When I started my blog five years ago, I said would try not to get too technical. Overall, I’ve stuck to that. However, with Akoma Ntoso now essentially standardised, I think it is time to start covering some areas of it in a little more technical detail. So, from time to time, I’m going to delve into a little technical mumbo jumbo to cover some subjects that come up frequently.
For the past two weeks I’ve been in Italy attending the LEX Summer School and Akoma Ntoso Developer’s Workshop at the Ravenna campus of the University of Bologna. This is my eighth summer school in Ravenna and my tenth overall LEX Summer School including the two U.S. editions. It’s always one of the highlights of my year.
Two great news piece of news this week! First, the documentation for Akoma Ntoso has now been officially released by OASIS. Second, we’re announcing the latest version of our LegisPro drafting platform for Akoma Ntoso, codenamed “Sunrise”.
Do you need to escape a technology eddy? In fluid dynamics, an eddy is the swirling of a fluid that causes a reverse current against a downstream flow. It often forms behind a major obstacle. The swirling motion of an eddy creates resistance to forward motion by creating a backward force. Eddies are also seen in air and electromagnetic systems.
I recently worked out that I’ve learned, on average, a new programming language every two to three years. These many languages have been part of my toolbox for somewhere between four to six years before falling away to make room for new technologies. However, there is one programming language that has been a major part of my programming repertoire for almost 22 years now – and that is JavaScript.
Yes, we’ve now built a full real-world legislative drafting editor using the final release of the new OASIS standard for legislative XML known as Akoma Ntoso. No, it wasn’t easy, but drafting tools never are. While our project is not yet a finished implementation, it shows that Akoma Ntoso is adaptable to some of the most challenging demands it will face as a world-wide standard for digital legislation.
Lately we’ve become quite Agile. More and more, our government customers have started to impose Agile methodologies on us. While I’ve always thought of our existing methodologies as being quite nimble, adopting Agile and Scrum methodologies has required some adaptation on my part.
Early in the game, I started to find Agile to be more of a hindrance than a help. The drumbeat of each sprint was wearing me out – and I started to feel the inevitable effects of burnout creeping into the my every thought.
But then a remarkable thing happened. I found myself not only defending Agile, but advocating it for our other projects. I was quite surprised to find myself having become such a big supporter. So what […]
I’ve recently been marveling at how software development has changed in recent years. Our development processes are increasingly integrated with both our government customers and our commercial partners — using modern Agile methodologies. This largely fulfills a grand vision I was a part of very early in my career.
I started my career at the Boeing Company working on Internal Methods and Processes Development (IMPD). Very soon, the vision that came about was the idea of Concurrent Engineering where all aspects of the product development cycle, including all disciplines, all partners, and all customers, were tightly integrated in a harmonious flow of information. Of course, making the vision a reality at Boeing’s scale has taken some time. Early on, Boeing […]
It’s been a while since I updated my blog – a whole year in fact. The reason is that I’ve been hard at work finishing our web-based XML editor, LegisPro, supporting our projects with the U.S. House, while simultaneously developing an Akoma Ntoso-based implementation for the U.K. and Scottish Parliaments. The challenge has been all-consuming.
Next week I will be giving a couple of talks with Matt Lynch of the Scottish Parliament at the LEX Summer School 2016 in Ravenna, Italy and then, the following week, by myself at NALIT 2016 in Indianapolis. My company, Xcential, also intend to show glimpses at our booth the Data Transparency Conference in Washington D.C. on the 28th September. We’ve got a busy month […]
As a proponent of XML for legislation, I’m often asked why an XML approach is better than a more traditional approach using a word processor. The answer is simple – it’s all about connected information.
The digital end point in a legislative system can no longer be publication of PDFs. PDFs are nothing but a kludgy way to digitize paper — a way to preserve the old traditions and avoid the future. Try reading a PDF on a cell phone and you see the problem. Try clicking on a citation in a PDF and you see the problem. Try and scrape the information out of a PDF to make it computer readable and you see the problem. The only useful function […]
