropped the ball on this project and would like to pick it back up. I'm at work at the moment but I'll write more of my thoughts later this evening. I recall that there was a bit more discussion on the group - I proposed a project to be called General Billy. James pointed out that this is somewhat redundant as generality was one of the main goals in factoring billy out of openstates in the first place but also admitted that (at least at that time) a lot of the actual refactoring and generalizing needed had not yet been done.
More later,
Steven
On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 2:30 PM, Justin <tcpa...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hey Steven,Just reading through some older discussions here in the group and this caught my eye.I too want to brush up on my meager Python skills and was about to post something similar for "opencounties". Did you get any direct replies or feedback through other channels from the community about "opencities"?
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Philip Ashlock
Jun 4, 2012, 5:25:01 PM6/4/12
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I know there was some conversation at the most recent Transparency Camp about this, but I'm not quite sure where it's at right now. It was a quick informal chat between David Moore of OpenCongress/OpenGovernment and Javier Muniz of Granicus/Legistar. It sounds like there are plenty of internal APIs in Legistar that could be opened up to the public if cities ask for it, so that might be a good opportunity to shortcut the scraping since so many cities use Legistar.--
Philip Ashlock
Philip Ashlock
Steven Collins
Jun 5, 2012, 12:39:12 AM6/5/12
to fifty-sta...@googlegroups.com
So, here are some of my thoughts on this issue/project, as promised. Apologies if it's a bit disjointed.
I do think that the right thing to do - eventually - is to be as general as possible, not only so that the API/schema is as applicable as possible to different kinds of governing bodies, but to make it possible to query and aggregate data ACROSS a wide variety of governing bodies for comparison studies, to the extent that that's feasible. That, besides the obvious fact that it seems counter-productive to have entirely disjoint "openstates" and "opencities" and "openstates" and "openthis" and "openthat" projects.
At a high level, I'm torn on what the next step ought to be. On the one hand, there is the omnipresent peer pressure in any modern developer's life to Be More Agile(TM). From that point of view, one would think that the starting place would be to just pick one special case - one city, one county, whatever - and just start doing the minimal useful thing, don't worry about the big picture, let iteration and God sort it out.
As you might gather from my sarcasm, I'm not entirely convinced that would work. The other part of me feels that the real next step should be not even one of coding but of research and thought: gather as much information about different kinds of governing bodies as possible. Look at what they have in common and what they don't. Come up with some generally applicable vocabulary. See if there are good existing ontologies for this sort of thing, and if not make our own. This then informs what the object hierarchy is, what the field names are.
But ultimately, the reality is that there are already so many not-immediately-compatible systems - there will always be scraping and converting and massaging to do. And maybe that fact alone is enough of an argument for Being More Agile - if we're mindful of the utility of being flexible, maybe making decisions early on that lead to a vocabulary and ontology that's "not quite right" can still be corrected for and massaged.
So that's at least a summary of what's bouncing around in my head about this project at the moment - what do y'all think?
- Steven
I do think that the right thing to do - eventually - is to be as general as possible, not only so that the API/schema is as applicable as possible to different kinds of governing bodies, but to make it possible to query and aggregate data ACROSS a wide variety of governing bodies for comparison studies, to the extent that that's feasible. That, besides the obvious fact that it seems counter-productive to have entirely disjoint "openstates" and "opencities" and "openstates" and "openthis" and "openthat" projects.
At a high level, I'm torn on what the next step ought to be. On the one hand, there is the omnipresent peer pressure in any modern developer's life to Be More Agile(TM). From that point of view, one would think that the starting place would be to just pick one special case - one city, one county, whatever - and just start doing the minimal useful thing, don't worry about the big picture, let iteration and God sort it out.
As you might gather from my sarcasm, I'm not entirely convinced that would work. The other part of me feels that the real next step should be not even one of coding but of research and thought: gather as much information about different kinds of governing bodies as possible. Look at what they have in common and what they don't. Come up with some generally applicable vocabulary. See if there are good existing ontologies for this sort of thing, and if not make our own. This then informs what the object hierarchy is, what the field names are.
But ultimately, the reality is that there are already so many not-immediately-compatible systems - there will always be scraping and converting and massaging to do. And maybe that fact alone is enough of an argument for Being More Agile - if we're mindful of the utility of being flexible, maybe making decisions early on that lead to a vocabulary and ontology that's "not quite right" can still be corrected for and massaged.
So that's at least a summary of what's bouncing around in my head about this project at the moment - what do y'all think?
- Steven
Justin
Jun 5, 2012, 5:50:14 PM6/5/12
to fifty-sta...@googlegroups.com
One thing I've noticed is lower level governments, such as cities and counties typically don't have the resources or know-how to publish the data. Federal data is easy to get (THOMAS, FEC, etc), State data is a bit more dynamic but still doable (there's only 50! ... which is "openstates"). However, when it comes to cities and counties, pdf's, doc(x)'s, and video's are the norm. This is especially true for rural areas, if the data exists at all.
Generally, it's fairly straight forward to scrape the "legislators" but when it comes to the votes and minutes it's whole other ball game. I've looked at several counties over the last few days, from a practical approach. Here are a few examples.
Las Vegas City/County Council, NV
Oklahoma City/County Council, OK
Las Vegas City/County Council, NV
Knox County Commission/Council, TN
Seattle City Council, WA (this actually looks doable)
IMO, the "Open Government" initiative just hasn't trickled down to this level yet. I think it will take, possibly, a federal mandate and/or state assistance to get a solid and consistent framework in motion.
Per the 2010 Census, there are +275 cities in the US with more than 100,000 people. There are +20 counties in the US with more than 1.5 million people. Perhaps it's a matter of looking at the most populous first and attacking from that angle, I don't know. I do know, I myself would not be included in this demographic (but that's okay, I'm not in it for me).
Greg Willson
Jun 22, 2012, 11:32:25 AM6/22/12
to fifty-sta...@googlegroups.com
I wonder how much interest there would be in collaborating on a wordpress plugin / standalone php app that could help smaller communities to present minutes on time, develop agendas, and add links to audio or video files related to the meetings.
I'd like to help make this happen, as my local community and (a board I serve on) uses wordpress, so I could beta test this app as well as develop something to test out and add to for the opencities event..
thanks all!
Greg
On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 8:53 PM, Chad Robinson <mr.chad....@gmail.com> wrote:
Justin,From the work we've tried to do with local governments, your assessment about their capacity is spot on typically. Another thing to keep in mind is the tiers of political subdivisions. Most states give different powers and authorities to different cities and counties. There are also varying degrees of home rule across states. Also keep in mind that their legislative process typically won't mimic the state process too closely. This will be its own kind of frustration as well.Chad Robinson
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