Popolo draft comments

Popolo Folks,

I just recently joined so I've been sifting through some of the previous
comments as I tried to assemble some thoughts, so this might be a little
scattered, but comments follow:

* General*
 * I agree with some of the previous comments regarding the mixing of the
data with the implementation details (references to MongoDB)
 * I like the support of reduced dates - we've found this to be pretty
important

*2.1/5.1 Person*
 * Email - From the sample, I can't quite tell if this will support
multiple email addresses for each person, but I think it's important
 * Email part 2 - In the past few years, many legislatures are shifting
from publishing email addresses to email forms - should this be handled as
a URL in the Email field, as a link in the links node or as a different
field?
 * In addition to links, I think it is important to provide a node for
identifiers used in other systems - these may be OpenStates id's, OCD
paths, VoteSmart ids, etc. (this is already in the organization
 * Some concept of Political Party is probably important
 * The current spec seems to be missing some information about the
provenance of the data - something like "last update date/time" and "last
update user" is probably the bare minimum, but a node that would provide a
place for reference citations and source information would be important

*2.2/5.2 Organization*
 * Same point about metadata related to provenance of the information
 * I would suggest adding a links node here that is similar to the Person -
many legislatures and other government entities have their own YouTube,
Twitter as well as their own web sites
 * Is there a way to indicate upper/lower house
 * Is there a way to support judicial and executive offices?
 * Is there a way to indicate hierarchical relationships between
organizations?  For example, a parliament contains an upper house and a
lower house and a lower house contains several committees
 * Is there a way to record the geographic hierarchy of a legislative body?
 For example, city government is located within a state government, which
is located within a national system.
 * There is a lot of other structured information that could potentially be
captured about legislative bodies..  For example, the number of seats, the
electoral system (constituencies vs. proportional representation), number
of years between elections, election rules, inauguration rules, etc.

*2.3/5.3 Address*
 * this structure makes a lot of sense
 * might be good to capture the country, though this may be something that
can be captured at the Organization level
 * Phone/Fax - there are often multiple phones assigned to a given address
- I think this can be accommodated with this structure.  Is that the case?

*5.4 Post*
 * I think the array of addresses makes sense here
 * Would membership in committees handled using the Membership or a
committees node on the Post?
 * It seems like there needs to be some sort of geographic id that would
tie the office to a constituency or region - I'm guessing this would on the
Post class.  Would it make sense to use an id system like the Open Civic
Data (OCD) - https://github.com/opencivicdata/ocd-division-ids

*5.5 Membership*
 * No comments


Best,

Robert


------------------
Robert Cheetham

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