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Proposal from knightcontest.com

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Readable Laws: Legislation in Plain English

Primary Contact Name

matthew burton

Describe your project

Readable Laws translates Congressional legislation into plain English so that everyday citizens can read it, understand it, and know how it affects them. Thousands of densely written bills are proposed every year. Few are ever fully read, even by the senators and representatives who pass them. Consequently, bills are often filled with dubious clauses that go unnoticed until they cause a scandal, much like the recent interim appointment of US attorneys authorized by the Patriot Act. By then, the bill is a law, and it is too late to change it. Countless loopholes and pork spending projects are passed because bills are incomprehensible. This inaccessibility discourages the public from participating in politics and weakens our democracy. Using the same concept as Wikipedia, Readable Laws invites the public to: -convert federal legislation into plain English, line-by-line. -analyze these bills and explain how they will impact the citizenry if passed. For example, a Readable Laws analysis of the agriculture budget bill will explain its impact on farmers, grocers and consumers, and spell out what each part of the bill means. But instead of relying on lobbies or the press, the Readable Laws analysis is written by the public--including those very farmers and grocers who have first-hand knowledge to contribute. A few other sites have similar goals. Readable Laws is different because it attacks the raw text, providing line-by-line interpretation and analysis. No citizen should need a law degree to read a bill from start to finish. Aside from enabling this fundamental right, this approach ensures that no stone goes unturned when analyzing bills: often, only bills that are controversial on the surface or applicable to the greater population get ample news coverage. The aforementioned agriculture bill would likely go unscrutinized, making it a good target for hidden legislation. Readable Laws prevents this. Because people naturally care more about laws that affect them directly, users will also be able to find legislation by ZIP code, issue, etc.

Primary Contact Email

matthewburton@gmail.com

Organization or Business Name

Who would want to use it and why?

Readable Laws is useful to anyone who wants to: -help our democracy -find active legislation that affects their geographic area, industry, children, etc. -catch unsavory legislation before it becomes law. -track the performance of their lawmakers. -do legal research. One bill can create hundreds of laws. Finding the one paragraph that is responsible for a certain law is like looking for a needle in a haystack. But Readable Laws analyses link back to the original text. Demo : go here http://urlx.org/readablelaws.org/a2e6c and click the "View bill text" links under "Who is covered?" The link takes you to the part of the bill that applies to the corresponding analysis. This makes Readable Laws the most trustworthy, high-integrity method of bill analysis; no other source's legislation analyses are this transparent.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

Passion and knowledge. I've been devoted to public service for many years, first doing several pro bono Web projects for nonprofits and then working as a government employee. I strongly believe that better technology can improve our democracy. As an intelligence analyst for the Department of Defense, I successfully lobbied the Director of Central Intelligence to change the Intelligence Community's intranet to a more communal, user-contributed culture. (see more here: http://urlx.org/nytimes.com/c4bd5 ) I also have experience in journalism, Web design and development, online communities and virtual collaboration. I am now a consultant to the Intelligence Community. I help them use Web sites to improve collaboration, information sharing and analytic integrity. I have been working on Readable Laws for over a year. I researched the legislative process for months in order to learn what kinds of tools the site would need. I have had a prototype online since April at ReadableLaws.org. But it needs work: better tools created by professional programmers, a designer to create a more intuitive layout, and most importantly, good content from knowledgeable contributors. Volunteer contributors will not show up out of thin air, but will instead be drawn to the site by good content. In other words, in order to get contributors, I need readers. And in order to get readers, I need resources to increase the site's visibility and utility, so that those who visit the site will find it compelling. I know the problem, and I know the solution. But I don't have the resources. Readable Laws was my Masters thesis at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. My thesis presentation can be seen here: http://itp.nyu.edu/thesis/spring2007/stream.php?search=Burton

