{"@attributes":{"version":"2.0"},"channel":{"title":"Open States","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/","description":"Recent content on Open States","generator":"Hugo -- gohugo.io","language":"en-us","lastBuildDate":"Wed, 07 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000","item":[{"title":"Big Changes Ahead for OpenStates.org","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/2023-june-changes\/","pubDate":"Wed, 07 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/2023-june-changes\/","description":"Coming in July: Open States is Plural! Making democracy more accessible and transparent is at the core of our mission. We are committed to breaking down barriers and making legislative tracking and analysis available to all. You\u2019ve been able to research bills and subscribe to updates about bills on OpenStates.org for years - it\u2019s something we\u2019re very proud of.\nIn early July, we are relaunching these tools under the Plural brand with a more powerful set of features."},{"title":"Summit 2023 Wrap-up","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/2023-summit-wrap-up\/","pubDate":"Fri, 20 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/2023-summit-wrap-up\/","description":"Summit 2023 Wrap-Up Thanks for everyone who attended our 2023 Summit, either virtually or in-person in Chicago! I want to provide a quick wrap-up for anyone who missed it.\nWatch the talks and tutorials We recorded our virtual and hybrid sessions so that you can catch up! Check out our Summit playlist on YouTube which includes:\n Introduction to Open States How people are using our data, including highlighted users doing academic research, startup innovation, and data integration with a big advocacy organization Future of Open States: vision and roadmap Developer team question and answer session How to write a web scraper tutorial How to access and use our data for quantitative analysis tutorial Special guest talk on voter turnout and peer-to-peer messaging  Matrix\/Element chat space We debuted a trial run of using Matrix\/Element to replace Slack as our chat space."},{"title":"Project Roadmap for 2023","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/2023-roadmap\/","pubDate":"Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/2023-roadmap\/","description":"Open States Roadmap Update - 2023 Our recent Summit featured a talk on the future of Open States. I encourage you to watch the talk and questions! But we also want to provide a written update to the roadmap and some FAQ about changes that are coming down the pipe for the project. Here’s the tl;dr:\n The data we provide here will remain free We are committed to growing that open data core, for example adding legislative data from jurisdictions in Africa!"},{"title":"December 2022 Update","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/december-2022-update\/","pubDate":"Fri, 16 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/december-2022-update\/","description":"Open States Summit See you in Chicago (or on Zoom) in January! Please RSVP now to participate in the 2023 Open States Summit, Jan 12-14!\nThis is an expansion of the summit we held last year. We’ll have another day of virtual talks about the project, and this time we’ve added two days of hackathon sessions! Here\u2019s the agenda:\n Thursday, January 12: Livestream talks and discussion about the project and folks using our data (11am - 4pm US central)  Introduction to Open States Future of the Project Highlight projects and people using Open States data Q&A with developers   Friday, January 13: Hackathon - hybrid in-person and remote (10am to 6pm central) Saturday, January 14: Hackathon - hybrid in-person and remote (10am to 6pm central)  We’ll be in-person in Chicago, hosted at the University of Chicago by the Harris School\u2019s Master of Science in Computational Analysis and Public Policy (MSCAPP) Program."},{"title":"August 2022 Update","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/august-2022-update\/","pubDate":"Mon, 08 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/august-2022-update\/","description":"Open States at Netroots 2022 Want to chat about Open States or public policy work with the team maintaining it? Come meet the Civic Eagle team at Netroots Nation 2022!\nWe\u2019ll be presenting two events:\n Lessons Learned Working in Coalitions Since Everything\u2019s Gone Digital, a panel discussion on Thursday, August 18th from 2:30-3:30 pm Rooftop Vibes with special guest Congresswoman Ilan Omar and featuring music by Lizzo\u2019s DJ Sophia Eris on Friday, August 19th from 5-7:30 PM RSVP  2022 Sessions by the Numbers Most regular sessions have adjourned, but we\u2019ve still got some special sessions currently meeting or coming up."},{"title":"Moving On & Moving Forward","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/james-moving-on\/","pubDate":"Tue, 15 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/james-moving-on\/","description":"Moving On I\u2019m writing today to announce that I am stepping down as Open States project lead, and from my role as Director of Public Data at Civic Eagle. I have decided I want to explore other career goals, and that it is the right time for me to move on, both for myself and for the project\u2019s future.\nIt was thirteen years ago this month that Open States was born."},{"title":"Open States Virtual Summit 2021","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-virtual-summit-2021\/","pubDate":"Tue, 21 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-virtual-summit-2021\/","description":"Last week we had the Open States Virtual Summit; if you were able to join thank you so much for making this first ever virtual summit such a success!\nIf you weren’t able to join, here’s what you missed:\nFuture of Open States Civic Eagle Product Manager Ruby Choonoo & I walked folks through what Open States has accomplished in 2021, and what we’re hoping to do in 2022.\nFuture of Open States Slides"},{"title":"October 2021 Update","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-2021-q3\/","pubDate":"Tue, 05 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-2021-q3\/","description":"Open States Virtual Summit Exciting news! We’re in the early phases of planning a meeting where Open States' contributors and users can come together to discuss the project.\nWe’re hoping to get something together for this winter, and if you’re reading this we could use your feedback on if this is something you’d be interested in attending. Please fill out our survey and let us know what you’d hope to get out of an event."