Writing
Legis Info
Essays on legislative technology, standards and AI in lawmaking, since 2011. Most recent first.
All essaysAI in lawmakingAkoma NtosoStandardsDrafting and amendingTransparencyProcessLEX Summer School
-
Six Commitments for AI in Legislative Drafting
Over the past few months, I’ve written about government’s responsibilities in the age of AI and about how AI is eroding the rigor of legislative drafting. It’s only fair that…
-
Rethinking Legislative Drafting for the Age of AI
Recently there have been a few articles on how AI slop is creating problems for legislative drafting, including this one. I’ve been giving this problem a lot of thought. Although…
-
Government’s Responsibility in the Age of AI
I’ve recently seen several articles on how AI is affecting government. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and my involvement in Bússola Tech events has pulled me…
-
Report on the Bússola Tech AI Conference in Brasília, Brazil
This past week I attended a conference in the Brazilian capital of Brasilia, hosted by the Brazilian Senate and organized by Bússola Tech and the Organization of American States (OAS).…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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.…
-
Mapping Amending Language to Akoma Ntoso Modifications
In my last blog, I talked about Xcential’s long history working with change management as it applies to legislation and my personal history working in the subject in other fields.…
-
Legislative Terminology — The Same but Different
In my last blog, I covered a lot of the variations I find around the world. I do a lot of document analysis, working to map various legislative traditions into…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Comparing DOCX to Akoma Ntoso for Legislation
After describing what makes for good legislative XML, I feel I should bring up a favorite topic of mine — why word processors don’t make for good legislative drafting tools.…
-
What is Good Legislative XML?
I’m often asked what make on XML model better than another when it comes to representing laws and regulations. Just because a document is modeled in XML does not mean…
-
Twenty Years in Legal Informatics!
Today marks my twentieth year in the field of legal informatics. It was January 4th, 2002 that we officially started Xcential. The following week, Brad and I flew up to…
-
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…
-
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…
-
I’m Back!!!
After a long hiatus away from my blog, I decided to reinstate it and get back to regular blogging. There are going to be a few changes. While the subject…
-
Using the <hcontainer> Element Properly
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…
-
LEX Summer School 2017
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…
-
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…
-
The many lives of JavaScript
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…
-
Implementing an Akoma Ntoso Editor
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
The (Supposed) Limitations of XML
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,…
-
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 –…
-
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…
-
Data Transparency Breakfast, LEX US Summer School 2015, First International Akoma Ntoso Conference, and LegisPro Edit reveal.
Last week was a very good week for my company, Xcential. We started the week hosting a breakfast put on by the Data Transparency Coalition at the Booz Allen Hamilton facility…
-
Upcoming U.S. and European events related to Akoma Ntoso
In my last blog post I covered the public review of the new proposed Akoma Ntoso (LegalDocML) standard for legal documents. Please keep the comments coming. In order to comment,…
-
Akoma Ntoso (LegalDocML) is now available for public review
It’s been many years in the making, but the standardised version of Akoma Ntoso is now finally in public review. You can find the official announcement here. The public review started…
-
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…
-
2014 LEX Summer School & Developer’s Workshop
This week I attended the 2014 LEX Summer School and the follow-on Developer’s Workshop put on by the University of Bologna in Ravenna, Italy. This is the fifth year that…
-
Look how far legal informatics has come – in just a few years
Back in 2001 when I started in the legal informatics field, it seemed we were all alone. Certainly, we weren’t – there were many similar efforts underway around the country…
-
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…
-
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…
-
2014 Legislative Data and Transparency Conference
Last week, I attended the 2014 Legislative Data and Transparency Conference in Washington D.C. This one day conference was put on the by the U.S. House of Representatives and was…
-
Building a browser-based XML Editor
Don’t forget the 2014 U.S. House Legislative Data and Transparency Conference this week. I’m now hard at work on our second generation web-based XML editor. In my blog last week,…
-
Tracking Changes with Legislative Drafting
We’re in the process of rebuilding our legislative editor – from the ground up. There are many reasons why we are doing this, which I will leave to my next…
-
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.…
-
Legal Citations and XML Editing for Legislation
It’s been quite some time since my last blog post – almost six months. The reason is that I’ve been very busy. We are doing a lot of exciting development…
-
Sheldon’s Roommate Agreement – in Akoma Ntoso
A Legal Open Document Hackathon was held yesterday at the University of Bologna in Italy – focused on Akoma Ntoso documents. You can learn more about it here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/c03pd1llrcvg7d0t0fj5sh41cbk http://codexml.cirsfid.unibo.it/material-for-legal-open-document-dec-10/…
-
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…
-
The U.S. Code in Akoma Ntoso
I’m on my way to Italy this week for my annual pilgrimage to Ravenna, Italy and the LEX Summer School put on by the University of Bologna. This is my…
-
Free Akoma Ntoso Validator
How are people doing with the Library of Congress’ Akoma Ntoso Challenge? Hopefully, you’re making good progress, having fun doing it, and in so doing, learning a valuable new skill…
-
U.S. House of Representatives release the U.S. Code in XML.