U.S. State

Country

United States

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

My ultimate goal is to have Readable Laws act as a citizen stopgap for dubious legislation. Such laws are passed all the time by members of Congress, who, in the confusion caused by thousands of pages of legalese, are not able to evaluate the bills they vote on. A completely successful stopgap would mean the following: -Every bill proposed by Congress is featured on Readable Laws. The site's volunteers decrypt the bill texts into plain English, section by section. They then analyze those bills and fully explain their implications. -The site frequently finds dubious clauses--for instance, a corporate welfare project that is awarded an outrageous budget--that otherwise would have gone unnoticed. Such discoveries gain media attention and lead to those clauses being changed or removed before the bill is passed. -Readable Laws becomes required reading for any citizen interested in politics, as it tells them in plain English how laws will affect their lives. Average people come to the site not only to learn about what Congress is doing, but to take an active role in the governance of their country. -Lawmakers recognize the Readable Laws community as an unofficial test that their legislation must pass in order to become a law. As a result, legislation becomes more transparent, and lawmakers feel more accountable to the public. This restores public confidence in Congress, which hit an all-time low in October 2007. -Democracies become weaker when their people do not understand it, participate in it, or believe in it. If Readable Laws becomes successful, citizens who previously paid no attention to legislation (either because of inaccessibility or lack of interest) will begin doing so, as bills will be in a language they can understand. The increase in public participation in our government will strengthen our democracy.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

A single instance of a bill being changed or defeated as a result of a Readable Laws discovery will be proof of an impact. However, as I noted in Question 5, there are other metrics for success, each with a tangible indicator: -As the work will primarily be done by citizen volunteers, a large number of bills translated and analyzed will be a sign of increased citizen participation. -If readers find Readable Laws by searching for a bill's name*, and spend a long time reading Readable Laws' analysis of that bill*, this will mean the site has provided useful information on that bill. -If new users register, visit the site frequently*, and make contributions to a wide range of pages, this will mean Readable Laws is an all-around useful resource on many topics for some people, and that those people are taking an interest in democracy for democracy's sake (as opposed to just caring about a single bill). *I use a comprehensive site traffic analysis program that tells me: --how users found the page --whether users came from a search engine, and if so, what their search terms were --how long each user spent on each page --whether a given user has been to the site before For the sake of my users' privacy, I do not connect these activities to specific users' identities or IP addresses.

Web site

http://matthewburton.org

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$500000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

In-depth and accessible information on all Congressional legislation. Right now, the public relies on sources that are either too subjective (like Washington lobbies), or not at all critical (like government offices such as the Congressional Research Service or Congressional Budget Office). Journalists often use those official reports as the source of their reporting and turn them into something the average person can read. But the media cannot possibly report on all of the 5,000+ bills authored every year, much less do original research on them. So while the media does make some legislation accessible to the public, it is rarely fully analyzed, and the vast majority of bills get zero press coverage. These sources also make it difficult for readers to do further research on a bill: whether it's a newspaper article or a press release from a senator's office, reports on bills seldom mention the bill number, the single most important piece of information if one is to do original research. Readable Laws is unrestricted in its scope. While it may give precedent to more interesting bills in the form of home page placement, it can analyze the most banal bills just as effectively. (Though analyzing an agricultural spending bill may not seem like a worthy use of a contributor's time, it is bills like these that are the biggest targets for abuse, precisely because nobody looks at them critically.) The press is limited by its manpower. Readable Laws taps the entire citizenry, meaning it can cover much more ground. Readable Laws also makes it easy to delve further into a bill. Every bill on the site includes basic information at the very top: the bill's number and unofficial name, its current status in Congress, and its vote tallies. It also has a full page dedicated to the bill's text, with parenthetical plain-English translations. All of this information is very difficult to find on Thomas, the Library of Congress's official legislation archive. Readable Laws makes a burdensome process easy.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$650000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

Citizen participation. Other independent sites that provide legislation information (such as the ones I mention in Question 12 below) are purely data sources: they give you raw information like text, bill number, links to news articles and blog posts, etc. But they don't offer analysis, and the users can only read content; they are not allowed to contribute their own knowledge. Decoding Congress is a gargantuan task and can only be achieved by letting the public do the work. This approach has the added bonus of actively engaging the citizenry in shaping the country's understanding of laws and the future of those laws.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

