Diplomacy is Overrated

Trickle-Down Datanomics

First, sorry for “datanomics”. It rhymed.

Second, with all the recent talk about APIs to make Congressional legislation more accessible to the public in general and developers in particular, and the upcoming proposed launch of data.gov, some questions still remain about how much and what kind of data will be exposed, and in what format(s). A deeper question also exists: does/will the government at all levels view developers who do interesting things with that data as partners or as potential gadflies? 

Also, while it’s great that the federal government is planning something along these lines with data.gov, what is really needed is for the same mindset to trickle-down to the states and local governments which, even now, lack consistency in the quality of standards and protocols used to make local data available to citizens. 

XML and its derivatives are a logical choice for a standard format. It’s never been easier or more efficient to make structured public data available online, but the problem lies in motivating state and local governments to put the data in a structured format to begin with without requiring extra work or staff. 

So what is needed is simple software for the people in state and local government who actually input legislative and other data to be able to generate XML files without having to jump through difficult hoops. It is incumbent upon government leadership to make this a priority and to seek out solutions that make this possible; it is equally incumbent upon us, as citizens, to demand it. Some already do this to a degree by making new legislation (and changes to existing legislation) available via RSS, but they’ve really only scratched the surface. There is still a very long way to go.

Imagine if every state put all of their new legislation, regulations, demographics, and statistics into XML feeds so that the average citizen could subscribe via an RSS reader, or developers could write software that could aggregate, index, and do other interesting things with all of that data without having to resort to 20th century screen-scraping and other inefficient methods for collecting data. 

Any government that does this is sure to win praise from the public as well as the technical community. 

A Modest Proposal for State Legislatures

There has been some excitement in the web development community among people who work with government data. A recent bill before Congress, HR1105, contains a proposal to make bills and other legislative information more accessible online, something that would enhance the public’s ability to stay better informed about what’s going on in Congress, and also help web developers and companies provide innovative and useful tools for accessing that information.

While Congress does a fair job now, more work is needed if the federal government can claim it provides true transparency where public information is concerned.

At the state level, however, there’s even more work to be done. I don’t want to single any states out…but I could. State bills and other legislation are often difficult, at best, to find online. While all states provide some level of access, the quality ranges from pretty darn good to dreadful in terms of the bill information offered and how it is accessed. In this day of inexpensive web resources and tried and tested software, there’s simply no good excuse for providing anything less than a decent level of access and a smooth, positive user experience. 

In light of that, I’ve put together a few suggestions (by no means the final word!) that state legislative bodies and state government technical operations people should consider. The demand for this sort of thing is only going to get stronger as time goes on:

1. Structured Data

Basic bill index data (bill number, date of introduction, sponsor, title, etc.) should be provided in a structured format. If all states provided this simply in plain XML, that in and of itself would be a major step forward since the bill information could be easily and readily used and shared by all parties involved (state governments, private citizens, web and software developers). Public data is only useful if it’s available in a structured format that can be shared; one could also argue that the government has an obligation to do as much as possible to reduce obstacles in this area.

2. Better Online Access

In many cases, states just need better websites for their citizens to use in accessing this information. The quality of the interfaces — i.e., the web pages and forms used to search and browse for bill information — ranges, again, from the pretty good to the confusing and unusable. There may have been a time when the cost of providing a well-designed and usable website was cost-prohibitive. Today that’s just not the case.

3. Subject Keywords and Tagging

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) does this for Congressional legislation. Some states attach keywords or subject terms to bills while others do not. Adapting some kind of standard for classifying and tagging legislation at the state level would greatly enhance the ability of citizens to locate bills of particular relevance to them. Bill numbers and, often, the actual titles of the bills themselves are less than helpful at best. “HB123” doesn’t mean much unless you already know what it means. Titles like, “A proposal to delay penalties on extant revenue for certain small businesses, for one fiscal year” isn’t much of an improvement. However, tags or subjects like “Income Tax”, “Business Tax”, “Estate Tax” help everyone get a little closer to what they’re searching for. 

Implementing the above at the state levels will help all of us locate, share, and access the information contained in the bills that can, as we are witnessing at present, have so serious an effect on our lives. Of course, having read the text of many state and Congressional bills, we’re still pretty much on our own when deciphering exactly what those bills mean. Web software can only do so much :)

But it would be a step in the right direction.