ryanwold.net

I was experimenting with Simile Timeline and found the Bill History for one piece of California Legislation: AB 1. I manually created an array of Events as a json object for each date in the Bill History.
http://sandbox.afomi.com/ui/timeline_issues

What this shows is when the bill was introduced, and was it was retired to "Inactive" status. What is particularly helpful is the context provided. Rather than a glimpse at a temporary state of a Bill at an indeterminant time, the Bill is displayed with the sense of a beginning and an end, which is very helpful cognitively. Likewise, the temporary existence of a Bill is easily mirrored as an instantiated data object. Based on this one example, it is possible to extrapolate the existence of a "Bill Graveyard", where Bills go to Inactive Status. How Inactive Bills are handled is interesting though. A Bill can be re-activated and considered or modified, resulting in a newer version of the Bill. Is it valuable to keep a better inventory of Legislation in all phases? Is it even common for old Bills to be recalled? Perhaps I'll pursue that if the cards fall in that direction. As a nation, we're running 38,000+ Instances of the Legislation process in the operating system which is our population. Systematically, there is much overlap and redundancy to government by design. How many municipalities begin and include the same formalities? A coherent, open and energetic effort at Refactoring Legislation would be incredibly fruitful. Refactored Legislation could result in streamlined government. Obama, apparently just took special steps to exercise powers to reduce the size of government. Yet, it seems many public functions would be rendered obsolete, or perhaps less necessary, to put is softly. So, if technologically, we CAN operate government on the ever-shrinking tax revenue, but the reduction of government staff becomes Unemployment. Alternatively, shrinking government spawns fodder for "job growth" talk. Ultimately, jobs are a means. 1984, Brave New World style. The Singularity. Technologically, we need to get equipped to an ever faster pace of life and evolution. When our technological means exceed our capacity to the extent that it changes our work environments, "jobs" will continue to change. We can become more efficient and better at providing equitable, "base-level" services for citizens. We continue to treat Welfare recipients as as downward drag on the system, almost like a temporary strain on the system. Rather, if 'the system' focused on providing adequate living services for citizens choosing to live an life, then there will be a base-level standard of assistance available. The fact is, systematically, administration doesn't always equal value. Thus, the need for interpretation drives an expensive, often-closed legal industry. Breaking Legislation into small, testable components could yield great benefits in terms of equipping government with the ability to evolve, adapt, and refine along with its population. Municipalities could opt into a module of Legislation, overriding or negating their own, thus modular-izing the processes legislation-making in new ways. Put Issues first. Test-Driven, Behavioral Driven Development of Governance?

The Lifecycle of Legislation

CA Legislative Bill Scraping