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Senate Opening Up? Offers Up Vote Data In XML Format
from the fun-to-watch dept
There's been a big push lately to get the gov't to be a lot more open with its data, and both the new federal government CTO and CIO have spoken up about the importance of opening up more data. While it may take some time, we are starting to see things happen -- and happen quickly in some cases. Apparently, the Senate agreed (despite some reservations) to make the data from Senate votes available in an open XML format, and just a few days later that data is available. This is absolutely a good thing, but the real test will be seeing what people do with this and other open government data sources. It's nice to report on the government doing something right every once in a while....
Reader Comments
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Good, we need a lot more governmental transparency.
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What? The Government giving us information? Accurate, usable information?
Wow. Awesome.
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Re:
Haha, good one! I actually laughed out loud!
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Why not...
...link to the actual primary source material? It is very annoying clicking through links to your other posts and news articles. Other than that, good stuff you have here.
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Re: Why not...
http://xml.gov/ is a good source of most of govt xml (data) initiatives.
Dorai Thodla
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Re: Re: Why not...
I usually find this stuff after a short search, but it would be nice if the guy writing the blog linked to more than a news article that also has no link to the source.
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After clicking through a few links, I was able to find two examples of the information in XML format.
It's nice, but there doesn't seem to be a list of all available roll call votes. I would certainly like to go to www.senate.gov and find a list of the XML files. A quick search on the site did not reveal a list of files.
Also, it would be nice to see the DTD, Schema, or Relax NG information for the files. That way it would be easy to process the information, write XSLT transformations, and otherwise make use of this resource.
Still, this is an excellent first start.
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Pointless
Whoop'd f'ing doo. Absolutely useless.
If Congress truly, sincerely cared about transparency, they'd use source control for drafting legislation. I'd love to see them use Subversion to track exactly which congressman inserted that particularly heinous clause into an otherwise normal bill.
That's the kind of transparency we need. Once it's up for a vote, it's way too late to affect change.
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Re: Pointless
They'd use SourceSafe and you know it!
All kidding aside, it would be great to have change tracking implemented.
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What is this "Ecch-Smell" format?
Sounds like it might raise a stink...
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This is not really news
Every vote, by every congress representative, Senate and House, since 1991, has been online on the Washington post web site since past year when one of my sons programmed it for them.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/
Further, as you will see there, the votes are analyzed, disected, cross-referenced and summarized by just about any data point you might wish.
You can also see the other amazing data projects he did for them on his blog entry (http://push.cx/2009/washington-post-update) that summarizes his work for them.
Sign me, Proud Father of a fantastic young man.
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a correction
After re-reading what I posted, I realize it sounds as if I am saying Peter did the whole WP stuff by himself. If you read his blog entry, you will see that he credits those whose works he added to and those whose prior work and current contributions were essential o his own part. And, the comments on his entry continue a dialog with some of those people.
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"If Congress truly, sincerely cared about transparency, they'd use source control for drafting legislation. I'd love to see them use Subversion to track exactly which congressman inserted that particularly heinous clause into an otherwise normal bill.
That's the kind of transparency we need. Once it's up for a vote, it's way too late to affect change."
I COMPLETELY agree!!! We should know EXACTLY how every single person voted. When federal agencies, like the FDA, pass laws there should be COMPLETE transparency over who was responsible for the passage of such laws.
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Re:
They only just discovered what Emails are .. give them a few centuries and you might get SVN.
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