Hi all,

Please join me at an IRC chat to talk about civic-technology projects,
on Saturday, August 16 at 4pm Eastern time! The agenda will be a mix
between seeing what various civic technology projects are up to
(GovTrack, OpenCongress, and any others run by people who show up), and
getting new people involved in ongoing projects. "oGosh" is, as I wrote
previously, Open Government Open Source Hacking, what I'm calling the
loose community that binds these projects together.

The chat will be in the #transparency channel on Freenode. For more
information on the meeting (and on how to get to the chat), see:

http://wiki.opengovdata.org/index.php/OGosh

Suggestions for agenda topics are most welcome either to me directly or
by revising the wiki page above.

Hope to see you there.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

Hi,

I'm in the process of working on an iPhone application using a combination of
data from
Govtrack, Sunlight, OpenSecrets, etc.  The iPhone presents a interesting set of
challenges, the
primary one being limiting the number and size of requests being made, It drains
the battery
and hampers the user experience (waiting for information to download).

A common pattern I'm noticing across the API's and data sets is there seems to
be no way to
limit how many results you get back and to a lesser extent, page the results. 
It would be
great if I could specify a month along with a year when requesting votes for a
candidate
(http://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes.xpd?month=07&year=2008&person=300090) and
votes.

Apologies if this is possible already and I've overlooked it.

P.S.  Thanks for the time and effort you've put into Govtrack.  It's invaluable.

  -Justin

That sounds neat. Would love to hear more about the app.

My personal stance on APIs is that, as far as GovTrack goes, since I
provide the raw data, I don't want to spend too much time trying to make
a comprehensive API as well.

Or, well, let's say, I'd be happy to accept code contributions to extend
the API, but otherwise it probably won't make it high enough on the
priority list to get done soon.

Josh

Justin Palmer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm in the process of working on an iPhone application using a combination of
data from
> Govtrack, Sunlight, OpenSecrets, etc.  The iPhone presents a interesting set
of challenges, the
> primary one being limiting the number and size of requests being made, It
drains the battery
> and hampers the user experience (waiting for information to download).
>
> A common pattern I'm noticing across the API's and data sets is there seems to
be no way to
> limit how many results you get back and to a lesser extent, page the results. 
It would be
> great if I could specify a month along with a year when requesting votes for a
candidate
> (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes.xpd?month=07&year=2008&person=300090)
and
> votes.
>
> Apologies if this is possible already and I've overlooked it.
>
> P.S.  Thanks for the time and effort you've put into Govtrack.  It's
invaluable.

Unfortunately, I've never written a line of python.

A little about the application -- The idea is that most of us (If I can
generalize for a
moment) don't pay close enough attention to our government and issues that
matter to
us.  We collect information in passing from various blogs and sites such as
Govtrack in bits
when we "have free time".  I'd like to make it easy for myself and others to
unobtrusively
monitor legislators, issues, and bills that are important to us.  I'd also like
the ability to do
this when I'm standing in line at the grocery store, waiting on the bus, etc.  I
believe that
somehow, if we can fit all of that information in someone's pocket, "having
time" is no
longer an issue.

With a few clicks, I can see how a Senator voted on a specific piece of
legislation.  What If I
disagree with the Senators position?  One more click and I can instantly call
their office or
send them an email.

You could also combine the basics with information from OpenSecrets to find out
where
the money is coming from, or Eventful to find out if there are any events in
your area for a
particular legislator.