},{"title":"Tips for web scraping from a web scraping intern","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/tips-for-web-scraping-from-a-web-scraping-intern\/","pubDate":"Thu, 16 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/tips-for-web-scraping-from-a-web-scraping-intern\/","description":"Michelle Orden is a rising second year Masters of Science in Computational Analysis and Public Policy (MSCAPP) student at the University of Chicago. She joined Civic Eagle this summer as a Python Engineering Intern. In this role, Michelle focused on converting existing people scrapers to use the spatula library. She also contributed to the scraping of committee data. After writing 30+ scrapers, here are some tips she learned along the way."},{"title":"June 2021 Update","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-2021-q2\/","pubDate":"Wed, 30 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-2021-q2\/","description":"Most sessions have ended, and we’re heading into the summer, but that doesn’t mean that the work has slowed down.\nAs detailed earlier this year, our 2021 focus is on data improvements across the board, and for the past few months we’ve been hard at work expanding Open States' data offerings with new federal data support & the addition of committee data.\nTeam Open States Expands This expanded focus is largely possible due to our team growing."},{"title":"March 2021 Update","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-2021-q1\/","pubDate":"Mon, 29 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-2021-q1\/","description":"The first 3 months of 2021 have flown by, which means it is time for our quarterly update!\nAs mentioned in the end-of-2020 update the big focus this year will be on data improvements across the board. We also have some exciting developments for the Open States community as we strive to make the project more accessible to developers and potential contributors.\nData Updates New Sessions\nThe focus of the first quarter tends to be on new session updates."},{"title":"Open States Joins Civic Eagle","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-joins-civic-eagle\/","pubDate":"Thu, 04 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-joins-civic-eagle\/","description":"This post and a companion also appear on the Civic Eagle blog:\n Open States Joins Civic Eagle Civic Eagle Acquires Open States and Invests in the Future of Civic Data  The project that\u2019s become Open States began back in 2009 while I was an employee at Sunlight Foundation. There was great enthusiasm for civic tech at this time, but not much direction for developers interested in getting involved. How could we rally the community and concentrate this surge of energy toward places where it had the best chance to create meaningful change?"},{"title":"December 2020 Update","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/december-2020\/","pubDate":"Tue, 29 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/december-2020\/","description":"In 2020 we put out our most ambitious roadmap in a long time. It included launching bill tracking, bulk data, and API improvements. Thanks to the funding we received, we launched all of the major features we had planned, and then some. We also wound up putting out some surprises we hadn\u2019t planned on, like our COVID-19 legislation tracking, new municipal data, and our new shiny API v3, which is already seeing great adoption!"},{"title":"Open States API v3 & 2021 Plans","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-api-v3\/","pubDate":"Wed, 25 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-api-v3\/","description":"API v3 is here! Back in September, I announced the beta of Open States API v3 and as of today it is moving from beta status to fully supported. Since the initial release there have been quite a few updates, all noted in the changelog.\nWhile API v3 will continue to improve, it has been moved to production servers, backwards-incompatible changes will be kept to a minimum and announced well in advance, and rate limits are a bit higher than they were during the beta accordingly."},{"title":"Open States API v3 Beta","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-api-v3-beta\/","pubDate":"Thu, 10 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-api-v3-beta\/","description":"The original Open States API was released ten years ago this fall, and we consider it the most important part of the project after the scrapers.\nWhile we released the GraphQL API several years ago, we found that the ease of use of API v1 meant that quite a few (nearly 40%) of API users stuck with API v1, so it has long been on the wishlist to have a successor that was closer to a 1:1 replacement for the API v1 methods that so many projects and organizations depend upon."},{"title":"August 2020 Update","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/august-2020-update\/","pubDate":"Mon, 10 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/august-2020-update\/","description":"August 2020 Update While this year’s legislative sessions have been quite unusual, Open States' work has continued on mostly uninterrupted. June was the busiest month ever for our APIs with lots of attention being paid to state legislatures as people push for policing reform and state-level Covid responses.\nWe’re pushing ahead with our planned roadmap, adding municipal & executive data to Open States for the first time, introducing a new guide to contributing, and planning the future of our API offerings."},{"title":"April 2020 Update","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/april-2020-update\/","pubDate":"Fri, 10 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/april-2020-update\/","description":"As legislatures adapt to the new reality that is unfolding, our work continues mostly uninterrupted. I hope everyone out there is staying safe and taking care of themselves.\nI wanted to give an update on where we’re at on our 2020 Roadmap, the status of our subscriptions beta, and our COVID-19 resource.\nBill Tracking For Everyone In case you missed the announcement in February, we now have bill tracking & notification features available on OpenStates."},{"title":"Tracking Legislation on OpenStates.org","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/tracking-legislation-on-open-states\/","pubDate":"Tue, 25 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/tracking-legislation-on-open-states\/","description":"Update: For an evergreen version of this post and a guide on how to use our new feature see https:\/\/openstates.org\/about\/subscriptions\/\nWe’re excited to announce that our most-requested feature, bill tracking and alerts, has come to the new OpenStates.org!