A Simple Idea to Help Open the Government

The problem is simply stated on the homepage of Citability.org. "Government websites are ever changing and cannot be cited. Content changes without notice or accountability." The solution has a simple starting point: create permanent, date stamped URLs for each paragraph of every federal document posted to the Web.

Researchers eyes light up when they hear this idea. "Of course," they say, "that would make it so easy to find government information online." It would make it easy to track changes to documents, such as bills and regulations, as they evolve throughout the policy formation process. It would make it possible to use a common search engine to find all comments written about any paragraph in any federal document.

Citability.org is the latest project from the League of Technical Voters to help create a transparent government. Silona Bonewald, the League's executive director, is big on simple solutions to problems many think are to complicated to solve. This is the latest, and perhaps most elegant of her simple solutions.

Imagine the level of accountability such a system would put on Congress. We could all track how legislators modify each line of the budget as it moves through the process. And legislators could keep an eye on what the media and voters are saying about key provisions of any bill.

All you would have to do is search for the URL in any search engine and see all who link to the paragraph. If the link is to an older version of the paragraph, it would take you to a list of all older and newer versions of the paragraph in the archive. The end result is all these comments across the entire web become linked, they become a conversation.

Citability.org isn't the complete solution to the transparent government puzzle, but it clearly is a first step towards it. And given that Congress, for example, has already implemented permanent URLs for each bill, adding paragraph and date markers to those links is a small adjustment.

Follow Alan Rosenblatt on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drdigipol

Comments

[GreatNews27]

But The Unitary Executive decries transparency! His States Secrecy stance duplicates the Bush stance. His stance on nearly all transparency issues duplicates Bush. He wants government actions SECRET. Forever. With no review. All hail King Obama.

[noneIn2008]

Your suggestion would make it harder for the special interests to load goodies into the bills. A start. How about also asking our politicians to read at least one bill that they sign?

[Alan Rosenblatt - Huffpost Blogger]

If we are able to link to specific paragraph in a bill as everyone discusses it in blogs, news, etc., then we would force legislators to pay attention to the text of bills.

[Sundialsvc4]

Readers who are interested in this will also probably already know about a resource which the Librarians of Congress already provide: http://thomas.loc.gov.

Not the same thing that Alan is discussing here, but extremely useful in its own right. In this Internet age, "the information really is out there if you care to find it," and "your computer would LOVE to have something exciting to do, in addition to surfing The Huffington Post!"

"Knowledge is power," and I think that the present occupants of our Congress do not yet have the faintest clue of how very different their jobs are soon going to be . . . But they have made it so that we have no choice, of course: we HAVE to become deeply involved in what is happening to us all and, quite naturally, computers will be a vital "enabling technology" to let us actually accomplish that (for the very first time in history).

"May you live in interesting times." Well, we do.

[Alan Rosenblatt - Huffpost Blogger]

While Thomas is useful for getting the general gist of bills introduced, when it comes to keeping tabs on the latest versions of bills or being able to drill down to specific sections of huge bill, it practically useless.

[BLBass]

You're right. I've tried reading through a bill and had Thomas time out on me before I made it down to the end of a single page, depending on how dense the legalese happens to be. Not the end of the world, but that's not really user-centric now is it?

[dave64]

There is already a system in place that could be used for this- Digital Object Identifiers ( http://www.doi.org/) are used by the publishing industry for exactly this purposes: to provide content with permanent cross-publisher identifiers. From the International DOI Federation website: "The Digital Object Identifier (DOI®) System is for identifying content objects in the digital environment. DOI® names are assigned to any entity for use on digital networks. They are used to provide current information, including where they (or information about them) can be found on the Internet. Information about a digital object may change over time, including where to find it, but its DOI name will not change."

It'd be even more awesome (pragmatic­cdallasite­), if the govenermnet just used something that already existed, as opposed to spending $$ and time studying an alternative!

[BLBass]

I can't speak to the validity of this concern, but I bet the first thing the government worried about when they considered this idea was security. Presumably they want control of whatever servers stash old versions and whatnot, too, but I'm sure somebody was concerned about cost and at least suggested that they use DOI. Any techies care to comment on the security of a solution like this?

[Silona Bonewald]

I see several things missing or wrong with DOI.

First off, DOI is trademarked and patented. We already have a problem with WestLaw's copyright system. Proprietary documentation systems are dangerous. Everyone is required to obtain permission to use the system.

Secondly, Primary goal of citability is to be HUMAN READABLE so that it can easily be used on blogs and such.

Thirdly, I see no simple versioning of content so that we cannot see changes over time of text.

Fourth, easy of use is non existent.

Fifth, Security is suggested by doing hashing of content is background. Combine hashes (which will show if content has been changed) w a cloneable server in a distributed versioning system like git or bizarre and you will find it difficult to edit without others noticing.

Notice for the citability system, the only reason cost is the same cost as a text backup (and could be used as such.) I really can't think of a cheaper or more effective solution.

Further reading of specifics can be found at citability­.pbworks.c­om

Cheers,
Silona

[pragmaticdallasite]

This is awesome......way more significant and substantive than 99% of the popular articles here.