Hey Josh, Noticing govtrack is missing co-sponsor data an all bills (at least all of the bills I have seen): ...
805
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Jan 7, 2010 8:08 pm
Yah, I noticed this morning. THOMAS seems to have made a few changes in their formatting in the last week, and as it happened I did a full update of 111th Cong...
806
Scott Lay
scott-lay
Jan 7, 2010 8:37 pm
At least Thomas hasn't screwed up all its dates with the new year like the California system has. All of the bills being amended are being given a file format...
807
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Jan 8, 2010 6:27 pm
Should be fixed now. Amendments also had broken. Hopefully we won't find any more surprises from THOMAS. They changed some "<br>" tags to "<br />" in their...
808
Ben Woosley
benwoosley
Jan 8, 2010 10:57 pm
So I'm doing a bulk import of bills and finding a number of incongruent committee references under the bill committee activity section which aren't accounted...
809
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Jan 9, 2010 5:38 pm
Hi, Ben. We're definitely at the mercy of THOMAS here. If you can figure it out it would be great. All of the bills/*.xml files use data from THOMAS only....
810
Ben Woosley
benwoosley
Jan 9, 2010 10:43 pm
So I'm adding constraints to my DB and found what seems to be a singular case where a Roll is missing data: It's 103/rolls/h1994-68.xml: <roll where="house"...
811
Derek Willis
derekpwillis
Jan 9, 2010 11:30 pm
Seems to be an issue with the original House data, which is also incomplete. http://clerk.house.gov/evs/1994/roll068.xml...
812
Ben Woosley
benwoosley
Jan 16, 2010 4:03 pm
So I'm applying some logic to the rolls, with the expectation that roll type being the key arbiter of meaning, i.e. what the roll means wrt the bill/amendment...
813
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Jan 16, 2010 8:08 pm
Hey, Yes, I think normalizing the Type element would be a great idea. Once that's done, your second typeiness (I like that word) sounds like a good idea too....
814
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Jan 16, 2010 11:30 pm
Ben, could you report this to the House webmaster? info.clerkweb@... I don't have a contact in the House. (I'd be obliged if you CC'd me if you...
815
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Jan 21, 2010 9:36 pm
GovTrack Insider Launches ... www.govtrackinsider.com Today beÂgins a new exÂperÂiÂment in onÂline jourÂnalÂism and govÂernÂment overÂsight....
816
Tiffiniy Cheng
cooperwef
Jan 22, 2010 1:07 am
Congratulations, Josh. This sounds great and I am looking forward to it. -Tiffiniy ... -- Tiffiniy Cheng Congratulations, Josh. This sounds great and I am...
817
Ben Woosley
benwoosley
Jan 27, 2010 12:30 pm
Here's my first set, focused on passage. These are pretty cut-and-dried. "On Passage" ... "Passage, Objections of the President Notwithstanding" ... "On...
818
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Jan 27, 2010 6:14 pm
If you've built any tools using GovTrack data, like Twitter streams, mobile apps, new websites, etc., I'd like to list it either here: ...
819
John Factorial
john_factorial
Jan 28, 2010 2:29 pm
Josh, http://www.newballot.org is using GovTrack data and loving it. We're just getting off the ground and have many improvements to make, but we're already...
820
John Factorial
john_factorial
Feb 2, 2010 11:35 pm
Hey Josh, OpenCongress has a "Hot Bills" section that highlights the most popular bills getting media attention today. Any idea how they're doing that with...
821
Andrew Ross
jlundigard
Feb 3, 2010 1:34 am
John, The "Hot Bills" on OpenCongress are selected by one of our editorial staff. They are not indicated as such in the Govtrack data. However, you can get...
822
John Factorial
john_factorial
Feb 3, 2010 2:37 pm
Nice! Thank you, Andy. -j...
823
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Feb 7, 2010 12:52 am
... Great. Keep the list posted with any changes. I've added a link to http://www.govtrack.us/downstream.xpd. Josh...
824
Margie Roswell
margieroswell
Feb 8, 2010 12:38 am
... From: Daniel Bowman Simon <daniel@...> Date: Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 6:24 PM Subject: [COMFOOD:] USDA’s Open Gov Plan (new website: usda.gov/open)...
825
Jack
jackangelo
Feb 8, 2010 1:02 pm
Is there a way to notice that the people.xml dataset has changed and what changed. Currently I am uploading the file once a week to make sure I am current but...
826
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Feb 8, 2010 3:14 pm
Hi, Jack. The alternative would be to track my database dump in my Subversion repo: http://razor.occams.info/code/repo/?/govtrack/gather/us/database.people.sql...
827
John Factorial
john_factorial
Feb 8, 2010 4:17 pm
I think a "lastupdated" attribute to the <people> root element would be a nice step toward this end. Before that happens, Jack when you download people.xml...
828
Jack Angelo
jackangelo
Feb 8, 2010 6:31 pm
the MD5 solution is a good one. jack ... Jack Angelo jangelo42@......
829
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Feb 8, 2010 8:08 pm
Ok, so I'm off the hook. :) Since I edit the info in MySQL and then dump it to the XML file, I don't have a handy opportunity to update a last_modified...
830
Paul Murphy
eagleeye_pjm
Feb 8, 2010 8:19 pm
Josh, What's the best way to complie a list of earmarks for the FY 2010 and FY 2011 budgets? Are they listed in each of the appropriations bills or does ...
831
Aaron Swartz
aaronswartz
Feb 8, 2010 8:29 pm
It's very hard to collect this data; it requires a lot of calling around to offices and reading thru for odd subsections. The best source I know of is ...
832
severian43
Feb 8, 2010 8:29 pm
Perhaps the easiest thing to do is to use something like wget, which only downloads the file when it's been changed (based on comparing the file modified...
833
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Feb 8, 2010 8:33 pm
As soon as I can fix some bug, that file is going to start to get written out every day, twice a day, instead of just on Sundays. The contents generally won't...