2years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

First, my site is search engine-optimized: shortly after adding a new bill to my site, the page is among the top 10 results when Googling that bill. Examples: urlx.org/google.com/a5ba9 urlx.org/google.com/b9bee urlx.org/google.com/b233a Even though Readable Laws is very new, its pages still rank closely to similar sites that are older and more popular. The search placement will only improve as Readable Laws attracts more contributors, because Google values fresh pages over stale ones. As my wiki-based, freely editable site gains attention, the content will become fresher and fresher. Other sites that provide similar information do not have this advantage. So the site's high placement in search results will easily attract people who are looking for information on specific bills. This is already happening: my site traffic analysis software lets me see how visitors get to the site, and most of them arrive after searching for a particular bill by name. Of course, I'm not relying on search engine optimization alone. There will need to be a wider publicity effort. For that, I have wide network of colleagues in the journalism, blogging, eDemocracy and legal communities who are promoting it and will continue to do so. These are solid leads. I also have ideas for other marketing efforts: -Requesting the endorsement of progressive, Web-savvy lawmakers -Targeting law schools and asking professors to direct their students to the site, and possibly even adopt the site as a homework platform -Pitching the site as an educational resource to high school civics and government teachers -Partnering with popular political blogs to focus their readers' attention on a single, controversial bill

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

Readable Laws receives funding from NewAssignment.Net, Jay Rosen's citizen journalism project. Readable Laws is based on an idea Rosen floated on his PressThink blog in 2006.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

Right now, I maintain the site and the day-to-day operations. In addition, colleagues in the blogging and Web democracy communities are helping me promote it. Some of those friends, such as Clay Shirky and Jay Rosen, are notable scholars of online communities and citizen journalism and have given me advice over the past year. If awarded a grant, most of the money will go toward part-time help: programmers to make the site more user-friendly and feature-rich, and legal experts to help write useful content. Why hire writers for a site that is supposed to be run by volunteers? I've learned that when it comes to attracting readers and contributors, nice graphics and cool features are important, but they are no substitute for good content. Good content attracts readers, who in turn become volunteer contributors who write MORE content. But I started from scratch: no readers, no writers, no content. Without volunteers to contribute content, I need to find another way to create that content. I want to hire legal experts--law professors, law students, legislation researchers, lawyers--to interpret and analyze legislation and create a useful corpus of information. Such a campaign will hopefully bootstrap this project, after which the site will attract a stream of readers and volunteer editors.

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

A few other Web sites focus on easy access to information on Congress: -GovTrack.us and OpenCongress provide a slew of information on legislation, all optimized for Web 2.0: RSS feeds of Congressional votes, links to blog entries about bills, the ability to track certain lawmakers' activities, etc. -Congresspedia, like Readable Laws, is based on MediaWiki software, the same software that runs Wikipedia. It is forming an encyclopedia of lawmakers, their donors, and the issues they support. It does follow legislation, but it focuses mainly on the larger context of a bill instead of evaluating the bill itself. -Politicopia focuses on the Utah state legislature. The site archives lawmakers' discussions about new policies and encourages readers to participate in the process through a message board. All of these sites make Congress more transparent and accessible to the public. This is good. Thomas, the Library of Congress's online archive of Congressional activity, is a mess. Its updates come days following action (new bills do not appear on Thomas until at least 48 hours after their introduction). There is no RSS. Searching the site is a nightmare. The above sites make these things easier, which is very important. None of them, however, provide in-depth analysis of legislation. In their present states, only Readable Laws and Congresspedia are prepared technically to allow collaborative analysis and translation by the public, and Congresspedia is not focusing on this. What makes Readable Laws different is not only its focus on analysis and translation, but its reliance on the citizenry--the very people who will be affected by these laws--to dissect them. So not only does it teach people about the law, but it involves them in the process as well. Also, it encourages line-by-line analysis of every bill, so that it is more than just a collection of information; it is a stopgap for dubious legislation, a way to subject bills to a test more rigorous than journalists and lobbies could ever hope of doing alone.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

If I complete the activities in this proposal, then an active online community of bill explainers/writers will be hard at work. While there are no guarantees for most things in life, I believe that once Readable Laws has good content on a number of bills, then all the effects described above in questions 5 and 7 will accrue. In addition, as I will be able to track participation (as described in #6), I will be able to see trends of participation and change the site to meet citizens needs and target my marketing at the most receptive audiences. I've pitched this idea to hundreds of people, and I always get an energetic, indignant reaction: "You're RIGHT, laws AREN'T readable!" Immediately, they want to do something about it. Almost everyone sees the need and likes the idea. With help from this grant, we will be able to design a way to turn this motivation into action.