\nHere’s what’s new:\nLogin & Profile Pages Our new sign up page is live, and lets you sign up for an account with common social media accounts or an email and password."},{"title":"January 2020 Update","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/jan-2020-update\/","pubDate":"Fri, 31 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/jan-2020-update\/","description":"It’s been a busy year so far for the Open States team! Of the thirteen items on the 2020 Roadmap, three are already nearly complete, and significant progress has been made on a few others.\nHere’s what we’ve been up to so far:\nOpenStates.org Bill Tracking Alpha You can now create an account on OpenStates.org, and if you fill out our short survey we will bring you into the private preview of bill tracking."},{"title":"Introducing Dan Schneiderman","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/introducing-dan-schneiderman\/","pubDate":"Thu, 19 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/introducing-dan-schneiderman\/","description":"We\u2019re incredibly excited to have Dan joining the team under our NSF Contract. Dan will be working to improve our historical data and data quality tools pipeline, while also making broader contributions to the project as time allows. - James\nI had originally worked on the Open States project as my first co-op at RIT during the summer of 2010. This was back when the project was named the 50 States Project and was based out of Sunlight Labs."},{"title":"Announcing Our 2020 Roadmap","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/2020-roadmap\/","pubDate":"Fri, 13 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/2020-roadmap\/","description":"With full time developers working on the project for the first time in years, 2020 is going to be an ambitious year.\nPlease note that many of these goals are outside of the core requirements of our grants, so this roadmap is aspirational. We are also only funded through the first half of the year, and seeking funding and partnerships to help make these a reality.\nIf you’re interested in collaborating in any way, please get in touch."},{"title":"National Science Foundation Funding!","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/openstates-nsf-funding\/","pubDate":"Mon, 18 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/openstates-nsf-funding\/","description":"I\u2019m excited to announce the most exciting development since we took the project over back in November 2016! The Open States team has received funding as part of an NSF grant and will, for the next ~9 months have full time staff.\nIn a bit more detail, we have received funding as subgrantees on an NSF C-Accel Grant to build a prototype of something the team is calling the Federalism Data and Advanced Statistics Hub."},{"title":"Adding Full Text Search to Open States","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/adding-full-text-search-to-open-states-14b665c1fe30\/","pubDate":"Mon, 09 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/adding-full-text-search-to-open-states-14b665c1fe30\/","description":"For years, the most requested feature on Open States has been the ability to search all legislation by keyword, and to receive updates when new bills matching keywords are updated.\nWe\u2019re excited to announce that today marks the first step in that direction with the alpha release of an enhancement to our search API.\nIf you\u2019re using the GraphQL API simply add the searchQuery term to your bills() query.\nsearchQuery in action"},{"title":"Happy 10th Birthday, Open States!","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/happy-10th-birthday-open-states-82cc59b9a185\/","pubDate":"Tue, 26 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/happy-10th-birthday-open-states-82cc59b9a185\/","description":"It was 10 years ago today that the first post about what would become Open States was made on the Sunlight Labs blog.\nRead the post here: Our next big goal, The Fifty State Project *While no single developer has the time to volunteer writing a custom scraper for each state, the goal of having data\u2026*sunlightfoundation.com\nOf course it was a few months later, at PyCon 2009 in Chicago that we really got things started: Fifty states Project: April 10th Status Report *Six weeks ago we announced on this blog _ the Fifty State Project _, our ambitious project to begin building scrapers\u2026*sunlightfoundation."},{"title":"Introducing the new openstates.org","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/introducing-the-new-openstates-org-64bcbd765f58\/","pubDate":"Wed, 09 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/introducing-the-new-openstates-org-64bcbd765f58\/","description":"Just over a year ago, we gave a preview of some work that team member Olivia Cheng was working on. As of today, we\u2019re proud to announce that work has become the new openstates.org.\nThe new state overview page\nThe new site has been something that Miles, Olivia, and myself have worked on in our spare time for the past year. We\u2019re proud that it is now in a state that is ready to be shown off to the world in time for the start of the 2019 sessions."},{"title":"2019 Session Updates","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/2019-session-updates-f4a6244e9755\/","pubDate":"Thu, 03 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/2019-session-updates-f4a6244e9755\/","description":"Happy New Year!\nThis is always the busiest time for the project, as nearly every state begins a new legislative session in the January of an odd-numbered year.\nMost states will be back in session by January 9th, and nearly all of them by January 16th. If you\u2019re unsure when your state starts, there\u2019s a great reference on Ballotpedia. The unfortunate fact is that many states don\u2019t put their data up until the day the session starts, or sometimes later."},{"title":"More Ways to Get State Legislative Data","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/more-ways-to-get-state-legislative-data-d9aece2245f0\/","pubDate":"Mon, 05 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/more-ways-to-get-state-legislative-data-d9aece2245f0\/","description":"The Open States API has been putting legislative data in people\u2019s hands since 2010. In that time we\u2019ve served well over a billion API calls for thousands of users, and in doing so learned a lot about what data people use and how they use it. We\u2019ve also learned quite a bit about how to model legislative data as we went from our initial subset of states to the 52 jurisdictions we cover today."