Open source, procurement, and gov tech.
I crunched the numbers on the collective partisanship of Republican and Democrats in the Virginia House and Senate, and I think that the results are really interesting, insofar as they support the perception that House Republicans are much farther to the right than House Democrats are to the left and that Senate Republicans are closer …
Continue reading “Analysis bears out notions of Republicans in the House and Senate”
Here’s an interesting, contextless fact. I just crunched some numbers on bill copatrons in the legislature in the past four years, looking at who legislators tend to copatrons bills with. (I hope to add this as a Richmond Sunlight feature very soon.) As you can imagine, Democrats tend to copatrons bills with more Democrats than …
Continue reading “Deeds is demonstrably more bipartisan than Moran.”
Richmond Sunlight has a menu item entitled “Minutes.” This is a terrible word to use because a) a lot of people don’t know what it means and b) that section also contains video, audio, and some other goodies soon. “Minutes” is so dry and unfamiliar that nobody clicks on it. What word (or two) can …
Continue reading “Help me rename part of Richmond Sunlight.”
Speaking of LAs, I’m looking for an LA or two to test out a new feature on Richmond Sunlight. You’d provide a short explanation of why your boss has introduced each of his bills and what they’re designed to accomplish, and I’ll have those explanations appear prominently on each bill’s page. Assuming y’all already have …
Continue reading “I need an LA as a Richmond Sunlight guinea pig.”
The Daily Progress has integrated Richmond Sunlight into their website. Would that I had the time to build a Richmond Sunlight toolkit for media outlets. I’d love to be able to make it easy for media outlets of all sizes and technical expertise to provide their readers with extensive information about their legislators and proposed …
Continue reading “They’ve got sunlight at The Daily Progress.”
I’m looking for a legislative aide to interview for Richmond Sunlight. If you’re an LA and you’re willing to take 20 minutes for a quick, simple e-mail interview, would you contact me?
There’s great news from the legislature today—the House Republican Caucus has OKd the broadcast of video and audio from floor sessions. Better still, the General Assembly’s tech staff is going to have the infrastructure up and running in time for this session, providing both audio and video. They’ve got the capacity to serve video to …
Continue reading “House Republicans agree to live floor session feed.”
John Athayde points out Tweet Congress, which seems like something I should do on Richmond Sunlight. Which members of the General Assembly have Twitter feeds?
Richmond Sunlight now has a Facebook page and a Twitter feed. I’m trying to move my obsessive here’s-the-change-I-made-today updates (like the vote-outcome graphs I just added) from my personal blog to something less Waldo-y. Anyhow, if you care to keep up with Richmond Sunlight and the legislature, you’ve got two options. It would be especially …
I recently established Richmond Sunlight Labs, a staging area to play with new technologies on the site that are in beta. My favorite new feature is Recommended Bills. After you’ve looked at a dozen or so bills on Richmond Sunlight, that page will list some bills that you haven’t yet seen that are similar to …