Legix.Info

“A Bill is a Bill is a Bill!”

I remember overhearing someone exclaim “A Bill is a Bill is a Bill” many years ago. What she meant is that a bill should be treated as a bill in the same way regardless of the system it flows through.

I’m going to borrow her exclamation to refer to something a bit different by rephrasing it slightly. Is a bill a Bill and a akn:bill? Lately I’ve been working in a number of different jurisdictions, and through my participation on OASIS and the LEX Summer School, with many other people from even more jurisdictions. It sometimes seems that everything bogs down when it comes to terminology. In the story of Babel, God is said to have divided […]

Legix.Info

My Week in Ravenna at the Akoma Ntoso Developer’s Workshop

Last week I attended the LEX Summer School 2012 and the Akoma Ntoso Developer’s Workshop in Ravenna, Italy. These events were hosted by the University of Bologna. For me, this was my third year that I visited Ravenna. I had originally attended the LEX Summer School 2010 as a student, returned last year as an invited speaker, and this year was again a speaker and a teacher at the Developer’s Workshop.

As always, the visit provided me with a great opportunity to compare notes with my colleagues around the world, learn a thing or two, and share my own experiences in the field of legal informatics. Of course, there has been a lot of development in Akoma […]

Legix.Info

Update on our Web-based Legislative Editor

It’s been a while since my last blog post. I’ve been busy working on a number of activities. As a result, I have a lot of news to announce regarding the web-based editor, previously known as the AKN/Editor, that we originally built for the “Unhackathon” back in May.

As you might already have guessed, it has a new name. The new name is “LegisPro Web” which now more clearly identifies its role and relationship to Xcential’s XMetaL-based standalone editor “LegisPro”. Going forward, we will be migrating much of the functionality currently available in LegisPro into LegisPro Web.

Of course, there is now a new web address for the editor – http://legisproweb.com. As before, the editor prototype is freely available for […]

Legix.Info

Legislative Legos

I just got back from a vacation in Denmark – the land where Legos come from. I thought it might be appropriate to spend some time talking about Flavio Zeni at UNDESA calls Legislative Legos – building blocks that can be used to build legislative systems.

Why is this such an important concept? Well, it’s all about managing risk and building a system that can adapt to change in timely manner. Legislative systems can take years and cost many millions of dollars to develop. As the sophistication grows and automation takes root throughout the organization, these systems become extensive mission critical parts of the organization’s fabric. So failure is not an option.

At the same time as legislative systems become so […]

Legix.Info

Why Not Build a Legislative Editor out of Google Docs?

Ever since I started working on my legislative editor (http://legalhacks.org/editor), I’ve been asked over and over if I was using Google Docs, and if not, why not.

So to answer the first part of the question, the answer is a simple no. I don’t use Google Docs or anything like it.

There are a number of good reasons why I take a different path. The first reason is that Google simply doesn’t open Google Docs to that type of customization. Even if the customization capability was there, there are still plenty of reasons why choosing to build a legislative editor around Google Docs would not necessarily make sense. We can start with the privacy and security concerns with storing legislation […]

Legix.Info

Why is Building a Legislative Editor so difficult?

Way back in 2002, when I first started building an editor for legislation, the problem looked so simple. We figured it was a quick six month project and we would then have a product we could resell to other jurisdictions. I remember when we first made our modest proposal, having it pushed back at us and being told we needed to go and rethink it. California had already learned, the hard way, that the deceptively simple problem of building a legislative editor was actually much more difficult and complex. What I have come to appreciate, over time, is that California’s approach actually makes the problem easier. It’s even harder elsewhere where the drafting rules are less structured and well thought […]

Legix.Info

A Pluggable XML Editor

Ever since I announced my HTML5-based XML editor, I’ve been getting all sorts of requests for a variety of implementations. While the focus has been, and continues to be, providing an Akoma Ntoso based legislative editor, I’ve realized that the interest in a web-based XML editor extends well beyond Akoma Ntoso and even legislative editors.

So… with that in mind I’ve started making some serious architectural changes to the base editor. From the get-go, my intent had been for the editor to be “pluggable” although I hadn’t totally thought it through. By “pluggable” I mean capable of allowing different information models to be used. I’m actually taking the model a bit further to allow modules to be built that can provide […]

Legix.Info

XBRL in Legislation

Over the past few weeks, my posts about the HTML5 editor I have been working on have received a lot of attention. One aspect that I have noticed throughout has been people equating legislative markup to XBRL. In fact, I have taken to explaining Akoma Ntoso as being like XBRL for legislation. That helps people better understand what we are up to.

Or does it? It’s a little misleading to describe a legislative information model as being like XBRL for legislation. The reason is that many of the people interested in the transparency aspects of legislative XML are interested in it precisely because they’re interested in tracking budget appropriations. The assumption being made is that the XML will somehow […]

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Unhackathon Wrapup

Well, we had our “unhackathon” and it was, overall, a great success. We learned a lot, introduced a lot of people to the notion of XML markup and Akoma Ntoso, and made a number of important contacts all around. I hope that all the participants got something out of the experience. In San Francisco we were competing with a lovely Saturday afternoon and a street fair outside – which people chose to give up in order to attend our event.

At UC Hastings we had a special visit from State Senator Leland Yee of the 8th District which was most gratifying. He has been a strong proponent for government transparency and his surprise visit was awesome.

This was the first outing […]

Legix.Info

An Interesting Idea for how to Rethink How we are Governed

This past weekend I came across this interesting block by Abe Voelker. GitLaw: GitHub for Laws and Legal Documents – a Tourniquet for American Liberty. The reaction he got was amazing and totally overwhelmed him.

It’s an interesting read – written by someone naive enough to actually have hope that we could fix our government by applying modern technology. Of course, those of us in the know realize how totally absurd his ideas are. The legislative process is meant to be out of reach the public citizen. It’s meant to keep the common people from meddling in how laws are made. Those people would use normal everyday language that everybody could understand. Too many eyes might spot all the […]