[Open-Legislation] Open Legislation communication tools

Tue Dec 3 09:46:10 UTC 2013

Hi All,

First, a minor correction: I think Francis meant to say that the Legal
Informatics group is closed, which it is. The PMO
Network<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pmo-network>group,
which was established to focus on issues related to parliamentary
monitoring and parliaments more broadly, is entirely open. The focus of the
latter group very much overlaps with respect to some of the legislative
issues that are being discussed here, as James has indicated.

Many moons ago, in the early days of the PMO Network, we tossed around the
idea of forming another discussion group to specifically focus on the more
technical issues related to technology and its application to legislation
and parliamentary data. It never panned out, in part because there was no
clear leader willing to take on the task.

If OKF is willing, then it's certainly worth discussing whether or not a
new group fulfills a need. We're more than happy to explore that with you.

Best,
Andrew

On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 9:01 AM, Oleg Lavrovsky <oleg at opendata.ch> wrote:

> Thanks for the excellent comments James & Francis. Indeed it would not be
> in the interests of the group at all to keep things closed off. On the
> contrary! The moderators endeavour to approve real people as quickly as
> they can (they are however all busy volunteers, so please be patient with
> us), foster discussion and encourage as much open idea exchange as
> possible.
>
> Cheers,
> Oleg
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 5:57 PM, James McKinney <james at opennorth.ca> wrote:
>
>> The working group was ostensibly relaunched in October:
>> http://blog.okfn.org/2013/10/15/open-legislation-working-group-relaunched-at-okcon/
>>
>> If you apply to the second group, I would be surprised if you were not
>> admitted. I don't think they hold very strongly to keeping it a closed
>> group, more for defending against spam than anything else.
>>
>> James
>>
>> On 2013-12-02, at 11:40 AM, Francis Davey wrote:
>>
>> Thanks James, that is very useful. Note that the second group is not an
>> open group.
>>
>> Is there a "working group" in the usual sense, or is it this mailing
>> list?
>>
>> Francis
>>
>>
>> 2013/12/2 James McKinney <james at opennorth.ca>
>>
>>> It's not a question of content. This list is simply not the popular one
>>> for the topics of legal informatics and open legislation. Here are some
>>> that fill that role for me:
>>>
>>>
>>> https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/legal-informatics-research-network
>>> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pmo-network
>>>
>>> I would focus on "what does the OKF Open Legislation Working Group want
>>> to do?" and center conversations around that. Maybe a more critical
>>> question is, does the Working Group have anyone to lead/do the work that
>>> the group chooses to focus on?
>>>
>>> James
>>>
>>> On 2013-12-02, at 11:08 AM, Francis Davey wrote:
>>>
>>> 2013/12/2 Clemens Wass <clemens at wass.at>
>>>>
>>>> Is it a question of content or is the mailing list an outdated tool for
>>>> discussions (sorry, no offence towards all those who have started this
>>>> group; I know that many open source groups still rely on the good old
>>>> mailing list, but just wanted to ask). Would you prefer a blog/wiki or
>>>> rather a discussion group like in LinkedIn?
>>>>
>>>> Please let me know! Any proposals are highly welcome!
>>>>
>>>
>>> Two thoughts: (i) you could provide a steer on what sort of things are
>>> going to be discussed/you want discussed; (ii) and also some idea what sort
>>> of people might be on list.
>>>
>>> Mailing lists are like all such media a compromise. Too little traffic
>>> and they aren't much use, too much and we have to unsubscribe or face
>>> overfull inbobxes.
>>>
>>> At the moment it seems a bit write only, but that is something that
>>> could change.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Francis Davey
>>>
>>>  _______________________________________________
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>>> Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/open-legislation
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Francis Davey
>>
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>
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-- 
*Andrew G. Mandelbaum*

Senior Program Officer, Governance
National Democratic Institute
www.ndi.org
OpeningParliament.org <http://openingparliament.org/>

Twitter: agm3dc
Phone: +212 6 62 68 10 56
Skype: agm3jordan
Email: amandelbaum at ndi.org
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