},{"title":"New Directions","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/new-directions-716cab38c357\/","pubDate":"Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/new-directions-716cab38c357\/","description":"There\u2019s been some radio silence here lately that has led to a few people asking about bigger picture questions, and we wanted to address some of these & make a few announcements regarding the direction of the project going forward. If you\u2019re less interested in the \u201cwhy\u201d and more interested in the \u201cwhat\u2019s next\u201d feel free to skip down to the relevant sections.\nTo get the obvious question out of the way, we do not plan to shut Open States down."},{"title":"Open States progress report, March 2","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-progress-report-march-2-49f683e775fd\/","pubDate":"Fri, 02 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-progress-report-march-2-49f683e775fd\/","description":"Hi again! Checking in with another progress update, as I begin my third and final month staffed full-time on Open States.\nWe\u2019ve continued to maintain high data quality, as the nation\u2019s legislative sessions move ahead in full-swing; over the past month, we\u2019ve had over 100 code commits to the scraper repository, closing 37 tickets. I\u2019ve been able to take care of most of these bugfixes and manual data corrections, and have also been helping onboard many first-time contributors who are coming to the project via Google Summer of Code."},{"title":"Open States & Google Summer of Code 2018","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-google-summer-of-code-2018-24e6493cbc9e\/","pubDate":"Mon, 12 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-google-summer-of-code-2018-24e6493cbc9e\/","description":"We\u2019re excited to announce that Open States has been accepted as a participating organization in Google Summer of Code 2018!\nLast year we had Hitesh Garg help us break ground on a brand new data admin tool. We\u2019re excited to have the opportunity to work with a couple of new students this year and see what great improvements we can build together this summer.\nFor those unfamiliar, GSoC is an opportunity for students to work on selected Open Source projects."},{"title":"Open States progress report, February 2","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-progress-report-february-2-d4e04fa68e0e\/","pubDate":"Fri, 02 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-progress-report-february-2-d4e04fa68e0e\/","description":"Hi all! As promised, touching base with a quick update on my Open States progress from the past couple weeks.\nOur legislator and bill scrapers are now fully-functioning, pulling in new data nightly. Only Arkansas and Connecticut remain deactivated, since their legislative sessions haven\u2019t yet begun, and their websites haven\u2019t published pre-filed bills.\nAs always, you can view Open States scraper status using our Bobsled tool:\nMy other focus has been updating our legislative boundary lookup, which powers a popular API endpoint and the openstates."},{"title":"Using state flags as Slack emoji","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/using-state-flags-as-slack-emoji-4d61f3e2cda8\/","pubDate":"Mon, 22 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/using-state-flags-as-slack-emoji-4d61f3e2cda8\/","description":"Want to rep your home state in Slack? Or travel around a lot, and want to use your Slack status to represent your location? Want to react to a friend\u2019s message, but can\u2019t find a way to say \u201cthat\u2019s sooo Kansas\u201d? (Or, run an open-source project and need a cute way to refer to individual states across the country? ;) )\nI got you. Hop over to my GitHub repository and you can load all 50 state flags (plus 6 territories\u2019) into your Slack, as custom emoji!"},{"title":"Scraper status report for the 2018 sessions","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/scraper-status-report-for-the-2018-sessions-5fa7b88e55e2\/","pubDate":"Fri, 19 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/scraper-status-report-for-the-2018-sessions-5fa7b88e55e2\/","description":"January\u2019s always a busy time for Open States, as new legislative sessions are sworn in across the country. I\u2019ve been hard at work making sure that our scrapers receive prompt fixes, as well as making manual data corrections as old legislators retire.\nOur scraper-status dashboard, http:\/\/bobsled.openstates.org\/\nRight now, we\u2019re in a great place. Thanks to 70 code commits in the past two weeks, 42 of our 52 state scrapers are running smoothly."},{"title":"Bringing on Support for the 2018 Legislative Sessions","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/bringing-on-support-for-the-2018-legislative-sessions-6313f4de4e49\/","pubDate":"Tue, 09 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/bringing-on-support-for-the-2018-legislative-sessions-6313f4de4e49\/","description":"I\u2019m excited to announce that Miles Watkins, a fellow member of the Open States core team, will be working on the project professionally during 2018\u2019s most legislatively-active months. Between now and late March, Miles will dedicate most of his work week to supporting Open States, especially by improving scraped data quality and building out the infrastructure of the new openstates.org and the geospatial components of the API.\nOpen States had no paid development staff in 2017, and our success relied on over a thousand volunteer hours from Miles, myself, and the rest of our contributors."},{"title":"The new openstates.org: a sneak peek","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/the-new-openstates-org-a-sneak-peek-2671e36ceac8\/","pubDate":"Sat, 02 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/the-new-openstates-org-a-sneak-peek-2671e36ceac8\/","description":"The current Open States website has served us well. It\u2019s a crucial gateway for citizens to track, search, and learn about their representatives and bills, and receives hundreds of thousands of hits per month when legislatures are in session.\nBut at six years old, the interface is starting to show its age, in both usability and visual design. Most significantly, openstates.org is not mobile-responsive, a bad experience for smartphone and tablet users."},{"title":"Open States in 2018 and Beyond","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-in-2018-and-beyond-d35f1717982b\/","pubDate":"Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-in-2018-and-beyond-d35f1717982b\/","description":"Open States will soon enter its tenth year as a project and second year as an independent entity. We wanted to take some time to reflect, and announce some changes that we\u2019ll be making in 2018.