Sunday, March 22, 2009

Legislation DIFF'ing

I'm interested in building an application to view diff's of legislation as they roll their way through the congress, and as they're amended over time. Recently the AIG bonus issue brought light to did so and so modify language that had been previously accepted so that some frankenstein loophole could be allowed. Well, computer programmers have very great tools for this. Its called diff. and there are some very nice gui's that have been built that makes one love to do version control.




Anyways, as new legislation comes out that modifies existing legislation.

Its very much a technical challenge just to comprehend what is being stated. Its like trying to understand the USA PATRIOT ACT. Sure it very much enhances our abilities as a nation, but I don't think that I as the guy in the control room trying to implement all the new features would be able to read the document.


Therefore, I am interested in piloting a project that takes these bills and tries to view them in a diff-like fashion.


For the uninitiated, diff is short for difference.

1 comment:

  1. I've created a ticket at http://govtrack.uservoice.com/pages/17228-feedback/suggestions/375339-add-legislation-diff-ing?utm_campaign=Widgets&utm_medium=widget&utm_source=govtrack.uservoice.com

    As a call for proposals on this.

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