America Decoded
I had a chat with Seamus Kraft of America Decoded last week.
What it is. America Decoded is a massive project to open US's laws. Many laws are currently not accessible, for a number of copyright and technical reasons explained here. America Decoded wants to provide local, state and federal laws for free. To everyone.
Why it's cool. Because it's giving back the law to the people.
What's in there. They are starting to free local and state codes. As I write, Chicago, Baltimore, San Francisco, Philadelphia, DC, Maryland, Virginia and Florida codes are already there, Miami and Raleigh coming soon. All the laws are in State Decoded's XML format.
Who provides the law. The cities and states which joined the project. No scraping, said Kraft, because although sometimes possible, it would look like 'smuggling'. Citizens are also asked to collaborate, by contacting their elected officials and ask them to join the project.
Who funds it. Donations. The Open Gov foundation is a no-profit entity.
What I like. The UX is cool. The special XML format makes thing easy to read. The inline definitions (i.e. in the Virginia Code) for explaining legalese are cool. Different bulk download options (JSON, plain text) are cool. Finally, the crowd-sourcing thing is cool: they ask people to collaborate, by contacting their officials but also by naming the titles (i.e. in the Code of Maryland) and by telling developers to come build things on their software: the State decoded software is open to developers to modify and create things on it.
Great start.