This week marked a big milestone for us. The U.S. House of Representatives released the U.S. Code in XML. You can see the announcement by the Speaker of the House,…
-
Akoma Ntoso Challenge by the Library of Congress
As many of you may have already read, the U.S. Library of Congress has announced a data challenge using Akoma Ntoso. The challenge lasts for three months and offers a…
-
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…
-
Legislative Data: The Book
Last week, as I was boarding the train at Admiralty station in Hong Kong to head back to the office, I learned that I am writing a book. +Ari made…
-
2013 Legislative Data and Transparency Conference
Last week I participated in the 2013 Legislative and Transparency Conference put on by the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington D.C. It was a one day event that featured…
-
XML, HTML, JSON – Choosing the Right Format for Legislative Text
I find I’m often talking about an information model and XML as if they’re the same thing. However, there is no reason to tie these two things together as one.…
-
Legal Reference Resolvers
After my last blog post I received a lot of feedback. Thanks to everyone who contacted me with questions and comments. After all the interest in the subject, I think…
-
Automating Legal References in Legislation
This is a blog I have wanted to write for quite some time. It addresses what I believe to be the single most important issue when modeling information for legal…
-
Legal Informatics Glossary of Terms
I work with people from around the world on matters relating to legal informatics. One common issue we constantly face is the issue of terminology. We use many of the…
-
“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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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,…
-
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…
-
An HTML5-Based XML Editor for Legislation!
UPDATE: (May 17, 2012) For all the people that asked for more editing capabilities, I have updated the editor to provide rudimentary cut/copy/paste capabilities via the normal shortcut keys. More…
-
Common Identifiers or a Common Data Format. What is more important?
I just read this excellent post by Tom Bruce, et. al. from the Legal Information Institute at the Cornell University Law School. Tom’s post brought to mind something I have…
-
Imagine All 50 States Legislation in a Common Format
Last week I expressed dissapointment over NCSL’s opposition to the DATA Act (H.R. 2146). Their reasoning is that the burden this might create on the state’s systems will not be…
-
The State of the Art in Legislative Editors and the DATA Act
(My plan was for my next blog to contain a mini-tutorial on my editor, that is still coming this weekend) A report on legislative editors has just been released in…
-
Building a Web-Based Legislative Editor
I built the legislative drafting tool used by the Office of the Legislative Counsel in California. It was a long and arduous process and took several years to complete. Issues…
-
Toward’s more Affordable Solutions in Legal Informatics – with Standards
Got six million dollars? That’s the ballpark figure for a complete legislative system and it is too much. A decade ago when the technologies were still new, the risks were…
-
International Open Standards Hackathon
An international open standard for legislative documents will be an important next step for making legislative information available to the people. An open standard will promote the creation of tools…
-
International Meeting on Transparency and the use of Open Document Standards
This past week was a very interesting week for me. I attended the meeting “Achieving Greater Transparency in Legislatures through the Use of Open Document Standards” at the U.S. House…
-
And now for something completely different… Chinese!
Last week we saw how Akoma Ntoso can be applied to a very large consolidated Code – the United States Code. This week we take the challenge in a different…
-
Applying Akoma Ntoso to the United States Code
A few weeks ago the U.S. House of Representative’s Committee on House Administration held a one day Legislative Data and Transparency Conference. While I was not able to attend in…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
To go Open Source or Not?
It is my dream to establish a legal informatics industry. Today, legal informatics is conducted either as an internal function or by consulting firms that specialize in long multi-year projects…
-
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…