\nWe\u2019re quite proud of all we accomplished in 2017. We focused on migrating the project to new & improved infrastructure, new data quality tools as part of our Google Summer of Code participation, and building relationships that will hopefully ensure Open States\u2019 sustainability well into the future."},{"title":"Introducing the Upcoming Open States GraphQL API","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/introducing-the-upcoming-open-states-graphql-api-838f9d023868\/","pubDate":"Thu, 30 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/introducing-the-upcoming-open-states-graphql-api-838f9d023868\/","description":"The Open States API is arguably the most important part of the project after the scrapers. The API was launched in 2010 and now sees millions of requests a week.\nToday we\u2019re announcing experimental availability of the Open States GraphQL API, our intended successor to the existing API.\nYou can start experimenting w\/ the API today: check out the alpha documentation or dive in!\nThis API is currently in an early alpha state."},{"title":"Google Summer of Code 2017 Final Update","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/google-summer-of-code-2017-final-update-cf5c14d80c51\/","pubDate":"Wed, 30 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/google-summer-of-code-2017-final-update-cf5c14d80c51\/","description":"Hello everyone!\nI\u2019m finally wrapping up my Google Summer of Code project. It was a very successful journey, and I\u2019m extremely happy that I got to work with an organization like Open States. I would like to thank my mentors Miles and James for providing me guidance to successfully complete the project. Here\u2019s a summary of what I produced:\nOverview The purpose of this project was to build Open Civic Data administrative data tools, and additionally to help with the pupa-ization of existing scrapers."},{"title":"Open States Data Availability Survey","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-data-availability-survey-942ceba26fb0\/","pubDate":"Sun, 20 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-data-availability-survey-942ceba26fb0\/","description":"Help evaluate your state\u2019s legislative data.\nIn 2013 the Open States team put together an Open Legislative Data Report Card. The report card ranked states in several categories, helping us provide states feedback and apply pressure to states to improve their data availability. That survey was greatly aided by volunteers helping us evaluate state data sources. We\u2019d like to revisit this for 2017 and once again want to call upon our community for assistance."},{"title":"Google Summer of Code \u2014 Data Quality Tools Update","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/google-summer-of-code-data-quality-tools-update-bb8d9d1edabf\/","pubDate":"Mon, 31 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/google-summer-of-code-data-quality-tools-update-bb8d9d1edabf\/","description":"Hitesh has been working with us as part of Google Summer of Code. Prior updates: intro, first update.\nHello everyone!\nA lot of work was done this month and hence the third blog post. So continuing from my last blog post, here\u2019s a quick overview of what\u2019s been accomplished so far:\n Introduced a new data quality check to capture if there are too many people associated with a post or too few people associated with a post."},{"title":"2017 So Far","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/2017-so-far-a4847249ac4\/","pubDate":"Fri, 21 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/2017-so-far-a4847249ac4\/","description":"With the bulk of 2017 sessions now adjourned we wanted to give an update for what we\u2019ve been working on besides keeping the scrapers running & what\u2019s coming next.\nscraper commits for 2017; https:\/\/github.com\/openstates\/openstates\/graphs\/commit-activity\nDiving into Open Civic Data In May, with the help of dozens of new contributors, we finished converting all of our scrapers to the Open Civic Data ecosystem. This was our big push for the first half of the year and it is fair to say that this is the biggest improvement to the Open States project since 2012, when we released openstates."},{"title":"Progress on the OCD Data Quality Tools","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/progress-on-the-ocd-data-quality-tools-7440f33f57f9\/","pubDate":"Tue, 04 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/progress-on-the-ocd-data-quality-tools-7440f33f57f9\/","description":"Hello everyone!\nIt seems like just yesterday that I was selected for Google Summer of Code, but I\u2019ve now completed my first of three months with the Open States project. Continuing from my last blog post, here\u2019s a quick overview of what\u2019s been accomplished so far:\n  I helped to complete the organization\u2019s switch to scraping into the Open Civic Data format.\n  I wrote a Django command to detect data quality issues in scraped OCD records, and store these issues in the database."},{"title":"Google Summer of Code \u2014 Improved Data Tools","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/google-summer-of-code-improved-data-tools-56b879faecc1\/","pubDate":"Sun, 28 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/google-summer-of-code-improved-data-tools-56b879faecc1\/","description":"Hello, Universe!\nI am Hitesh Garg, one of the two Google Summer of Code (GSoC) students working with Open States this summer. I\u2019ll be helping to transition the project to Open Civic Data (OCD), by implementing admin interfaces to this new data structure.\nMy journey to Google Summer of Code I\u2019ve always been fascinated by the open-source software community, and wanted to contribute my skills to society and do something impactful."},{"title":"Google Summer of Code \u2014 Crowdsourcing & Scraper Fixing","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/google-summer-of-code-crowd-sourcing-scraper-fixing-6c8472fd4604\/","pubDate":"Sun, 14 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/google-summer-of-code-crowd-sourcing-scraper-fixing-6c8472fd4604\/","description":"Hello everyone!\nMy name is Bikram Bharti, I am working with Open States this summer aspart of the Google Summer of Code program.\nAbout Me I am a junior year student with major in Electronics Engineering at IIT (Varanasi) BHU. I started my journey with open source contributions in 2016, with contributions in few of the web-development related projects of fossasia.\nI started contributing to Open States last spring, helped convert many states from billy to pupa, wrote documentation for event conversion and fixed a few scrapers."