Re: Legislation on the web...

Hi everyone,

I recently joined the list-serv and am the author of the handles document quoted below. It was released to the Congressional community but I understand that there is a public release in the works. The intention was to help staffers distribute both internal and external links to bills. A handle is a redirect created for digital preservation (see http://www.handle.net/faq.html). The commercial publishers use DOIs, which are the same technology. The current link structure for legislation has not changed. A handle is an additional access point that provides predictable links over the long-term. Please note that there are handles to THOMAS as well, just remove the dash lis(-lis) at the end.  I coordinated the design and implemented the project if anyone has any questions about it. 

To clarify the origins of congressional information, THOMAS combines three sets of data. First, documents only come from GPO where they finalize and print texts received from Congress (the bill itself, committee reports). Second, the metadata or transaction aspects of legislation (cosponsors, votes, consideration) originate from the databases of the House and Senate. Finally, CRS adds the summaries as mandated by the 1936 statue USC 166(d)(6) in addition to other items.   

Returning to Peter's original question about data and standards, both chambers of Congress (House and Senate) jointly work on a project to draft bills in XML. The House has sponsored the public website http://xml.house.gov at least since 2001, as I recall. The current DTD (this project was started in the days of SGML) and schema are available. There is a whitepaper about how they created the XML drafting system http://xml.house.gov/drafting.htm


From talking to colleagues at state legislatures and national legislatures, it seems we share many similar issues.  I'd be interested in learning more about how W3C standards could be used so legal information can be more easily shared and accessed.


>>> "John Wonderlich" <johnwonderlich@gmail.com> 10:27 AM Wed, 10-Sep 2008 >>>

Hi Kevin,

In case it's helpful, I've appended at the end of this email the document that Daniel Bennett prepared on the "legislative handles" system for permanent bill URLs, which he has sent to the Open House Project google group.  Manually entering the new URLs works for existing legislation, although there aren't yet links to autogenerated stable URLs from THOMAS pages yet.

As far as I know, the current situation with funding for THOMAS upgrades stands with the Legislative Branch Approps subcommittee tentatively approving language in the report for the current years approps directing THOMAS to report back on the feasibility of data level access to legislative information, though this is bogged down in the current approps situation (with Congress expected to pass a Continuing Resolution rather than approps bills).  Here's Rob Pierson from Honda's office discussing the report language:

http://groups.google.com/group/openhouseproject/browse_thread/thread/903b3f1cef0a7c81/c394ec00c157033d?lnk=gst&q=pierson#c394ec00c157033d


And here's the document that Daniel Bennett prepared on "legislative handles":



Legislative Handles 
 (which can be used as Tags/Metadata/Citations)


LIS announces Legislative Handles, a new persistent URL service for creating links to legislative documents. Legislative Handles are a convenient way to cite legislation from either LIS (http://www.congress.gov) or THOMAS (http://thomas.loc.gov). With a simple syntax, Handles make it easy to link to legislation while writing emails or coding web pages. 
Handles are web addresses that do not change over time. The goal of the Handles project is to minimize the impact of any future search engine or database changes by providing persistent predictable links. The current link structure for LIS and THOMAS has not changed. See How to Build Links to Thomas for more information about the current structure. 
How to create a Legislative Handle
To create a Legislative Handle, start with http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/ followed by the collection name, legislation. Add a period and the congress number,110. Finally, add a period, the bill abbreviation and the bill number. Add a -lis to link to LIS. Without the suffix, the Handle will resolve to THOMAS.
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.110hconres196 
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.110hconres196-lis 
To learn the specifics for building any Handle, see Syntax below. 
How Legislative Handles work
A Handle is a form of uniform resource identifier (URI) that resolves to a uniform resource locator (URL). As a stable pointer, the Handle will not change even if the underlying URL changes over time or the object moves to a new directory. The Global Handle Registry(TM) is run by CNRI (Corporation for National Research Initiatives), making it possible to resolve Handles from any computer on any network. The actual page URL, not the Handle, is shown in the browser address bar when the page is displayed. 
Handles are being introduced in stages and will cover past congresses and additional legislative document types. See Schedule below. Handles are pre-registered, meaning they are created in bulk. The maximum value of the Handle registered is identified on the schedule.
HANDLE SYNTAX
General Syntax - - Legislation (BSS) Syntax 
GENERAL SYNTAX for any Legislative Handle 
Handle Server http://hdl.loc.gov/

Naming Authorityloc.uscongress/
Identifier - Collection legislation.
Identifier - Item 110hconres4544-
Identifier - Suffix lis


http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.110hr4544-lis

The Handle server is the existing proxy server at the Library of Congress.
http://hdl.loc.gov