I'm about 1/4 of the way through implementation, and running into some hurdles
that I've
yet to determine how I'm going to proceed.  For instance, when looking at the
voting
record of a candidate "HR 1234" doesn't mean much unless you already know what
this
relates too.  In order for me to fetch the related bill (and the more
descriptive title) I'd have
to:

* Request the votes for a candidate
* Request the roll for a vote (to obtain bill id)
* Request the bill and extract the title

I have to run through that list once for each vote and given the inability to
limit votes, this
ends up being a very costly operation (both processing and $ if you're not on an
unlimited
data plan).  Fun stuff, but it's coming along nicely so far! :-)

Here are a few preliminary screens:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/caged/legislate/legislators.png
http://s3.amazonaws.com/caged/legislate/democrat.png
http://s3.amazonaws.com/caged/legislate/republican.png

  -Justin

--- In govtrack@yahoogroups.com, Josh Tauberer <tauberer@...> wrote:
>
> That sounds neat. Would love to hear more about the app.
>
> My personal stance on APIs is that, as far as GovTrack goes, since I
> provide the raw data, I don't want to spend too much time trying to make
> a comprehensive API as well.
>
> Or, well, let's say, I'd be happy to accept code contributions to extend
> the API, but otherwise it probably won't make it high enough on the
> priority list to get done soon.
>
> Josh
>
> Justin Palmer wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm in the process of working on an iPhone application using a combination
of data
from
> > Govtrack, Sunlight, OpenSecrets, etc.  The iPhone presents a interesting set
of
challenges, the
> > primary one being limiting the number and size of requests being made, It
drains the
battery
> > and hampers the user experience (waiting for information to download).
> >
> > A common pattern I'm noticing across the API's and data sets is there seems
to be no
way to
> > limit how many results you get back and to a lesser extent, page the
results.  It would
be
> > great if I could specify a month along with a year when requesting votes for
a
candidate
> > (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes.xpd?
month=07&year=2008&person=300090) and
> > votes.
> >
> > Apologies if this is possible already and I've overlooked it.
> >
> > P.S.  Thanks for the time and effort you've put into Govtrack.  It's
invaluable.
>

Justin Palmer wrote:
> Unfortunately, I've never written a line of python.

That's quite all right since the site doesn't use Python. :)

(For the APIs, it's XSLT and C#.)

> somehow, if we can fit all of that information in someone's pocket, "having
time" is no
> longer an issue.

Nice!

> With a few clicks, I can see how a Senator voted on a specific piece of
legislation.  What If I
> disagree with the Senators position?  One more click and I can instantly call
their office or
> send them an email.

Communication with Congress is tricky business. The easier you make it
for a constituent to communicate, the less seriously it is taken.

> * Request the votes for a candidate
> * Request the roll for a vote (to obtain bill id)
> * Request the bill and extract the title
>
> I have to run through that list once for each vote and given the inability to
limit votes, this
> ends up being a very costly operation (both processing and $ if you're not on
an unlimited
> data plan).  Fun stuff, but it's coming along nicely so far! :-)

In this case, what you should try to do is create a server side to this
so that the data is prepared in a format on the server that is most
suitable to be loaded by the iPhone. This might involve downloading my
raw dataset so you can access the whole thing in one shot, rather than
making a number of API calls (which are somewhat costly on my end) per page.

> Here are a few preliminary screens:
> http://s3.amazonaws.com/caged/legislate/legislators.png
> http://s3.amazonaws.com/caged/legislate/democrat.png
> http://s3.amazonaws.com/caged/legislate/republican.png

Looking good.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

I am interested in building zero energy homes. These have a lot of components to
that that
would benefit from government incentives. For example, there is a FEED In Tariff
bill recently
introduced that would incentivize the installation of solar PV and another that
would give a
$10,000 tax credit for a zero energy house. Is it possible to set a search
criteria that would
identify relevant bills?

On Aug 14, 2008, at 10:28 AM, auzzie22301 wrote:
> I am interested in building zero energy homes. These have a lot of
> components to that that
> would benefit from government incentives. For example, there is a
> FEED In Tariff bill recently
> introduced that would incentivize the installation of solar PV and
> another that would give a
> $10,000 tax credit for a zero energy house. Is it possible to set a
> search criteria that would
> identify relevant bills?