},{"title":"Open States API Keys","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-api-keys-ad48a7804131\/","pubDate":"Fri, 21 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-api-keys-ad48a7804131\/","description":"TL;DR- We\u2019re requiring API keys for API access again, register for a key and start using it by May 12th of this year. This applies even if you have a Sunlight-issued key.\nWhen we took over Open States from Sunlight last year we temporarily removed the API key requirement. While it hasn\u2019t been a priority, we\u2019ve recently seen some excess usage and decided it was about time to turn keys back on."},{"title":"Open States Virtual Code Sprint: Sunday, April 23!","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-virtual-code-sprint-sunday-april-23-931e3b9a8b55\/","pubDate":"Tue, 04 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-virtual-code-sprint-sunday-april-23-931e3b9a8b55\/","description":"We\u2019re excited to announce our second code sprint of 2017. And this time, we\u2019re running it virtually, so that community members outside of DC can join in!\nSo, hop on the Open States Slack, set aside Sunday, April 23 on your calendars, and get ready.\nJames, myself, and other core developers will be online from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM Eastern Time (14:00 to 22:00 UTC). During that time, we\u2019ll be ready to enable any and all contributions to the project, including:"},{"title":"March 19, 2017 Sprint Retrospective","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/march-19-2017-sprint-retrospective-46726954fcdf\/","pubDate":"Thu, 23 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/march-19-2017-sprint-retrospective-46726954fcdf\/","description":"This past Sunday\u2019s code sprint was a huge success!\nWe had 15 developers spend a whole day at work on Billy-to-Pupa conversion. With 13 new PRs from that group alone, we\u2019re well on our way to the next step in our 2017 roadmap.\nA huge thank-you from James and myself to everyone who dedicated their day off to the project: @jmcarp, @hmoco, @erinspace, @lmm54321, @rshorey, @lindsayyoung, @showerst, @mroswell, @lmdragun, @gregjd, @jschiarizzi, @jalbertbowden, and @amitnagis."},{"title":"Wrapping up my Open States contract","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/wrapping-up-my-open-states-contract-788c5d67bbb0\/","pubDate":"Tue, 21 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/wrapping-up-my-open-states-contract-788c5d67bbb0\/","description":"This is my last week of my three-month stint working full-time on Open States.\nSo far in 2018, I\u2019ve made over 100 scraper code commits, dozens of manual data corrections, built up our community of contributors (including 70 prospective Google Summer of Code students), and developed most of the main views for our new website. Returning to working in my off-hours, I\u2019m hoping that Olivia and I can have the new website up and public in the coming months."},{"title":"Open States & Google Summer of Code 2017","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-google-summer-of-code-2017-e8f3895a9a81\/","pubDate":"Mon, 27 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/open-states-google-summer-of-code-2017-e8f3895a9a81\/","description":"Google Summer of Code 2017\nWe\u2019re excited to announce that Open States has been accepted as a participating organization in Google Summer of Code 2017!\nIt\u2019s been a few years since we last participated (while at Sunlight), but Google Summer of Code has been a fantastic experience for Open States in the past and we\u2019re glad to be participating again.\nIf you aren\u2019t familiar with GSoC, it is a program in which Google pays stipends to college students that are willing to spend their summer working on select Open Source projects."},{"title":"Save the Date: Open States Code Sprint \u2014 March 19, 2017","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/save-the-date-open-states-code-sprint-march-19-2017-f234dd09b6e1\/","pubDate":"Thu, 16 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/save-the-date-open-states-code-sprint-march-19-2017-f234dd09b6e1\/","description":"We\u2019re excited to announce that Open States will be holding a code sprint in DC on Sunday, March 19!\nWhen and where? We\u2019ll kick off in the morning at 9:00 AM, close up around 6:00 PM, and\u2019ll plan to serve both breakfast and lunch. And don\u2019t worry if you can attend for only part o that; we\u2019ll be available to onboard contributors throughout the day.\nDevelopment Seed has generously offered to host the event in their office space."},{"title":"What\u2019s Next in 2017?","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/whats-next-in-2017-5932ff0baa5d\/","pubDate":"Tue, 31 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/whats-next-in-2017-5932ff0baa5d\/","description":"As of last week, we\u2019re collecting current data again for all in-session state legislatures. (This includes 48 of the 50 states, as well as DC and Puerto Rico; Florida begins their main 2017 session in March, and Louisiana doesn\u2019t start until April.)\nThis isn\u2019t the first time we\u2019ve gone through this massive start-of-session undertaking, but each time we\u2019re floored by the amazing support from our community. We\u2019d like to extend a huge thank-you to everyone that chipped in to get us here: since the start of November, there have been over 300 code commits from a dozen contributors, and we\u2019ve received over $7,000 for our general fund from over 50 donors."},{"title":"2017 New Year Update","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/2017-new-year-update-cc285aa818fd\/","pubDate":"Mon, 02 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/2017-new-year-update-cc285aa818fd\/","description":"Phew! We\u2019ve been working hard over the holidays, and are pleased to report that Open States is now serving up-to-date data for 20 state legislatures.\nOur initial plan was to have a set of 11 states ready for you by January 3. Unfortunately, some of these states\u2019 websites haven\u2019t yet been fully updated for the 2017 session, including Ohio, DC, and Massachusetts. Waylaid without their data, we focused instead on bringing up as many states as possible, including most legislatures with 2017-session information hosted."},{"title":"Scraper Timeline Update","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/scraper-timeline-update-57f2c73457ba\/","pubDate":"Mon, 12 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/scraper-timeline-update-57f2c73457ba\/","description":"We\u2019re excited to announce that over the coming days, we\u2019ll be able to start reactivating some state scrapers to collect up-to-date legislative data.