Subject Codes

[Alex Garlick]

Going through the CSVs, it seems as if about half of the states have subject codes. I've also gathered that these are scraped directly from the states, does anyone have any insight for how these codes are generated at the state level? Is there a process? 

Finally, does anyone know why these 24 states are the ones with codes?

Thanks,

Alex

[Shay Wilson]

        Every legislature is different and runs things in their own way. That is why some states have subjects and some don't.   Knowing personally the frustrating differences between legislatures I'm amazed that openstates has managed to find a way to present the data with a common set of APIs.  I can tell you how Alaska's subject associations are created.  All our bills are drafted by our legislative legal department  when the drafter creates the bill they will choose from a fairly static group of subjects (about 270) the drafter will chose all the subjects that they feel fit the bill. Usually about 3-10.

        Finally I can tell you why some states may be reluctant to assign subjects to the bills.  In a highly political environment the creation and assigning of subjects could be construed to have some meaning making it difficult to have a single person in charge of such a thing (as we do) and having a committee assign subjects becomes menial and inconsistent.  Or it was just an over site that no one ever bothered to have fixed. 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Open State Project" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fifty-state-pro...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to fifty-sta...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/fifty-state-project.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Paul Tagliamonte]

This is a perfect answer (Hey, Shay!), and totally spot-on.

We try our best to normalize them to the common set between states, and yeah, it's not a perfect conversion, but it's close.

For the exact list of subjects we have, we've got a list on the http://openstates.org/categorization/ page

I think Shay's answers to the real questions here is totally right.

Cheers,

  Paul

--
Paul Tagliamonte
Software Developer | Sunlight Foundation

[Alex Garlick]

Thanks Paul for that information. And thanks Shay for that insight on Alaska. I appreciate it.

If anybody else has state specific info, please do tell!

AG

On Wednesday, June 4, 2014 1:57:03 PM UTC-4, Paul Tagliamonte wrote:

This is a perfect answer (Hey, Shay!), and totally spot-on.

We try our best to normalize them to the common set between states, and yeah, it's not a perfect conversion, but it's close.

For the exact list of subjects we have, we've got a list on the http://openstates.org/categorization/ page

I think Shay's answers to the real questions here is totally right.

Cheers,

  Paul

On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 1:51 PM, Shay Wilson <shay....@gmail.com> wrote:

        Every legislature is different and runs things in their own way. That is why some states have subjects and some don't.   Knowing personally the frustrating differences between legislatures I'm amazed that openstates has managed to find a way to present the data with a common set of APIs.  I can tell you how Alaska's subject associations are created.  All our bills are drafted by our legislative legal department  when the drafter creates the bill they will choose from a fairly static group of subjects (about 270) the drafter will chose all the subjects that they feel fit the bill. Usually about 3-10.

        Finally I can tell you why some states may be reluctant to assign subjects to the bills.  In a highly political environment the creation and assigning of subjects could be construed to have some meaning making it difficult to have a single person in charge of such a thing (as we do) and having a committee assign subjects becomes menial and inconsistent.  Or it was just an over site that no one ever bothered to have fixed. 

On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 7:13 AM, Alex Garlick <agar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Going through the CSVs, it seems as if about half of the states have subject codes. I've also gathered that these are scraped directly from the states, does anyone have any insight for how these codes are generated at the state level? Is there a process? 

Finally, does anyone know why these 24 states are the ones with codes?

Thanks,

Alex

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Open State Project" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fifty-state-project+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to fifty-sta...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/fifty-state-project.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Open State Project" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fifty-state-project+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to fifty-sta...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/fifty-state-project.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.