Is this bill one of those you'd want to see?
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110-1059

If any of the subject areas are close enough for you, you can monitor
them, or have an RSS feed for them, but if that would return too much
"noise" beyond the ones in which you are interested, then there would
need to be a way to identify them more specifically.

In theory, at least, that might be something which could be done by
textual analysis, or it might be done by human experts tagging the
bills with more precise categories, or by some middle ground where the
textual analysis recommends candidates for tagging to the human
experts...  As it is now, I think the best you have is the subject
categories, and I think those are up to the Library of Congress.

How do you find relevant bills now?

Joe

--
Joe Germuska
Joe@... * http://blog.germuska.com

"I felt so good I told the leader how to follow."
-- Sly Stone

A friendly interface to track issues is;
http://www.opencongress.org/issue/show/4665_energy_conservation. Open
Congress uses the GovTrack XML files as the source for the tracking.

Cheers,
/Neil

Joe Germuska wrote:
>
> On Aug 14, 2008, at 10:28 AM, auzzie22301 wrote:
> > I am interested in building zero energy homes. These have a lot of
> > components to that that
> > would benefit from government incentives. For example, there is a
> > FEED In Tariff bill recently
> > introduced that would incentivize the installation of solar PV and
> > another that would give a
> > $10,000 tax credit for a zero energy house. Is it possible to set a
> > search criteria that would
> > identify relevant bills?
>
> Is this bill one of those you'd want to see?
> http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110-1059
>
> If any of the subject areas are close enough for you, you can monitor
> them, or have an RSS feed for them, but if that would return too much
> "noise" beyond the ones in which you are interested, then there would
> need to be a way to identify them more specifically.
>
> In theory, at least, that might be something which could be done by
> textual analysis, or it might be done by human experts tagging the
> bills with more precise categories, or by some middle ground where the
> textual analysis recommends candidates for tagging to the human
> experts... As it is now, I think the best you have is the subject
> categories, and I think those are up to the Library of Congress.
>
> How do you find relevant bills now?
>
> Joe
>
> --
> Joe Germuska
> Joe@... * http://blog.germuska.com
>
> _._,___

Just a reminder.

Hi all,

Please join me at an IRC chat to talk about civic-technology projects,
on Saturday, August 16 at 4pm Eastern time! The agenda will be a mix
between seeing what various civic technology projects are up to
(GovTrack, OpenCongress, and any others run by people who show up), and
getting new people involved in ongoing projects. "oGosh" is, as I wrote
previously, Open Government Open Source Hacking, what I'm calling the
loose community that binds these projects together.

The chat will be in the #transparency channel on Freenode. For more
information on the meeting (and on how to get to the chat), see:

http://wiki.opengovdata.org/index.php/OGosh

Suggestions for agenda topics are most welcome either to me directly or
by revising the wiki page above.

Hope to see you there.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

(Passing this along...)

www.MAPLight.org

Drupal Developer / MySQL Admin

MAPLight.org, a dynamic Berkeley-based non-profit illuminating the
connection between money and politics, is seeking a Drupal developer
with significant MySQL administration experience to maintain and
expand our groundbreaking public database of campaign contributions
and legislative votes. Ideal candidates will join deep technical
expertise with strong communications skills, a love of problem-
solving, a passion for data integrity, and a belief in the power of
data transparency to improve American politics.

Responsibilities
* Maintain a MySQL database of legislative votes and campaign
contributions, ensuring speed, stability, and data integrity as new
data is added
* Maintain a Drupal-based website offering easy public access to the
database
* Manage daily imports of data from a variety of non-profit and
governmental sources
* Help to expand MAPLight.org’s online services, developing new Drupal
modules and working with external contractors as necessary
* Support research and public reports based on the data
* Offer technical advice and expertise to inform strategic decisions
for the organization

Qualifications
* BS/MS in Computer Science or a related field, or BA with equivalent
work experience
* 5+ years database administration, preferably with MySQL
* 5+ years web development, preferably in LAMP environments
* Expertise with PHP, DHTML/CSS/Javascript, XML
* Experience managing and developing Drupal-based websites
* Strong communications skills
* Personal commitment to MAPLight.org’s mission and goals

Preferred
* Experience in Open Source software development
* Understanding of the American legislative system
* Experience with Flash/Flex development

This position is full-time and based in Berkeley, California. Salary
commensurate with experience. Position includes health benefits and
paid vacation. MAPLight.org is an equal opportunity employer.