\nWe plan to turn on nearly a dozen states in our first round: California, Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington DC. These are some of the earliest states to begin their 2017 legislative sessions, and together include over 40% of the US population."},{"title":"Our First Month","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/our-first-month-aadd98a8e285\/","pubDate":"Thu, 08 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/our-first-month-aadd98a8e285\/","description":"It\u2019s been just over a month since we took over ownership of Open States and we wanted to give you an update on how things are going.\nFirst off, we\u2019d like to thank you all for your contributions to our ongoing General Support Fundraiser; over the past month, we\u2019ve received dozens of donations totaling over $4,000! This is incredible, and we\u2019ll be putting together a donor\u2019s page by the end of the year thanking everyone who publicly supported the mission of Open States."},{"title":"Why Open States?","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/why-open-states-10caed7874c6\/","pubDate":"Thu, 03 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/why-open-states-10caed7874c6\/","description":"originally published November 3, 2016\nWe announced earlier this week that Open States is now being maintained by the original creators of the project, a community of Sunlight Foundation alumni and other volunteers.\nAfter a year of scant staffing culminating in the closure of Sunlight Labs, we expect that getting Open States fully operational again will take a significant effort, and we know from experience that maintaining the menagerie of scrapers into the future isn\u2019t easy either."},{"title":"Adopting Open States","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/adopting-open-states-e837741e97da\/","pubDate":"Tue, 01 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/adopting-open-states-e837741e97da\/","description":"As the Sunlight Foundation announced today, Open States is going to be passed along to us, a group of Sunlight alumni, with the goal of turning it into an independent, self-sustaining project.\nWe\u2019re extremely grateful to Kat Duffy and everyone else at Sunlight for helping us to get to this point, and wanted to take some time today to explain who we are, what our plan is, and what we need from you in order to have Open States succeed."},{"title":"Open States Transparency Report Card","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/2013-transparency-report-card\/","pubDate":"Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/2013-transparency-report-card\/","description":"This post originally appeared at https:\/\/sunlightfoundation.com\/2013\/03\/11\/openstates-report-card\/ but has moved here for posterity.\nToday we\u2019re making available our Transparency Report Card, a byproduct of the work we did in producing Open States.\nIn the course of writing scrapers for all 50 state legislatures, our Open States team and volunteers spent a lot of time looking at state legislative websites and struggling with the often inadequate information made available. Impossibly difficult to navigate sites, information going missing and gnarly PDFs of tabular data have become daily occurrences for those of us working on Open States."},{"title":"Open States Launch: Find & Follow Your State Capitol","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/site-launch\/","pubDate":"Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/site-launch\/","description":"This post originally appeared at https:\/\/sunlightfoundation.com\/2012\/08\/01\/check-out-the-open-states-beta-site\/ and is replicated here for posterity.\nAfter more than four years of work from volunteers and a full-time team here at Sunlight we\u2019re immensely proud to launch the full Open States site with searchable legislative data for all 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Open States is the only comprehensive database of activities from all state capitols that makes it easy to find your state lawmaker, review their votes, search for legislation, track bills and much more."},{"title":"Open States Beta Launch","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/beta-launch\/","pubDate":"Wed, 01 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/beta-launch\/","description":"This post originally appeared at https:\/\/sunlightfoundation.com\/2012\/08\/01\/check-out-the-open-states-beta-site\/ and is replicated here for posterity.\nA view of the Open States beta site on the District of Columbia page.\nIf you don\u2019t read the Sunlight Labs blog as religiously as I do (you should!), you might miss that our Open States project now has a public beta site up and running. Users can find who their state reps are, their voting record and contact information, the most recent actions taken by the legislature and search the full text of current and past bills."},{"title":"A New Face for Open States","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/a-new-face\/","pubDate":"Fri, 27 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/a-new-face\/","description":"This post originally appeared at https:\/\/sunlightfoundation.com\/2012\/07\/27\/a-new-face-for-openstates\/ but has been replicated here for posterity. Links may not have been preserved.\nWonder what the Open States team has been working on since we finished our initial goal of providing information for all 50 states back in March? As promised, we\u2019ve been focusing on a new OpenStates.org and expanding our API to support full text search and we\u2019re finally ready to show you the results."},{"title":"Open States: 50!","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/openstates-50\/","pubDate":"Mon, 12 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/openstates-50\/","description":"This page originally appeared at https:\/\/sunlightfoundation.com\/2012\/03\/12\/open-states-50\/ but has been replicated here for posterity.\nThree years ago at PyCon 2009, we had the first PyCon Open Government Hackathon. Our big project was Open States (then the 50 State Project). The goal was to begin scraping state legislatures\u2019 websites in the hope of providing a common format for bill metadata across all 50 states.\nToday, as we kick off the 4th Annual Open Government Hackathon at PyCon we\u2019re extraordinarily happy to announce one of the most significant milestones in the history of Open States: as of today, all 50 states (as well as DC and Puerto Rico) are now supported via our API and bulk downloads."