January 16, 2007

Legislative Database Update 2

Jimmy Hogan, one of my tech-skilled regular readers, tells me that he has emailed the director of Tennessee's Office of Legislative Information Services requesting, under the state's open-records law, the contents of the legislative bill-tracking database heretofore only accessible to state legislators. Hogan is also seeking a once-daily update from the database. The goal: to build a publicly-accessible and easily searchable legislation-tracking database.

Meanwhile, Michael Chaney writes in the comments to this previous update, "I don't think funding is a problem. I own an ISP; I have the equipment and connection to make the information available if I can get it. The only factor for me is time, but my guess is (and I think Jimmy would agree) that we're probably not dealing with rocket science here. More likely is that we're just have some folks who don't want to add something else to their already full plates, so it's more of a political problem of how to do it without causing more work for someone else."

And commenter SBK says, "I can't think of many things that I'd rather see than Ron Ramsey on the front page of the Tennessean swinging the doors open to this type of information leaving Naifeh as the only hold out: "Do you or do you not support open and honest government Mr. Naifeh?" Makes me giddy just thinking about it..."

Me too, SBK. New Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey is the political key here. He can make this project happen simply by ordering the Office of Legislative Information Services to make the Senate-side data available. The information in that database is subject to the state's open records laws, but the Office of Legislative Information Services isn't currently complying with state law that requires them to provide the public the "fullest possible access" to the information.

I have no doubt that smart techie folks like Hogan and Chaney could very easily create an easily searchable database, and probably for not much money. I'd hope they also were able to create some value-added revenue-generating services - such as, perhaps, an RSS-based automatic alert service that users could subscribe to in order to get alerts when legislation they designate by bill number, subject, key word or other criteria, moves within the legislative process, or perhaps some cross-referencing between the legislative database and the state's campaign finance database.

The private sector stands ready to do what the bureaucracy has, so far, not done. This is a doable project. All that is required is for the Office of Legislative Information Services to comply with the state's open-records law and work with the public to provide the public with the "fullest access possible," as that law requires.

Developing...

Previous coverage:
Legislative Database Update 1
Sen. Ramsey, Open the Door.