The naming authority has two parts. The primary naming authority (loc) is managed by the Library of Congress and the secondary naming authority (loc.uscongress) is managed by CRS.
loc.uscongress
The collection identifier is the legislative document or database. In addition to legislation, we anticipate having Handles for the congressional record, nominations and others.
legislation
The item identifier uniquely describes one item in a collection. It contains a series of subparts that logically divide the content within the collection. The unique identifier syntax depends on the collection.
110hconres4544
The suffix indicates whether the Handle will resolve to THOMAS or to LIS. Without a suffix, the Handle will resolve to THOMAS. 
-lis
Handle punctuation
Numbers will *not* use zero padding.
A slash will be used as a delimiter between
- the Handle server and the naming authority hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress
- the naming authority and the item identifier loc.uscongress/legislation.110hconres4544
A period will be used as a delimiter between
- subdivisions of the naming authority loc.uscongress
- the collection and the item legislation.110hconres4544
- repeated occurences of a numbers in the item identifier treaty.110.34
A dash will be used as a delimiter before the suffix -lis

LEGISLATION SYNTAX (Bill Summary and Status database)
http:// hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.###( s | sjres | sconres | sres | hr | hjres | hconres | hres )###-lis
The collection name, legislation, is followed by a period and the Congress number. 
The bill type abbreviation (s | sjres | sconres | sres | hr | hjres | hconres | hres) is followed immediately by the bill number. 
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.110s254

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.110sjres10-lis

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.110sconres33-lis

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.110sres69-lis 
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.110hr622

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.110hjres65-lis

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.110hconres27-lis

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.110hres655-lis



On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 9:13 AM, Novak, Kevin <KevinNovak@aia.org> wrote:

Peter and All,

Having managed Thomas for four years as one of my many duties at the Library of Congress I wanted to chime in.

Thomas is a very old system and presents many challenges with exposing, managing, and making accessible all of its information. The information and documents coming from the House side of Congress is coming in via XML. The Senate had not yet at the time I left LOC decided on an XML standard for the documents they produce and therefore doesn't offer the accessibility or opportunity for different displays, etc. 

As John may remember (given we had share some information with the Sunlight Foundation and Congressman Honda's office, we had a plan in place to begin major changes to the THOMAS infrastructure, how it communicates and manages data, and how the interface/presentation layer is demonstrated/made available. Of course the challenge was getting the funding to move forward with the plan. 

One item that most are not aware of is that the data in THOMAS originates at the Government Printing Office given how the Senate and House, per policy, are required to document and communicate their activities/bills and the like. All permanent identifiers to the original document reside there. I am surprised to hear that links are changing. Not that I can do anything directly about it now that I am not there anymore but am curious as to what links to documents are not permanent. 

Chris Testa who is the eGov IG subchair for web standards was the direct manager responsible for THOMAS and may be able to provide more insight.

Kevin

Kevin Novak
Vice President, Integrated Web Strategy and Technology
The American Institute of Architects
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From: public-egov-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:public-egov-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of richard.murphy@gsa.gov
Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2008 9:12 AM
To: johnwonderlich@gmail.com
Cc: Peter Krantz; public-egov-ig@w3.org

Subject: Re: Legislation on the web...

John & All:

I don't think this precisely fits your criteria, but you may be interested in a few OWL-DL ontologies my team maintains. 

1. The US-Privacy Act of 1974 here ...

http://www.osera.gov/privacy.owl


2. The Federal Enterprise Architecture Reference Models

http://www.osera.gov/owl/2004/11/FEA/fea.owl

Best wishes,

Rick

office: 202-501-9199
cell: 202-557-1604

-----public-egov-ig-request@w3..org wrote: -----
To: "Peter Krantz" <peter.krantz@gmail.com>
From: "John Wonderlich" <johnwonderlich@gmail.com>
Sent by: public-egov-ig-request@w3.org
Date: 09/07/2008 01:28PM
cc: public-egov-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: Legislation on the web...
I recently did a survey of some legislator driven efforts in the US (inserted below).  On a broader level, several sites have grown here to add value to the Library of Congress THOMAS page (the official source of legislation), which has many notable shortfalls, such as links that expire.

GovTrack does the main work of scraping and re-presenting, allowing other sites such as OpenCongress.org to focus on usability and social features.  The source code for both is available.

One chapter of the Open House Project report was about THOMAS upgrades, and is available here.

(blog post below)

                              
Public Legislative Participation
               
August 11th, 2008 by John Wonderlich · 2 Comments
               
                    
The next list I'd like to tackle is legislative participation.

A number of innovative approaches have appeared in various legislative bodies, inviting public participation in what is arguably the most public of all processes: the creation of public policy.  While these projects vary in scope and effect, they all have granted a new level of access and authenticity to public deliberation, recognizing the public as a capable partner in the process of legislating.  