Interested candidates should submit a cover letter and resume to Emily
[at] maplight [dot] org. Please include specific details of your
experience with MySQL database administration and Drupal development,
along with examples of your online work.

About MAPLight.org
MAPLight.org, a groundbreaking public database, illuminates the
connection between campaign donations and legislative votes in
unprecedented ways. Elected officials collect large sums of money to
run their campaigns, and they often pay back campaign contributors
with special access and favorable laws. This common practice is
contrary to the public interest, yet legal. MAPLight.org makes money/
vote connections transparent, to help citizens hold their legislators
accountable.

MAPLight.org’s small, effective team has won numerous awards,
including a 2008 Webby award nomination for best Politics website.
Learn more at http://www.maplight.org.

Thanks to Dan Gabriel, the visual appearance of GovTrack has been
totally revamped. Check it out.

It's not totally finished, but I wanted to push the changes so I can
take a break from the site for a while.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

I like the changes. Makes it easier for newbies and experienced users
to find things.

Alnisa

On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 9:36 AM, Josh Tauberer <tauberer@...> wrote:
> Thanks to Dan Gabriel, the visual appearance of GovTrack has been
> totally revamped. Check it out.
>
> It's not totally finished, but I wanted to push the changes so I can
> take a break from the site for a while.
>
> --
> - Josh Tauberer
> - GovTrack.us
>
> http://razor.occams.info
>
> "Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
> falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
> Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

http://www.govtrack.us/
Looks great

One thing I note is that the "Track Legislation" Google ad was so
prominent, it almost competes for attention with the main "primary
links" on the page (Primary Links is a Drupal term, I mean the links
across the top of the page.)

Can you make:
Track, Research, Get Involved, About GovTrack
a little bit bigger?

I'm ever, and always impressed with the awesome work of this community,

Margie

On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 10:36 AM, Josh Tauberer <tauberer@...> wrote:
> Thanks to Dan Gabriel, the visual appearance of GovTrack has been
> totally revamped. Check it out.
>
> It's not totally finished, but I wanted to push the changes so I can
> take a break from the site for a while.
>
> --
> - Josh Tauberer
> - GovTrack.us
>
> http://razor.occams.info
>
> "Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
> falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
> Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
>
>

Thanks belatedly for all of the feedback on the new design. We'll be
revising some things... eventually.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)


Marjorie Roswell wrote:
> http://www.govtrack.us/
> Looks great
>
> One thing I note is that the "Track Legislation" Google ad was so
> prominent, it almost competes for attention with the main "primary
> links" on the page (Primary Links is a Drupal term, I mean the links
> across the top of the page.)
>
> Can you make:
> Track, Research, Get Involved, About GovTrack
> a little bit bigger?
>
> I'm ever, and always impressed with the awesome work of this community,

(Also a hyperlinked version here:
http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2008/09/09/govtrack-updated)

This month www.GovTrack.us hits its four-year anniversary. It’s been an
incredible four years. Really. When I first rolled out the site in 2004,
after around three years of on-and-off development, I didn’t know if
anyone was going to want to use it. I thought the “selling point” was
merely email updates, but I had no idea that the project would turn into
something a bit bigger. Today the site is viewed by around 15,000 people
a day and sends out 1,000 email updates a night, but it is also a data
provider to neat sites like MAPLight.org and Follow The Oil Money which
track the correlations of campaign contributions and votes and
themiddleclass.org, an advocacy organization. Through the site, I have
also gotten into government data policy and am making small inroads in
improving how our government publishes raw data. Most recently, I have
been lucky to have been joined by others in the task of improving
GovTrack, as the site moves further in the direction of being a
community project.