},{"title":"Open States API, 1 Year Later","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/api-1-year-later\/","pubDate":"Mon, 12 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/api-1-year-later\/","description":"This post originally appeared at https:\/\/sunlightfoundation.com\/2011\/09\/12\/open-states-api-1-yr-later\/ but has been moved here for posterity.\nLast September we announced the first public release of the Open States API. The API enables programmatic access to all of the key artifacts of the state legislative process. The API currently provides a standard interface to bills, votes, legislators, committees, and events across 36 states, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico.\nSeeing as it has been a year since this first public release it seems like a good time to check on on where we are today and where we\u2019re going next."},{"title":"Halfway to 50","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/halfway\/","pubDate":"Fri, 06 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/halfway\/","description":"This page originally appeared at https:\/\/sunlightfoundation.com\/2011\/05\/06\/open-states-halfway\/ but has been replicated here for posterity.\nToday marks an important milestone for the Open State Project: the addition of New York to our list of experimental states brings our total number of supported states to 25 (plus Washington DC). This marks the halfway point on our journey to bring clean, consistent, machine readable legislative information to all 50 states.\nThis means that residents of 25 states (accounting for approximately two-thirds of US citizens) can access their state\u2019s legislative data in a variety of machine readable formats (JSON, XML, CSV) and will soon be benefiting from sites like like OpenGovernment."},{"title":"New Hampshire Opens Its Legislative Data","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/new-hampshire-open-data\/","pubDate":"Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/new-hampshire-open-data\/","description":"This post originally appeared on https:\/\/sunlightfoundation.com\/2011\/02\/03\/new-hampshire-open-legislative-data\/ but has been moved here for posterity.\nThe New Hampshire General Court (their state legislature) has made an extremely welcome addition to their website in the form of a downloads section.\nNew Hampshire isn\u2019t the first state to offer such a thing: New Jersey has a similar section on their website, and quite a few states like New York and Kansas are introducing APIs to their new legislature websites."},{"title":"Open State Project API","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/introducing-the-openstates-api\/","pubDate":"Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/introducing-the-openstates-api\/","description":"This page originally appeared at https:\/\/sunlightfoundation.com\/2010\/09\/01\/introducing-open-state-project-api\/ but has been replicated here for posterity.\nOver a year ago we announced our intention to build scrapers that would collect and sanitize legislative information from all fifty states, an initiative that is now known as the Open State Project. (formerly the Fifty State Project)\nSince we put out the proposal we\u2019ve had more than 25 developers contribute code, and we now have scrapers in various states of completion for approximately 30 states."},{"title":"Google Summer of Code 2010: Open States","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/gsoc-2010\/","pubDate":"Mon, 30 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/gsoc-2010\/","description":"This post originally appeared at https:\/\/sunlightfoundation.com\/2010\/08\/30\/gsoc-2010-openstates\/ but has moved here for posterity.\nHello! I\u2019m Gabriel, I\u2019m a 4th year student of Computer Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico in Mayag\u00fcez. This summer I worked as a GSoC student on developing new scapers for the Open State Project. The states I worked on were Colorado, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon and the territory of Puerto Rico. I really enjoyed the whole experience. The work is very fulfilling as coding in Python is always delightful and fun."},{"title":"Fifty State Project: Redux","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/fifty-state-project-redux\/","pubDate":"Mon, 10 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/fifty-state-project-redux\/","description":"This post originally appeared at https:\/\/sunlightfoundation.com\/2010\/05\/10\/fifty-state-project-redux\/ but has moved here for posterity.\nThe Fifty State Project is now over a year old and has evolved from a Sunlight Labs side project to a funded endeavor. The project is receiving funding as part of a proposal to provide data for five new state level OpenCongress.org-type sites (being developed by the team at Participatory Politics Foundation). As a result we will soon have three staff members working on the project in addition to a Google Summer of Code student."},{"title":"April 10 2009 Status Report","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/april-2009\/","pubDate":"Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/april-2009\/","description":"This post originally appeared at https:\/\/sunlightfoundation.com\/2009\/04\/10\/fifty-states-project-april-10th-status-report\/ but has moved here for posterity.\nSix weeks ago we announced on this blog the Fifty State Project, our ambitious project to begin building scrapers and storing data for all legislative information from all fifty states. At the time this project seemed like a longshot, but almost immediately a community rose to the challenge and there are now more than a dozen contributors and more than thirty states in progress."},{"title":"Our next big goal, The Fifty State Project","link":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/the-fifty-state-project\/","pubDate":"Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/blog.openstates.org\/the-fifty-state-project\/","description":"This post originally appeared at https:\/\/sunlightfoundation.com\/2009\/02\/26\/fifty-state-project\/ but has moved here for posterity.\nThose of you who are familiar with Open Congress know that its power lies not in making legislative information available, but instead in how it makes legislation accessible by allowing people to interact with and repurpose what Congress produces. Unfortunately, hurdles remain in creating a better democracy at the local level and shedding light on state legislation. At Sunlight Labs, we\u2019ve been thinking about this problem for a while and now is the time for a fix."}]}}