Legal Software: Crowdsourced lawmaking begins in New York City, with OpenGov Foundation’s Madison platform

duminică, 1 iunie 2014

Crowdsourced lawmaking begins in New York City, with OpenGov Foundation’s Madison platform

A project has been launched to crowdsource drafting and discussion of seven proposed ordinances in New York City, using the OpenGov Foundation’s Madison platform , according to an announcement from the foundation last week: NYC Councilmember Ben Kallos unlocks 7 key bills in Madison for online citizen drafting .

Here are excerpts from the announcement:

[...] New York City Councilmember Ben Kallos [has] released seven key government reform bills for online public debate and drafting in Madison, a free policymaking platform developed by the nonprofit OpenGov Foundation. Madison gives citizens direct access to their legislators and the legislative process itself, lowering the barrier between citizens and their government on their own time, and on their own terms. Councilmember Kallos is the second city legislator in America to harness the power of collaborative Internet-based legislating, joining Washington, D.C. Councilmember David Grosso on the cutting edge of American democracy. To get involved, New Yorkers simply need to log on to start legislating in partnership with Kallos. [...]

Kallos’ seven bills opened for public, online drafting in Madison include the:

eNotices Act, requiring all government-issued public notices be posted online;

Public Online Information Act and the City Record Online Act, making public information available online in machine-readable formats;

Free and Open Source Software Act and the Civic Commons Act, aimed at saving government resources through the use of free and collaborative technology;

Open Maps Act and Open Crime Data Act, mandating the sharing of critical crime statistics online via APIs that web developers can use to build useful tools for data visualization and analysis. [...]