Legis Info · Topic
Process
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Changing the way the world legislates. Together.
I got my start, like my father before me, as a draftsman. I worked for the Cleveland Switchboard Company drawing power distribution switchboards and panel boards while earning my engineering…
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Transparent legislation should be easy to read — part II
Over a decade ago, I wrote a blog questioning why federal bills are written the way they are. For someone experienced with state legislation, federal legislation is quite cryptic and…
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Building an Agile Team
We’ve recently built our first true Agile development team. It’s been quite a learning experience, but now we’re seeing the results. At Xcential, we have lots of waterfall process experience.…
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Legislative Archeology
One of the cool aspects of my job is that I get to work in different legislative traditions around the world. Sometimes it feels like a bit of an archeological…
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GitHub Copilot — Is it the future?
Several months ago, I got admitted to the GitHub Copilot preview. For those of you who don’t know what Copilot is, it’s a AI-based plugin to Visual Studio Code that…
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Moving on Up to Document Synthesis
In my last blog, I discussed the DIKW pyramid and how the CAD world has advanced through the layers while the legal profession was going much slower. I mentioned that…
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The Knowledge Pyramid
At the very start of my career at the Boeing Company, my boss Jerry introduced the Knowledge Pyramid the DIKW Pyramid to me one evening. I had an insatiable thirst…
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Escaping a Technology Eddy
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…
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Becoming Agile
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…
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Changing the way the world is governed. Together.
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…
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Connected Information
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 –…
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Can GitHub be used to manage legislation?
Every so often, someone suggests that GitHub would be a great way to manage legislation. Usually, we roll our eyes at the naïve suggestion and that is that. However, there…
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Achieving Five Star Open Data
A couple weeks ago, I was in Ravenna, Italy at the LEX Summer School and follow-on Developer’s Workshop. There, the topic of a semantic web came up a lot. Despite…
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Imagining Government Data in the 21st Century
After the 2014 Legislative Data and Transparency conference, I came away both encouraged and a little worried. I’m encouraged by the vast amount of progress we have seen in the…
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What is Transparency?
I’ve been thinking a lot about transparency lately. The disappearance of Malaysian Airline Flight 370 (MH370) provided an interesting case to look at – and some important lessons. Releasing data…
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Improving Legal References
In my blog last week, I talked a little about our efforts to improve how citations are handled. This week, I want to talk about this in some more detail.…
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Is it time to rethink how we are governed?
We have seen the worst of our government in the past few weeks. Our politicians have seemingly forgotten that their mission is to solve problems. Instead, they’ve regressed back to…
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Transparent legislation should be easy to read
Legislation is difficult to read and understand. So difficult that it largely goes unread. This is something I learned when I first started building bill drafting systems over a decade…
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Computerize vs. Automate
There are two words that have long been important to me: computerize and automate. The dictionary defines these words as follows: Computerize (kəm-pyū’tə-rīz’) tr.v., -ized, -iz·ing, -iz·es. 1. To furnish…
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Legislative Information Modeling
Last week I brought up the subject of semantic webs for legal documents. This week I want to expand the subject by discussing the technologies that I have encountered recently…
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What is a Semantic Web?
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, defines a semantic web quite simply as “a web of data that can be processed directly and indirectly by machines“. In my…
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Welcome to my new blog on Legal Informatics
Imagine that all the world’s laws are published electronically in an open and consistent manner. Imagine that you or your business can easily research the laws to which you are…
