Document class and properties

[jpmckinney]

Add a Document class to represent things like bills, agendas, etc. The base Document class may be fairly generic, with subclasses providing additional properties.

Issues

• The requirements for drafting legislation are sometimes in tension with those of parsing and displaying legislation. Different specifications/standards may emerge that are better tailored for one or the other.

Existing specifications

• Dublin Core
• FOAF Document: topic (dcterms:subject), primaryTopic, sha1
• Project Documents Ontology: adds no document properties not covered by Dublin Core

Legislative

• Akoma Ntoso
• metasausage includes sponsorships
• OASIS LegalXML: LegalDocML technical committee and mailing list
  • Discussion on the extension of Akoma Ntoso for the US code pilot case
• NIEM: Document*
• Crown Legislation Markup Language (CLML)
• xml.house.gov
• Finlex Legislation Metadata Schema
• OParl.de Paper, File, etc.
• OpenCivicData Bill
• BillIt component
• Councilmatic

[jpmckinney]

For the basic use cases, Dublin Core is sufficient.

For bills: While many organizations write software dealing with bills, it's unclear if any software yet exists that crosses borders. Until there's evidence of reuse across jurisdictions, there is not a strong use case for creating an international data interchange format.

This issue can be reopened if interest is expressed in reviving the discussion.

[akuckartz]

I am in contact with people working for the European Parliament regarding the Akoma Ntoso FOSS implementation AT4AM for All. And I am interested in combining that with OpenGovLD, Popolo etc.

(I think that it would be good to put information as that compiled by @jpmckinney on a Wiki instead of hiding it in closed issues!)

[jpmckinney]

Feel free to copy it to a wiki!

[jpmckinney]

I remembered we have this page https://github.com/opennorth/popolo-spec/wiki/Miscellaneous-specifications I'll copy things there.