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XML for Bills

idea

What is the idea?

Tag all dollar figures/spending in government bills so that they are machine readable and can easily be pulled out of huge documents.  Pork would become obvious and people would become accountable for their actions.  Then measure the performance against the promise.

Why is it important?

Simple transparency of huge government documents.  At this point these Bills are so voluminous that not even the folks voting for them bother to read them cover to cover.  XML or some flavor of it would allow for the important details to be flagged and cataloged for review.

Submitted by jgeraci (Consulting) on Apr 27, 2009

This idea is now closed to further comments.

Current number of stars: 3
based on 2 votes
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1 Comment

Member comment

Putting Legislative Bills into an XML format, with the corresponding document schema, would be a great idea. 

The same applies to all government information. 

A terminology could then be used to extract out the meaning and and context of the terms being used, to support across-the board searches, analysis, and decision-making. 

That would lead to an appropriately "transparent" government.

Comment from RoyERoebuck at One World Information System on Apr 28, 2009