#open law

[emasters]

From Blue to Indigo to … « Citing Legally

From Blue to Indigo to … « Citing Legally

From Blue to Indigo to … « Citing Legally http://citeblog.access-to-law.com/?p=617

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[lawyersareboring]

The random legal tech mixtapes

As you may know or not, I've embarked in my new legal tech enterprise. I've founded Wildcat and, out of many, I've started running the Wildcat blog. And I'll bother you to death with posting and reposting from one account to the other. 

On the Wildcat blog I've started asking legal tech people to make me a mixtape. It may sound like the silliest thing ever: it's not. Go find out why. 

Proud to mention that our first guest was Anna Ronkainen, that I guess you know very well. 

By the way. If you want to make me a mixtape or if what I'm saying on the Wildcat blog resonates with you, just let me know: on twitter, here, or via email serena (at) thewildcat.co.uk 

[betanyc]

BetaNYC's support of three bills that would put the city's laws online, centralize FOIL, and Publishing the City Record online.

Date: Monday, 9 June 2014 From: Noel Hidalgo, Executive Director of BetaNYC To: NY City Council’s Committee on Governmental Operations jointly with the Committee on Technology Subject: Online Publication of City Laws, Centralizing FOIL, and Publishing the City Record online

Honorable Chairs and City Council Members,

I am Noel Hidalgo, the executive director of BetaNYC. It is a great honor to represent New York City’s technology community. Particularly, a rather active group of technologists - the civic hacker.

BetaNYC works to create a New York City government for the people, by the people, for the 21 century. We meet weekly to develop new avenues for civic engagement. We are members of the NYC Transparency Working Group. Collectively, we want to see our City adopt tools, programs, and law that increase transparency, efficiency, and participation.

Last year, our community published the People’s Roadmap to the Digital New York City. This manifesto combined 32 ideas into a foundation for 21st century open government. Today, we are here to talk about a critical component of the roadmap. Access to information.

Today’s hearing covers three laws with historical importance. According to a recent survey, most New Yorkers have cell phones -- 98%, 50% have smart phones, and 40% have tablets/eReaders.

Within a few years, a majority of New Yorkers will receive a majority of their information via mobile devices. To ensure content delivery across all devices, we need information to be open and in machine readable formats.

We kindly ask that the Council add “bulk data access” and “machine readability” provisions to Intro-149 and work with the City Law department to improve and prototype the current system.

By placing the law and City Register online and in a machine readable format, New Yorkers can connect to their government regardless of privilege or device.

Lastly, we feel this Open FOIL bill presents a transformative opportunity to increase access and lower the cost of government operations. Just as the first online search engines gave us the ability to see the world wide web, this FOIL amendment gives the public a 21st century process to know how, when, and where information is being kept. Open FOIL presents NYC’s the most logical, secure, and transparent FOIL process for the 21st century.

In conclusion, we support the passage of these three bills and the great research Reinvent Albany has provided. We fundamentally believe these three bills provide a proper foundation for a 21st century New York City government.

[lawyersareboring]

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.