Today the Unites States Senate released its senators’ policy voting records here in a machine readable format. This small step now enables anyone in the world to potentially analyze this data to find out where their parliamentarians actually vote (or dont at all!) for policies that concern everyone.

Sticking to my technology focus, here’s something that I want to point out from a letter circulated by Senator DeMint, who proposed the change:

Instead of HTML, Senator DeMint is asking that votes be posted in XML (Extensible Markup Language). Without going to deep into the technology, XML would allow roll call votes in the United States Senate to be disseminated in a format that anyone can download, parse, disseminate, and distribute in any form they see fit. By having an authoritative XML stream provided by the Senate, application developers could build databases that could overlay different types of data onto Senate votes, public interest groups could match up policy background with votes, or any of a hundred other possible applications. The result would not be merely some whiz-bang technology, but rather a better informed electorate.

Unfortunately with the current HTML formatting, the best we can hope for is that outside groups successfully “scrape” the Senate webpage for votes and repackage the data on their website. This forces the public to either pay for the information from other websites or to rely on data which can be prone to errors. Such basic democratic information, how elected officials vote on important issues, should be available in the most transparent format, free and accessible to all Americans.

As always, I shall be following ths Sunlight Foundation with its legion of developers and open source code for governmental oversight. I will be putting up direct links to the Sunlight Foundations Github page for source code.