Here are the recent changes to the site:

      * The appearance! Thanks to Dan Gabriele, the site now looks pretty
professional, I would say. We are going to roll out another set of
visual updates next month.
      * Community Question and Answer: You can now find on bill pages a
box to enter questions about the bill, and to see what questions other
GovTrack users have posted. Then you can answer them. It’s a community
effort to research legislation and help others get the facts. Take a
look at the list of recent questions and answers and see if you can
answer any (possibly by putting your research hat on). It’s a civic good
deed. Since the feature was added at the end of June, 373 question and
235 answers have been posted. We will expand on this tool in the future.
      * You can now look up your congressional district and Members of
Congress by a ZIP or ZIP+4 postal code. (Thanks to public.resource.org
for the data!)
      * I have written a page on Tips for Commnicating With Congress.
Should you write your rep? What should you include? Take a look.
      * Votes pages now include some cute pie charts, and, also, the time
of day when the vote happened, in case you’re doing some deep research.
      * Pages for representatives now show a little map for their
congressional district and a listing of the counties and towns in the
district. See this example.
      * Bills pages now show related pages based on what GovTrack users
have selected as trackers. You have to go to the Related Bills page for
a bill. See this example. This will help you find legislation that has
superseded the bill you are looking at, for instance.
      * The feed and bill status widgets that you can embed on your
webpage (which by the way we had first) can now be customized easier.

And for developers:

      * There is a new Get Involved page.
      * The congressional district look-up API now supports lat/long,
addresses, ZIP codes, and ZIP+4 codes. You may not know about the three
other APIs either: see the source page.

But much more is in the works. We’ll be completely overhauling our bill
text page for easier navigation and comparison of bill text and to let
you link directly from your website to particular paragraphs within
bills, and to embed paragraphs in widgets on your own website — to help
you make your case in your own writings. We’ll also be expanding and
improving on the statistics we generate for Members of Congress,
providing a new set of “indicators” to get the big picture on what your
rep is actually doing. Lastly we hope to integrate some campaign
contribution data to get another perspective.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

While reviewing some of the bills online, I like the way you can
reference specific sections of the bills with linkable tool tips being
present.

This got me thinking of an improvement suggestion.

Is it possible showing a bill that includes ammending a bill or
reference to another bill, that a tool tip or similar link be available
to go to the related bill as well?

Thanks ahead of time.

Eric

Eric Bresie wrote:
> While reviewing some of the bills online, I like the way you can
> reference specific sections of the bills with linkable tool tips being
> present.

Thanks! You mean creating a link right to a paragraph, right? You're the
first to provide feedback on that.

We (that is, really someone else is doing the hard work on the
following) are going to roll out some major improvements to the bill
text pages in the next month, hopefully

> Is it possible showing a bill that includes ammending a bill or
> reference to another bill, that a tool tip or similar link be available
> to go to the related bill as well?

Bills don't ever refer to other bills (as far as I've seen). Amendments
implicitly refer to a bill, but we don't have a good foundation for
showing amendment text well because Congress doesn't code up that
information very well at all.

Bills do reference the U.S. Code ("USC") and sometimes the Code of
Federal Regulations ("CFR"). They may make references to other aspects
of law that I haven't seen. Is this what you mean? But, when a bill
references the USC it should almost always be accompanied by a link on
the site to the text of the USC (on a website run by Cornell).

So I'm not sure what you mean, but please do clarify or point me to a
particular example, since it sounds like you have an idea that would be
very useful to add and also not so difficult for me to do.

