Future of the Open States project

[Brady Swenson]

Given the recent news about the Sunlight Foundation and the information regarding the database projects like Open States: "We will discontinue our tool building and database maintenance activities, and encourage others to continue our most promising projects," Klein wrote. He said the group was "making necessary adjustments to staff in accordance" with the planned changes."

Can you all confirm for us that the Open States will be shutting down? 

Can you give us a better idea of when this will happen?

If so, are you aware of any other projects that provide a similar service?

Very saddened to hear this news. We've relied on the Open States API to provide enriching data for our Legislative Tracker for several years now. 

Thanks,

Brady Swenson

Director of Tech

Rewire

[Andy Lo]

Hi Brandy,

Some of the former Open States maintainers and Labs will be meeting to discuss potential avenues for Open States to have a future.  Unfortunately, at this time, a lot of things are in a state of limbo.  We'll let the community know when things have been hammered out.  In the meantime, LegiScan is probably the best, most directly comparable alternative that I know of.

[Adam Sentner]

I too hope that Open States has a future.

I was starting to use the API to pull data down when I heard the news. I compared Open States to Legiscan and determined Open States to have a more complete dataset, specifically with legislators, committee assignments, districts, district boundaries, etc... 

With an API's collectively receiving 543,070 daily calls, I wonder if the community at large even knows this is happening. Has there been any type of community outreach to members with a registered API key? 

Any idea who the former maintainers are? Is there a point of contact?

Thanks in advance!

Adam Sentner

Senior Product Architect

Walk West

asen...@walkwest.com

(919) 324-3925

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[James Turk]

Hi Adam,

I was the original project lead and along with a lot of the other previous contributors/maintainers am currently putting together a plan to make Open States sustainable.

The announcement took us by surprise and there's a lot to figure out so we're still a few days away from having an announcement but we'll be making announcements here for sure in coming weeks.

Stay tuned, and if anyone wants to reach out feel free to email me directly.

[John Bogil]

Hi James,

Any update about the future of OpenStates?

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[Kory P]

I'm not sure where things are at either.  I'm working to set up the API on a server (django 1.6.2) which will

hopefully be ready soon.

If anyone is up for helping out, please email me at  kory....@gmail.com

Still bummed that Sunlight shut down, but we can all make it happen, there are enough of us!

kory

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