Comments on: Communicating with Congress Conference http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/10/02/communicating-with-congress-conference/ Recommendations, Resources, and Reform Mon, 14 Feb 2011 15:53:58 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Daniel Bennett http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/10/02/communicating-with-congress-conference/comment-page-1/#comment-1260 Daniel Bennett Sun, 07 Oct 2007 14:37:02 +0000 http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/10/02/communicating-with-congress-conference/#comment-1260 There already is an XML schema for communicating with Congress (and has been for over a decade). Although it has so far been mainly used internally (for the congressional hosted web forms), Maj. Leader Hoyer ran a beta test exposing the XML format with the addition of a new tag ( the topic code tag) which advocacy groups can put a URL into as a way to allow Hill staff to immediately tabulate incoming messages and assign responses. The beta test was very successful at saving offices time and with the increasing load of messages from advocacy campaigns will make life manageable for staffers. For advocacy groups it will mean that messages get recognized in a timely manner (before rather than after congressional votes). As to the idea of Josh's, we had both spoken a couple years ago about 'connected conversations' which would depend on legislative metadata standards as well as something like the topic code. I will look back through my notes for the slides we did. My paper about the topic code can be found at: http://www.advocatehope.org/project-papers/communicating-with-congress-by-way-of-advocacy There already is an XML schema for communicating with Congress (and has been for over a decade). Although it has so far been mainly used internally (for the congressional hosted web forms), Maj. Leader Hoyer ran a beta test exposing the XML format with the addition of a new tag ( the topic code tag) which advocacy groups can put a URL into as a way to allow Hill staff to immediately tabulate incoming messages and assign responses. The beta test was very successful at saving offices time and with the increasing load of messages from advocacy campaigns will make life manageable for staffers. For advocacy groups it will mean that messages get recognized in a timely manner (before rather than after congressional votes).

As to the idea of Josh’s, we had both spoken a couple years ago about ‘connected conversations’ which would depend on legislative metadata standards as well as something like the topic code. I will look back through my notes for the slides we did.

My paper about the topic code can be found at: http://www.advocatehope.org/project-papers/communicating-with-congress-by-way-of-advocacy

]]> By: Chris http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/10/02/communicating-with-congress-conference/comment-page-1/#comment-1201 Chris Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:27:09 +0000 http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/10/02/communicating-with-congress-conference/#comment-1201 i forgot to mention the Condorcet internet voting service i forgot to mention the Condorcet internet voting service

]]> By: Chris http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/10/02/communicating-with-congress-conference/comment-page-1/#comment-1200 Chris Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:26:20 +0000 http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/10/02/communicating-with-congress-conference/#comment-1200 many-to-one aggregated communication: blog comments, forums (fora?), user-submitted aggregation sites (slashdot/digg/dell idea storm), anything with voting and ranking (youtube, etc.) identification problem: openid ... many-to-one aggregated communication:
blog comments, forums (fora?), user-submitted aggregation sites (slashdot/digg/dell idea storm), anything with voting and ranking (youtube, etc.)

identification problem:
openid

…

]]> By: Oxa Koba http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/10/02/communicating-with-congress-conference/comment-page-1/#comment-1190 Oxa Koba Thu, 04 Oct 2007 06:22:35 +0000 http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/10/02/communicating-with-congress-conference/#comment-1190 But there are many other forms of many-to-one, aggregated communication,… Could you elaborate on this please. It is not immediately obvious what these other forms are that might be appropriate for the congressional context. But there are many other forms of many-to-one, aggregated communication,…

Could you elaborate on this please. It is not immediately obvious what these other forms are that might be appropriate for the congressional context.

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