Josh

--- In govtrack@yahoogroups.com, Josh Tauberer <tauberer@...> wrote:
>
> Eric Bresie wrote:
> > While reviewing some of the bills online, I like the way you can
> > reference specific sections of the bills with linkable tool tips
being
> > present.
>
> Thanks! You mean creating a link right to a paragraph, right?
You're the
> first to provide feedback on that.
>
> We (that is, really someone else is doing the hard work on the
> following) are going to roll out some major improvements to the
bill
> text pages in the next month, hopefully
>
> > Is it possible showing a bill that includes ammending a bill or
> > reference to another bill, that a tool tip or similar link be
available
> > to go to the related bill as well?
>
> Bills don't ever refer to other bills (as far as I've seen).
Amendments
> implicitly refer to a bill, but we don't have a good foundation for
> showing amendment text well because Congress doesn't code up that
> information very well at all.
>
> Bills do reference the U.S. Code ("USC") and sometimes the Code of
> Federal Regulations ("CFR"). They may make references to other
aspects
> of law that I haven't seen. Is this what you mean? But, when a bill
> references the USC it should almost always be accompanied by a link
on
> the site to the text of the USC (on a website run by Cornell).
>
> So I'm not sure what you mean, but please do clarify or point me to
a
> particular example, since it sounds like you have an idea that
would be
> very useful to add and also not so difficult for me to do.
>
> Josh
>

This probably is more relavent when ammeding a bill, which references
an earlier bill, with specific sections in the bill.

I think I was looking for something similiar to what is in the
Navigation on the Status page, only added as a link in the "tool tip"
type dialog (presently available showing "Paragraph Options").
Currently it allows linking in, but not showing links out.

Maybe some of this is my unfamiliarity with the way these things are
written up.  Does that make sense?

Eric

Not sure if anyone really cares here, but I thought I would mention that
I have changed this morning the statistics generated per Member of
Congress on bill sponsorship --- the numbers now exclude resolutions.
This is because there is a statistic counting bills that were enacted,
but since resolutions are not enacted, it was somewhat misleading to
include them in the totals for sponsorship, cosponsorship, and
bills-not-going-anywhere.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

Eric Bresie wrote:
> --- In govtrack@yahoogroups.com, Josh Tauberer <tauberer@...> wrote:
>> Eric Bresie wrote:
>>> While reviewing some of the bills online, I like the way you can
>>> reference specific sections of the bills with linkable tool tips
> being
>>> present.
>> Thanks! You mean creating a link right to a paragraph, right?
> You're the
>> first to provide feedback on that.
>>
>> We (that is, really someone else is doing the hard work on the
>> following) are going to roll out some major improvements to the
> bill
>> text pages in the next month, hopefully
>>
>>> Is it possible showing a bill that includes ammending a bill or
>>> reference to another bill, that a tool tip or similar link be
> available
>>> to go to the related bill as well?
>> Bills don't ever refer to other bills (as far as I've seen).
> Amendments
>> implicitly refer to a bill, but we don't have a good foundation for
>> showing amendment text well because Congress doesn't code up that
>> information very well at all.
>>
>> Bills do reference the U.S. Code ("USC") and sometimes the Code of
>> Federal Regulations ("CFR"). They may make references to other
> aspects
>> of law that I haven't seen. Is this what you mean? But, when a bill
>> references the USC it should almost always be accompanied by a link
> on
>> the site to the text of the USC (on a website run by Cornell).
>>
>> So I'm not sure what you mean, but please do clarify or point me to
> a
>> particular example, since it sounds like you have an idea that
> would be
>> very useful to add and also not so difficult for me to do.
>>
>> Josh
>>
>
> This probably is more relavent when ammeding a bill, which references
> an earlier bill, with specific sections in the bill.
>
> I think I was looking for something similiar to what is in the
> Navigation on the Status page, only added as a link in the "tool tip"
> type dialog (presently available showing "Paragraph Options").
> Currently it allows linking in, but not showing links out.
>
> Maybe some of this is my unfamiliarity with the way these things are
> written up.  Does that make sense?

