I’m ecstatic. All right, so this all goes back to late 2006, a bunch of people sitting at their computers writing some emails about what Congress should do with data. I distinctly remember Dan Newman and I both thinking that the Library of Congress should make its raw legislative database (that powers THOMAS) available directly [...]

I’d like to know whether the government, NGOs and others are doing a sufficient job explaining the rights and responsibilities of citizens. I’ve been informally reviewing the explanatory guides designed to make congressional information more accessible, but I’m struck at the overall lack of another type of explanation.
While I’m happy to focus primarily on [...]

I like to be devil’s advocate among my friends, and since MAPLight and Sunlight are some of my friends, they can’t get out of a careful look over their analyses. Ellen writes on her blog about an analysis provided by MAPLight of the correlation of contributions to representatives and their vote on H.R. 1424 (bill [...]

A flurry of new disclosure related legislation from the Senate Judiciary Committee:
The Sunshine in Litigation Act requires that judges consider public health in deciding whether to release the results of litigation.
The bipartisan “Sunshine in Litigation Act� was prompted by dozens of cases in which hazards and threats to public health were not disclosed during court [...]

A shiver, well at least a small one, goes down my spine every time I see transparency and claims about fairness mixed in with party politics. There are two big issues running around, the first being superdelegates, the back-room deals, and uncertainty over the fairness of a confusing multi-level delegate-based system to choose party candidates. [...]

I just got a copy of the prepared testimony from the GPO for today’s hearing in the legislative appropriations committee. (embedded below).

Notably, they discuss appropriations for the FDSYS system for digital government-wide documents access, and illustrate the efficiency that has come with digital technology. They also discuss web-harvesting, and the FDLP expenditures.
There’s a [...]

Yesterday’s legislative branch subcommittee hearing featured testimony from from Dr. James Billington, the Librarian of Congress. He gave an update on current LoC initiatives, and described funding priorities. From the testimony:
Demand for online services, increased pressure on web services operations to enhance THOMAS, the World Digital Library (WDL), and the Legal Information Services [...]

I moderated a panel today (I guess yesterday, at this hour) at IPDI’s Politics Online Conference, proudly featuring Greg Palmer, Peggy Garvin, and Derek Willis. There wasn’t any official recording of the event, but a reporter from Mashable in the front row more than took up for all of our slack, deploying what was [...]

For the best review of current executive e-gov initiatives, probably the best source is this report from OMB on implementing the e-government act of 2002 (pdf, from this page). The most recent report provides details about spending priorities, and by-agency reviews of successful e-gov initiatives.
For all the discussion about what the next administration might [...]

I have a question:
State legislatures define the borders of their congressional districts when they “redistrict”, every ten years. The number of districts per state is assigned on the basis of the census (this is “apportionment”).
How are the borders of congressional districts defined?
Do state legislatures pass what amounts to a list of complex geographical shapes? [...]