Bill Status - a low hanging fruit for NEIM eDemocracy?
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sean.m...@gmail.com
Aug 16, 2011, 1:34:00 PM8/16/11
to NIEM EDemocracy
From talking to various people and looking at the state of play in US
State Legislatures, there appears to be a real need for a simple,
standardized expression of bill status information.
1 Lots of folks track bills - citizens, members, lobbyists etc.
2 Multiple commercial companies I know of struggle with "scraping"
bill information from Legislatures for use in their products (Eg.
Thomson Accela, LexisNexis StateNet, KnowWho, Legination etc)
3 Multiple not-for-profits struggle with it too: Sunlight's OpenStates
project for example
4 Legislatures are starting to provide Web APIs - data.gov style
5 The time would thus seem to be right to look at standardizing what
comes out of those Legislature APIs for Bill Status so that downstream
consumers can do a single piece of integration work and reasonably
expect to get multiple State Legislatures covered
as a result
6 The Kansas website (kslegislature.org) has an RESTian API that we
created. Rather than invent our own XML/JSON
schema for the information we provide, I would prefer to be able to
target a NIEM standard schema.
Some cautionary notes:
1 Legislatures are remarkably different in how they execute bill
workflows and in the terminology they use
2 We must avoid going down deep ratholes trying to standardize too
much
3 We must get input from people who work in the legislatures
themselves. No amount of reading the "How a bill becomes
a law" booklets often found on Legislative Websites will provide the
kind of information that is needed.
I will be approaching NALIT for their input on (3) above. Would love
to hear from downstream consumers about what information they would
like to see in the Bill Status schema. I have access to reasonably
good knowledge about KS, ND, PA and NV to get the ball rolling on
this...
Thoughts?
State Legislatures, there appears to be a real need for a simple,
standardized expression of bill status information.
1 Lots of folks track bills - citizens, members, lobbyists etc.
2 Multiple commercial companies I know of struggle with "scraping"
bill information from Legislatures for use in their products (Eg.
Thomson Accela, LexisNexis StateNet, KnowWho, Legination etc)
3 Multiple not-for-profits struggle with it too: Sunlight's OpenStates
project for example
4 Legislatures are starting to provide Web APIs - data.gov style
5 The time would thus seem to be right to look at standardizing what
comes out of those Legislature APIs for Bill Status so that downstream
consumers can do a single piece of integration work and reasonably
expect to get multiple State Legislatures covered
as a result
6 The Kansas website (kslegislature.org) has an RESTian API that we
created. Rather than invent our own XML/JSON
schema for the information we provide, I would prefer to be able to
target a NIEM standard schema.
Some cautionary notes:
1 Legislatures are remarkably different in how they execute bill
workflows and in the terminology they use
2 We must avoid going down deep ratholes trying to standardize too
much
3 We must get input from people who work in the legislatures
themselves. No amount of reading the "How a bill becomes
a law" booklets often found on Legislative Websites will provide the
kind of information that is needed.
I will be approaching NALIT for their input on (3) above. Would love
to hear from downstream consumers about what information they would
like to see in the Bill Status schema. I have access to reasonably
good knowledge about KS, ND, PA and NV to get the ball rolling on
this...
Thoughts?
James Turk
Aug 19, 2011, 10:25:49 AM8/19/11
to niem-ed...@googlegroups.com
We worked with the Minnesota Historical Society / NDIIPP on some recommendations earlier this year, a lot of it is simply about access, but there are some things to keep in mind.
We also contributed to this legislative metadata comparison that goes over fields that MN tracks and fields that our project tracks:
Grantcv1
Aug 19, 2011, 4:57:42 PM8/19/11
to NIEM EDemocracy
I've been working to tackle the same basic issues with California
legislative data. I would certainly welcome some open standards in
this area - presuming simplicity and flexibility. I don't have any
NIEM experience, but have been looking at other initiatives like Akoma
Ntoso from the University of Bologna and African i-Parliament group
and more recently Sunlight Foundation's Open State's Project.
My work at http://legix.info is perhaps a bit less ambitious compared
to NIEM, but does span a fair amount of the legislative data from
California - everything I can get my hands on. I am trying to be all
inclusive in supporting various approaches being taken in the hopes of
developing a better understanding of how these all might interoperate
- XML, JSON, RDF, Akoma Ntoso, and so on. I would welcome the
opportunity to adapt to the output from this initiative, while
providing my own input in getting to that.
-Grant
On Aug 16, 10:34 am, "sean.mcgr...@propylon.com"
legislative data. I would certainly welcome some open standards in
this area - presuming simplicity and flexibility. I don't have any
NIEM experience, but have been looking at other initiatives like Akoma
Ntoso from the University of Bologna and African i-Parliament group
and more recently Sunlight Foundation's Open State's Project.
My work at http://legix.info is perhaps a bit less ambitious compared
to NIEM, but does span a fair amount of the legislative data from
California - everything I can get my hands on. I am trying to be all
inclusive in supporting various approaches being taken in the hopes of
developing a better understanding of how these all might interoperate
- XML, JSON, RDF, Akoma Ntoso, and so on. I would welcome the
opportunity to adapt to the output from this initiative, while
providing my own input in getting to that.
-Grant
On Aug 16, 10:34 am, "sean.mcgr...@propylon.com"
smoodle
Sep 3, 2011, 7:36:00 PM9/3/11
to NIEM EDemocracy
Have you guys seen this graphic of how a bill becomes a law:
http://www.mikewirthart.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/howlawsmadeWIRTH2.jpg
More cool stuff can be accessed from this starting page:
http://sunlightlabs.com/contests/designforamerica/
I guess this is old news, but I'm just seeing it now. Just thought I
would share.
-Karen
On Aug 16, 11:34 am, "sean.mcgr...@propylon.com"
http://www.mikewirthart.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/howlawsmadeWIRTH2.jpg
More cool stuff can be accessed from this starting page:
http://sunlightlabs.com/contests/designforamerica/
I guess this is old news, but I'm just seeing it now. Just thought I
would share.
-Karen
On Aug 16, 11:34 am, "sean.mcgr...@propylon.com"
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