Yes and no. I think I know what you mean, but an example would help.

If you're suggesting that on a bill text page it should link to the
amendments that modify the paragraph you're looking at, or if you're
looking at an amendment's text and it should link to the paragraph in
the bill it modifies --- both of those are major projects which would be
worthwhile to do but someone would have to step up and volunteer to do
them. It may actually not be possible to do in an automated and
comprehensive way.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

> Not sure if anyone really cares here, but I thought I would mention that
> I have changed this morning the statistics generated per Member of
> Congress on bill sponsorship --- the numbers now exclude resolutions.
> This is because there is a statistic counting bills that were enacted,
> but since resolutions are not enacted, it was somewhat misleading to
> include them in the totals for sponsorship, cosponsorship, and
> bills-not-going-anywhere.

Is this fixed in the XML files as well? Are there any changes we need
to make to our parsers?

Aaron Swartz wrote:
>> Not sure if anyone really cares here, but I thought I would mention that
>> I have changed this morning the statistics generated per Member of
>> Congress on bill sponsorship --- the numbers now exclude resolutions.
>> This is because there is a statistic counting bills that were enacted,
>> but since resolutions are not enacted, it was somewhat misleading to
>> include them in the totals for sponsorship, cosponsorship, and
>> bills-not-going-anywhere.
>
> Is this fixed in the XML files as well? Are there any changes we need
> to make to our parsers?

It's just that the meaning of the fields changed. The structure of the
XML didn't change.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

----- Original Message -----

From: Josh Tauberer

To: GovTrack List

Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2008 4:06 AM

Subject: [govtrack] Change in GovTrack bill statistics

Not sure if anyone really cares here, but I thought I would mention that
I have changed this morning the statistics generated per Member of
Congress on bill sponsorship --- the numbers now exclude resolutions.
This is because there is a statistic counting bills that were enacted,
but since resolutions are not enacted, it was somewhat misleading to
include them in the totals for sponsorship, cosponsorship, and
bills-not-going-anywhere.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

On this page:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-6869
Having clicked a paragraph, the target given is:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-6869&version=ih&nid=null

This link doesn't take you to the paragraph; it yields this message:
"The link you followed was targetted at a paragraph in a different
version of the bill that could not be automatically identified in this
version."

Bug?

Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> On this page:
> http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-6869
> Having clicked a paragraph, the target given is:
>
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-6869&version=ih&nid=null
>
> This link doesn't take you to the paragraph; it yields this message:
> "The link you followed was targetted at a paragraph in a different
> version of the bill that could not be automatically identified in this
> version."
>
> Bug?

Definitely a bug. I'll look into it. Thanks!

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

Carl Malamud of public.resource.org, with funding from a bunch of places
including a small bit from GovTrack's ad profits, announced his
intention to purchase from the Government Printing Office documents they
produce in the course of their statutory obligations and then have the
nerve to sell back to the public at prohibitive prices. The document to
   be purchased is the Code of Federal Regulations, the component of
federal law created by executive branch agencies, in electronic form.
Once obtained, it will be posted openly/freely online.

More here: http://public.resource.org/gpo.gov/index.html

And Carl's letter to the GPO:
http://public.resource.org/gpo.gov/the_honorable.html

There is no independent website that provides Web 2.0ish access to the
CFR. I hope someone steps up to rectify that problem as soon as we get
the files.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

Peggy Garvin wrote:
> Josh, Thanks for the update.
> An exception on resolutions: joint resolutions can become public law.
> Don't now if you have considered this or not. In the 110th, see HJRes 20
> and HJRes 43 for examples. Including these would probably have little
> effect on any member's stats, but it is an important distinction. A good
> reference for these matters:
> http://www.gpoaccess.gov/bills/glossary.html#definitions

Meh.

I'll just ignore that.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)