In case you’re wondering why it’s been a little silent on the blog and the mail list recently, we’ve begun drafting our report. The group has broken down into smaller groups each working on a different section of the report. I’ve been working on the section of the report that will recommend using structured data formats to publish the status of legislation, and it’s coming along nicely thanks to the help of some others. We should be done with our section in the next few days, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the other sections will look like.
This probably puts us a little bit behind schedule for issuing the report this month, but I thought that was too optimistic all along. The extra time that has gone into getting background facts and carefully hacking out the issues for and against each recommendation has been incredibly useful.
We’re typing away
March 18th, 2007 by Joshua Tauberer · 2 Comments
Tags: OpenHouse
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2 responses so far ↓
skeptic06 // Mar 19, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Don’t know whether this is in your remit but:
I’ve been greatly frustrated over the last few days over the lack of online availability of the text(s) of the Iraq supplemental appropriations bill.
Even now, when the bill has been processed by the Apps committee, there is no copy of the bill available either on THOMAS nor on the committee site. (All there is on the site is a five page summary.)
Yet, it’s been clear for days that texts have been circulating widely among pols and journos.
I don’t know whether this lack of info is down to a deliberate decision to keep the Great Unwashed in the dark, or blind observance of precedent or sheer bone idleness – but it can’t surely be limitations of technology that are preventing an early online dissemination of texts in the process of being marked up.
(It’s a particular problem with appropriations bills because those originate in the committee – so there’s not even the text of the bill as introduced to guide the outsider as to what in Sam Hill is going on!)
Joshua Tauberer // May 1, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Don’t know if anyone will read the comments on this old post anymore, but I wanted to just toss in a quick ‘thanks’ for pointing out that issue. Getting legislative info online before it’s all been voted on seemed to fly under the radar here for a while, but I did add a small note about it in the legislative databases section of the report.
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