Watching Delaware State Government with Requests
Or more precisely, the Legislature.
I’ve been looking at ways to keep track of what goes on in Dover, which means looking beyond the NJ. The State’s website actually provides some useful tools that were new to me, so I thought I would share some of these for the (probably very few of you) who didn’t know, either (note, RSS links prompt you to add feed to a reader):
- RSS feed for Introduced Legislation (for both houses)
- RSS feed for House Passed Legislation
- RSS feed for Senate Passed Legislation
- RSS feed for Signed Legislation
- MyLis by which you can indicate legislation you want to track and you will get email notice of changes in status. This you have to register for.
- Delaware Legislative Actions Notice which is another subscription service to get notice of legislative actions. Some of you may already be signed up to this service for school closings or school announcements.
While I haven’t yet tried the last two services, the RSS feeds are pretty good and are very convenient to access via my already too full newsreader. Clicking on the title will get you an expansion of the entry and clicking on the arrow (I’m using Google News) takes you to the Legislature website so you can get more information. The website provides the usual stuff — schedules, press releases and so on, but also provides a link in the middle of the page to listen to the House when it is in session.
Of course we can’t afford it, but certainly live video streaming of the sessions would be a good addition, but I think that podcasts of each committee or task force session would be ideal. A staff directory would be useful, but it seems easy enough to communicate directly with the legislator. Another idea is to use a blog or forum template to solicit input on big issues. For instance, the Minnesota Senate is asking citizens to weigh in on the budget. The drawback may be that you don’t get many people to participate as seems the case here — but I talked to two typically clued in friends of mine in MN who hadn’t heard of this at all. Implement something like this and I would even volunteer to moderate it — if something like this becomes the NJ comments it will never be useful.
So what else? How do you keep track of what the Legislature is doing and what have I missed? Do you have any ideas for the State’s webmaster to implement better web-based tools that would help (when we can afford it)?
ps. There are more RSS feeds for other Departments or state info which is very interesting.
Tags: Open Government
RSS feeds can also be added to websites.
I got a kick out of watching the chaos in the Tennessee House earlier this week, streamed live and archived on the web. I suppose if Tennessee can afford it, so can Delaware.
Cassandra – you rock.
I 2nd that lg. Perhaps you could keep the RSS feeds a permanent linkages on the blog. To me, it seems like another blog is really needed, like a state government watch to keep track of what is going on. Yes, I wish they would livestream the sessions, that is what we really need. Perhaps we could get a friendly legislator to sponsor a bill?
Great freaking job Cassandra.
looks great! Now describe what I should do next like you are describing it to a 10 year old.
jason330, just keep playing with your legos, the grownups will take over from here. 😉
nemski,
Make yourself useful and take down the “web awards” thingy so that the poll will return to its center stage location.
Jason, are you looking for instructions for how to set up a news reader? I can do that after I get thawed out from seeing Obama at the train station 🙂
For those of you that are twitter heads, GG has a DEPolitics page (not related to Burris’ blog). She’s does a nice job of summarizing things.
Hi — I am one of the website administrators for the MN Senate Budget Discussion website. We just went live on Thursday, Jan. 15th. It’s been interesting watching the ideas trickle in over the past two days. Thanks for linking to the website, and thanks for helping to spread the word with your friends in MN. This website is a new step for the MN Legislature, and we hope it will be a successful way for citizens to be more involved in budget decisions.
Thanks for the tweat (if that’s what the kids call it), RSmitty
Thanks for stopping by, Lindsey! If you wander back, can you tell us how this Discussion site came to be? And will you be moderating comments (discussions about money can get to be testy…)?
We developed this website partly because we were inspired by how Obama is using technology to reach out to citizens in new ways. MN is also facing a crushing budget deficit — we are facing a budget shortfall of over $5 billion out of a $34 billion general fund budget. We had been discussing ways to pull the public into the decision making process because we’re at the point of cutting a lot of state services. We wanted a way for the public to tell us what they REALLY value and what they are able to do without. The website itself is easy to maintain. We’re using WordPress. It took us about 6 weeks to put up however because it took a long time to gather input from Senators and staff, and to prepare information about the budget that was substantive but less jargon-y than the material that is distributed at Senate committee meetings. We update the material every day based on feedback. Turns out it’s hard not to be wonky! The budget is really complex, and I think it’s hard for the public to grasp how much $5 billion really means.
Yes — we do moderate the comments. We don’t publish profanity, but we publish any idea, large or small. We also are encouraging Senators to participate as much as possible so that the public knows we are reading their ideas and taking them seriously. Some of the comments struggle factually, so we are working through how to best facilitate the conversation so that thoughtful research-based ideas receive positive reinforcement. It’s tricky because it’s a public website, so we don’t have as much control over the content as we would if it were a private blog. We spend a lot of time talking about where the fine lines are between encouraging substance and stifling fresh ideas. A good idea is still good even if it is not expressed articulately at first.
Thanks alot, Lindsey! Do you see this budget blog lasting through this legislative session or would this be a long-term conversation?
I appreciate your answers here — we have a new administration starting in a couple of days who is also facing crushing budget decisions and am hoping that what you guys have done can be a model here.
Some of the comments struggle factually,
That is a very kind way of saying that Republicans are taking part.
Yes, we are very tactful here in MN.
But to answer Cassandra’s question, the website is on a trial basis through this legislative session. There were some naysayers who worried it would be a disaster and then we would have been beholden to a permanent website that we weren’t happy with. If it is successful, it will be a model for a more permanent website. There were some other features I wanted to include, such as registered user logins that would bring people to a tailored portal website, but that will take more proprietary programming on our part. We will invest the energy into creating specialized features this summer. For now, though, we’re making do with WordPress, which is able to do most of what we had in mind. For the future, I would be very interested in working with Joomla, or another software similar to Joomla.
Thanks again, Lindsey, especially for providing us with some inspiration. I’ll be looking in at what you are doing from time to time — it looks like it will be a real success for you.