Economic Stimulus Bill Text Tracker
Josh Tauberer
> I recently saw a version control system that programmers apparently
> use routinely to track changes in code, where differences and
> appended sections are highlighted, allowing for the evolution of a
> text to be easily tracked and visualized.
>
> It seems that there are individual provisions evolving through
> multiple iterations, which could be aligned in such a version control
> system, though I don't know how easy such version control analysis is
> to apply to bills.
I went ahead and adapted the bill comparison tool I developed for
GovTrack and analyzed the changes made between the draft PDFs that have
been circulating of the bail-out bill. I found four texts (three drafts
plus the amendment voted on today), making for three comparisons. You
can see them here:
http://www.govtrack.us/special/econstimbill/changes.xpd
It's not very pretty because while House bill writers have been posting
the PDFs, PDFs don't make it easy to make comparisons. They *are*
composing the bills in XML, and if they made those available we the
public would have an easier time. Maybe we wouldn't complain to our reps
so much either because we could actually understand what is going on better!
GovTrack, much like House.gov, is having difficulty keeping up with the
high load of so many people Googling for HR 3997. You may have to reload
the page once or twice or thrice to get it.
If you have spotted a draft PDF (in the 105 page range) that I don't
have, please send it along and I'll add it.
Feedback is welcome. I would appreciate a few hours embargo on linking
in case some bugs crop up from feedback. After that, please disseminate
far and wide as you please.
--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
John Wonderlich
This is really cool!
nice turnaround time, too.
We've been looking also at what version tracking would look like for the last 5 or so versions of the House Rules. Let me know if you (or anyone) wants the ASCI files, which we got from here:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/hrm/browse.html
Alli, my fearless intern, went through and downloaded each rule from each Congress, and found some interesting disparities in version labeling among different Congresses, and also discovered that the rules were drastically changed between the 105th and 106th Congresses.
It's really interesting to see the things that only come to light under a programmatic lens, and I have no doubt that the bailout comparison you've put together here has similar interesting nuggets.
This is also a great counterpart to Mark Tapscott's bill tracking chart.
John
Greg Elin
Love side by side comparisons and wish Congress did them! Nicely done...for transparency (even if I disagree with certain representation of issues...but cool for your readers).
Greg Elin
Sunlight Foundation (http://sunlightfoundation.com)
Sunlight Labs (http://sunlightlabs.com)
ge...@sunlightfoundation.com
gr...@fotonotes.net
skype: fotonotes
aim: wiredbike
twitter: gregelin
cell: 917-304-3488
John Wonderlich
Youtube and pictures here: http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2008/10/02/versioning-on-paper/
Josh Tauberer
> I liked Josh's implementation so much I tried to do it with paper, just
> to show how helpful the diff tool is in this circumstance.
>
> Youtube and pictures here:
> http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2008/10/02/versioning-on-paper/
Ha, fantastic! It just needs some talkie piano music in the background.
J
> ge...@sunlightfoundation.com <mailto:ge...@sunlightfoundation.com>
> gr...@fotonotes.net <mailto:gr...@fotonotes.net>
chrisber
change.gov in particular - here:
http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/11/change-gov-revision-control.html
There's even a preliminary git-based implementation.
On Oct 9, 5:58 am, Josh Tauberer <taube...@govtrack.us> wrote:
> John Wonderlich wrote:
> > I liked Josh's implementation so much I tried to do it with paper, just
> > to show how helpful the diff tool is in this circumstance.
>
> > Youtube and pictures here:
> >http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2008/10/02/versioning-on-paper/
>
> Ha, fantastic! It just needs some talkie piano music in the background.
>
> J
>
>
>
> > On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 3:07 PM, Greg Elin <ge...@sunlightfoundation.com
> > <mailto:ge...@sunlightfoundation.com>> wrote:
>
> > Drat, GovTrack down.
>
> > Love side by side comparisons and wish Congress did them! Nicely
> > done...for transparency (even if I disagree with certain
> > representation of issues...but cool for your readers).
>
> > On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 7:16 AM, John Wonderlich
>
> > Josh,
>
> > This is really cool!
>
> > nice turnaround time, too.
>
> > We've been looking also at what version tracking would look like
> > for the last 5 or so versions of the House Rules. Let me know
> > if you (or anyone) wants the ASCI files, which we got from here:
> > http://www.gpoaccess.gov/hrm/browse.html
>
> > Alli, my fearless intern, went through and downloaded each rule
> > from each Congress, and found some interesting disparities in
> > version labeling among different Congresses, and also discovered
> > that the rules were drastically changed between the 105th and
> > 106th Congresses.
>
> > It's really interesting to see the things that only come to
> > light under a programmatic lens, and I have no doubt that the
> > bailout comparison you've put together here has similar
> > interesting nuggets.
>
> > This is also a great counterpart to Mark Tapscott's bill
> > tracking chart
> > John
>
> > On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 6:41 PM, Josh Tauberer
>
> > Based on John's idea on a previous thread:
> > > use routinely to track changes in code, where differences and
> > > appended sections are highlighted, allowing for the
> > evolution of a
> > > text to be easily tracked and visualized.
>
> > > It seems that there are individual provisions evolving
> > through
> > > multiple iterations, which could be aligned in such a
> > version control