Hacking Challenge #1: Annotating the Code to Create Statutes At Large

Team

Sean Meloy, Dan Whaley, David Zvenyach

Problem

We lack the ability to annotate codified legislation

Users of the Tool

Codifiers of the law, anyone who has to "look" at the law like a person who has been called to traffic court (interacting with the code/law)

Problem Description

The enrolled version of a bill (e.g., http://dcclims1.dccouncil.us/images/00001/20130308111548.pdf) doesn’t have all of the annotations that ultimately go into the statutes at large (link to follow). The goal is to add annotations to the enrolled bill itself and to discrete portions of the enrolled bill. Then, to make those annotations “speak” with the DC Code, which is a compilation of the laws (i.e., enrolled bills). The DC Code is found at http://dccode.org/browser.

Sec. 2. Section 47-462(d) of the District of Columbia Official Code is amended by striking the phrase "9 months after the Commission's appointment" and inserting the phrase "September 30, 2013" in its place.

Section 47-562(d) read after the amendment as annotated:

(d) The Commission shall submit to the Council and the Mayor its final report no later than 9 months after the Commission's appointment September 30, 2013.

Laying the groundwork for the next step, it would be awesome to populate the history line of the Code. I’ll explain what that means shortly...

Proposed Solution

Creation of a “Lens” plugin for the DC code would be ideal. Lens references a project by eLifeSciences that lays semantic enhancements over scientific journal articles, like this one. Their lens makes citations to other articles clickable. The idea of a lens in the context of code would search for section numbers (i.e. § 2-352.01(b)) in amendments (for instance on PDFs, like this one) and make them clickable.

Then, taking the changes in code that occur and automatically change it.

-potential to built into CMS

-additional need to have meta data (credits, historical and statutory aspects) also be available / clickable. This is the information that you’d put at the top of the document (i.e., law number,effective date, etc.). So that you’d be able to make the discrete amendment to the portion of the code in the code, and have the statutes at large have a place that could show, in context, the changes made to the code (as it existed at the time it was being amended) by that specific amendment.

Challenges

In order for annotations to be certified, certain duties / roles have to be logged and accounted for in order for it to be official.

• Workflow process that would have to be integrated: pdf.dokku.hypothes.is
• Funding
• Time

Next Steps

Make this a hackathon event. Make a video. Make the world a better place.

Side Discussion

Ability for legislators / interested parties to private develop bill / be updated and then later go public is ideal and would lead to better adoption by legislative staff/legislators

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