Seeking technical advice on New York State local laws project

[Ari Epstein]

Hello all,

I am a fellow at the New York State Department of State.  I've got a group of colleagues and municipal officials (attorneys and legislative clerks) interested in a pilot project I am undertaking to build a prototype system to support the legislative process.  In a sentence, we are trying to adapt the continuous delivery approach used in open source software to work for local legislative process.  I am including context below, but to jump straight to the issue: We have a group of informatics students working with us this spring to develop a prototype, and I think our work will benefit from expertise in the technologies we are proposing to work with.

Context

Our hook here is that in New York (unlike any other state I am aware of), local laws must be filed with the Secretary of State (our agency) before they can take effect.  This is now done by snail mail.  Laws are sent uncodified (in a form similiar to session laws at the federal or state level), scanned in our agency, OCR'd, and then published with limited metadata online.  Or they are rejected and sent back if they do not meet validation requirements, which are formal in nature (disputes over substance happen in court).  We have authority to provide an electronic process, which offers an opportunity to launch a new platform.  This idea is inspired both others' observations that law is like source code and will some day be developed more like source code.  Local officials have identified three features they would find valuable to switch to an electronic process that we would like the platform to support:

1. revision control -- detailed record of what changed, who did it, when, and why
2. automated publication to shared, searchable statewide database in PDF, HTML, ebook formats
3. instant validation and acknowledgment on submission

The attached pictures illustrate the concept.  One depicts continuous delivery, an approach to open source software that I understand as the GitHub way of doing things.  Source code is stored in a repo.  Pushes to the repo on GitHub (or similar) trigger continuous integration tests or, when the push is to the production branch, deployment scripts.  It offers an extensible, highly automated framework for software development, and it seems to be the way to develop software (at least open source) these days.

The other is the rough model for the prototype framework I am trying to develop. The steps are largely the same as for continuous delivery, but instead of a programming language like Javascript or Ruby, the source is a narrative text format like AsciiDoc.  And the output is a publication in PDF, HTML, EPUB, etc. instead of a deployed application.  I am proposing using AsciiDoctor as a starting point for representing law for several reasons:

1. it's a plain text format that works well with diff tools (revision control)
2. it's a mature standard based on more than two decades of refinement
3. the AsciiDoctor implementation has a robust array of tools, and is accompanied by a comprehensive suite of tests
4. its community has active interest in a Legal AsciiDoctor extension

As a preliminary test, I converted one county's codification into an AsciiDoctor repo and pieced together a script to build it into PDF, EPUB, and HTML.

While I admit it is a stretch to have most municipal attorneys and clerks learn how to use GitHub or GitLab, these platforms have great API's that a more appropriate user experience could be built around.  We will be seeking for our student team to build a prototype for that user experience.  I think our chances of success are best if we make connections with others grappling with these issues or familiar with the tools we are planning to use.

If you have suggestions about connections or are interested to provide expertise as our work commences, please be in touch.