The Library of Congress is sponsoring a set of legislative data challenges to advance the development of international data exchange standards for legislative data. These challenges are an initiative to encourage broad participation in the development and application of legislative data standards and to engage new communities in the use of legislative data. Goals of this initiative include:
•    Enabling wider accessibility and more efficient exchange of the legislative data of the United States Congress,
•    Encouraging the development of open standards that facilitate better integration, analysis, and interpretation of legislative data,
•    Fostering the use of open source licensing for implementing legislative data standard.

The Markup of US Legislation in Akoma Ntoso Challenge invites competitors to create representations of selected US bills using the most recent Akoma Ntoso standard. This work will help identify gaps in the Akoma Ntoso framework or US bill text where data cannot be incorporated properly within the existing standard, and propose new domain specific metadata elements or possibly other solutions to overcome these challenges.

The winning solution will win $5,000 in cash, as well as opportunities for promotion, exposure, and recognition by the Library of Congress. For more information about the prize, please see the Official Rules.

Eligibility

You may participate in the Challenge if you are:

  • at least 18 years old at the time of entry; you may enter both individually and as part of a team or organization;
  • a team of individuals where each team member is at least 18 years old at the time of entry; and
  • any for-profit or non-profit organization.

A team or organization must appoint a representative to act on its behalf. 

Please see Official Rules for full eligibility information.

Requirements

Submission should include:

  1. Title of your solution
  2. Executive summary
  3. Converted bill text - data files and supporting documentation for conversion of the text of the four U.S. bills, including the Akoma Ntoso XML versions of each bill.  
  4. Documentation about decisions you made regarding the tools used and processing of data files. 
  5. Open Source Toolkit - if you develop a toolkit for this challenge, it should be included in your documentation and either submitted under an open source license or committed to the public domain. If you use existing tools, we'd like your evaluation of the tools and information about how they were used for the challenge.
  6. Optional Video demonstrating your solution, or describing how your proposed solution would work.

Please see Official Rules for full submission requirements.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$5,000 in prizes

First Place

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

How to enter

Interested persons should read these Official Rules before entering the Challenge.

All challenge participants must submit their entries through the Challenge.gov portal.  Please note, in order to submit an entry, challenge participants will first need to register and create an account with ChallengePost. 

Challenge participants must:

  1. Create a ChallengePost account at https://secure.challengepost.com.  Registration is free.
  2. From the Challenge webpage on Challenge.gov, use the “Enter a Submission” tab to submit a solution which:

a. Maps each of the following bills into Akoma Ntoso XML schema:

Bill Number Version URL for Bill Text PDF (for viewing style/layout characteristics)
H.Con.Res.83[112] Engrossed http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hconres83eh/html/BILLS-112hconres83eh.htm http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hconres83eh/pdf/BILLS-112hconres83eh.pdf
H.R. 4310[112] Enrolled http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr4310enr/html/BILLS-112hr4310enr.htm http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr4310enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr4310enr.pdf
H.R. 1[112] Engrossed Amendment Senate http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1eas/html/BILLS-112hr1eas.htm http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1eas/pdf/BILLS-112hr1eas.pdf
H.R. 1120 [113] Reported House http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-113hr1120rh/html/BILLS-113hr1120rh.htm http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-113hr1120rh/pdf/BILLS-113hr1120rh.pdf

b. Identifies gaps in the Akoma Ntoso framework or U.S. bill text where data cannot be incorporated properly into the existing framework, and propose new schema elements or other solutions as necessary.

c. Documents the solution’s methodology, including discussion about decisions you made regarding the tools used, processing of data files, and data structures not accommodated by the standard.

Eligible Submissions will be posted on the Challenge.gov contest webpage after the open submission period has ended.

Please see the Official Rules for complete submission instructions.

Judges

Kirsten Gullickson

Kirsten Gullickson
Senior Systems Analyst with the Office of the Clerk, United States House of Representatives

Monica Palmirani

Monica Palmirani
Associate Professor of Computer Science and Law at the School of Law, University of Bologna, Italy

Fabio Vitali

Fabio Vitali
Associate Professor in Computer Science, University of Bologna, Italy

Judging Criteria

  • Completeness (40%)
    Does your entry include: Markup of all four legislative measures? Proper use of the Akoma Ntoso standard for all parts of the legislation? Discussion of and recommendations about data not accommodated by the standard? Information about the tools you used?
  • Accuracy (40%)
    Did the entry correctly: Identify data structures not accommodated by the standard? Propose new elements to resolve markup issues that conform to the existing standard? Propose an efficient and easy to use methodology to solve any data issues?
  • Practicality (20%)
    How successful is the proposed solution? How easy is it to adapt the solution to other jurisdictions and types of legislation? What has to be changed for the solution to work? Can it function today?

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