These are all legislative projects operating with official government sponsorship.  While there is a great deal of valuable work done tracking legislation and developing policy outside government, and also pioneering work developing in Congress for communicating with constituents, I'm focusing here on officially sponsored legislative participation.



The Open House Project launched with Speaker Pelosi's endorsement, developing a transparency reform agenda for Congress. 
The Irish House of Parliament, the Oirechtas, held an involved "e-consultation" project on their broadcasting bill.  From their site: 
"The consulters, comprising of members of the Joint Committee of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources and the Office of the Houses of the Oireachtas e-Consultation Working Group, viewed the e-Consultation pilot as a significant departure from previous practice as it involved a dedicated website which allowed for the posting of submissions in a structured manner as well as a discussion forum and it constituted an attempt to communicate directly with the public on legislation and not just target traditional 'stakeholders'." 
Rep. Honda☼ posted legislation and accepted public commentary on their proposed STEM Act. 
Rep. Kuhl☼ launched a "Fix Washington" project, where citizens proposed legislative priorities. 
Senator Lieberman☼ developed the first E-government Act of 2002 in conjunction with a public Web site that collected priorities and suggestions.  From the accompanying report language: 
o    On May 18, 2000, Senators Lieberman and Thompson launched an on-line `experiment in interactive legislation', a website that sought public comments on 44 topics related to possible measures that Congress could take to advance the cause of e-government. Topics were organized into categories, such as `centralized leadership', `funding innovations', and `digital democracy: citizen access and participation,' and ranged from `centralized online portal' to `interoperability standards' to `G-Bay': enhanced online distribution of federal government surplus property.' For each of the topics, a short discussion described the status of current efforts and the `New Idea', or ideas, being offered for consideration. Visitors to the website could then submit their comments on the subject, and read views that had been submitted by others. Nearly 1,000 comments were submitted, approximately one half of which were posted on the website after being reviewed by Committee staff.13
[Footnote] Comments were submitted by private citizens, academicians, federal employees, and even federal agencies. OMB also responded to the website by soliciting views from federal agencies; OMB officials then consolidated agencies' responses and presented them to the Committee as a single document. Opinions, additional information, and alternative proposals submitted over the website proved helpful as Senator Lieberman formulated his electronic government legislation.
[Footnote] 13Comments were reviewed primarily for appropriateness and relevance; Committee staff did not favor any particular viewpoint in deciding which submissions to post. The website was intended to educate the public about the potential of e-government, to solicit input and information on the many topics being considered for possible legislation, and to serve as both an experiment and an example of how the Internet could be used to make government processes more accessible to the public.
Senator Dick Durbin☼ held public discussions on Open Left and Redstate, asking the question: "What Should We Include in our National Broadband Strategy?" 
Politicopia is a public wiki, set up in conjunction with the Utah State Legislature's Rules Committee. 
I'm looking for any other examples.  Others that sort of fit: 


In a sense, the California initiative process involves citizen participation, although it bypasses more than it augments the legislative process. 
The Peer to Patent Project is probably the best designed example of substantive public involvement, although it isn't legislative. 
Any other suggestions? 
                                   
-----Original Message----- 
From: Sheridan, John [mailto:John.Sheridan@nationalarchives.gov.uk] 
Sent: Sun 07/09/2008 19:02 
To: Peter Krantz; public-egov-ig@w3.org 
Cc: jeni@jenitennison.com; Appleby, Paul 
Subject: RE: Legislation on the web...


Peter,

I'm responsible for the development of the UK Government's "official legislation website" - and also for official Gazettes  on the web (the London, Belfast and Edinburgh Gazettes).

See: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2008/ukpga_20080003_en_1 for an example of how we publish legislation (it is semantic HTML and we use a bit of GRDDL too). We've published our XML Schema here: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/legislation/schema/


You might also be interested in "Sem Webbing the London Gazette"
http://2008.xtech.org/public/schedule/detail/528


We're really keen to share ideas!

I've cc'ed some of the others involved.

John Sheridan

Head of e-Services
Office of Public Sector Information
Admiralty Arch
North Side
The Mall
London
SW1A 2WH

Tel: 020 7276 5205
Fax: 020 7276 2661


On Sun, Sep 7, 2008 at 1:19 PM, Peter Krantz <peter.krantz@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear egov-ig group members,

Is there anyone else that is involved in a project that aims to put
your national legislation on the web? We are currently half way
through a project where we use a lot of W3C standards/technology (e.g.
RDFa, OWL, RDFS, XHTML et al) to put swedish legislation online in a
better shape than what exists today.

I was thinking that projects of this type would be similar (from a
technology perspective) in many countries and it would be interesting
to share ideas.

Kind regards,

Peter Krantz