Bringing back “Madison”
POPVOX relaunches parts of OpenGov Foundation’s collaborative drafting toolset
On February 4, 2019, the OpenGov Foundation Executive Director & Co-Founder, Seamus Kraft, shared sad news for the civic tech world: the OGF’s flagship platform, Madison, would be archived. Today, we are honored to announce that key features of Madison will live again on POPVOX, with the relaunch of Madison’s collaborative editing function.
Madison: Civic Tech Trailblazing
I have often said that “Civic Tech” — technology to empower citizens — is something everyone agrees should exist and no one knows how to pay for. That was certainly the case with Madison.
As Kraft explained, the OGF developed, hosted and maintained Madison for seven years “for significantly less than $1 million, cobbled together from grants and the odd charitable donation.”
Through four major releases, The OGF maintained and improved Madison for thousands of citizen-users and more than seventy-five local, state, federal and international governments. We are honored by every one of those users, and by the hundreds of thousands of additional people who stopped by Madison to witness smarter, more equitable 21st Century democracy in action. It was a helluva run.
Madison was used in the drafting of “the first citizen-drafted legislation [in the history of the United States Congress] — The OPEN Act.” Cities used Madison for development of rules and regulations, including Syracuse’s body-worn camera policy and Chicago’s smart city data privacy rules. The Obama Administration used Madison to draft and publish the U.S. Federal Government’s public engagement playbook.
To quote the 80’s philosopher, Cinderella, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Within weeks of the OGF’s announcement about the shuttering of Madison, we at POPVOX received requests for similar functionality. Questions about collaborative drafting tools came in from across the country. The topic even came up in the questions when I had the privilege to testify in June before the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. It was clear that the functionality of Madison is something that policymakers and the public agree should exist.
The “SIDE” Framework: Modernizing the Lawmaking Process
This summer, I joined political scientists Claire Abernathy and Kevin Esterling in writing a paper under the aegis of the Tech and Innovation subcommittee of the American Political Science Association’s Committee on Congressional Reform. As a part of this work, we introduced the “SIDE Framework” for leveraging technology within the policymaking process, providing a mechanism for incorporating “Stakeholders, Individuals, Data, and Evidence.” (read summary of the report)
While that sounds nice in theory, how would it work in practice? Well, one committee is finding out, and they will be using Madison as a part of this process.
Natural Resources: A People-Centered Process for Environmental Justice Legislation
In early summer, we at POPVOX were contacted by the House Natural Resources majority. They were planning to draft major environmental justice legislation but were facing a significant challenge. One of the core principals of the environmental justice movement is that no one speaks for communities — there is no umbrella organization — the communities speak for themselves. Congressional committees, however normally deal with formal organizations or trade groups, especially those who have lobbyists on K Street.
Chairman Raúl Grijalva very clearly wanted to do things differently. The committee had already planned for a full-day event (the #EJconvening) on Capitol Hill, with in-person and livestreamed participation by people from all over the country. They wanted a way to receive input from organizations and individuals throughout the legislative drafting process. In my first meeting with staff, I explained the “SIDE” concept, honestly telling them, “this is an idea, not a ‘thing,’ but you can make it a thing!” They accepted the challenge and became the first committee to conduct a “SIDE” process.
1. A new “Request for Input”
As a first step, the committee majority shared a list of environmental justice principles in a new “request for input” (RFI) template on POPVOX. The new functionality allows organizations, individuals, and lawmakers to comment on proposals before they are introduced as bills.
Over several months, the committee collected comments from lawmakers, orthat were displayed publicly.
2. Collective Drafting with Madison
Next, the Natural Resources committee majority is taking the input they received through the RFI and incorporating it input into draft bill text. This draft will be the first text available for comment with the re-launched Madison toolbox on POPVOX. (It will go live as soon as draft language is ready.)
As with the original Madison platform, participants will be able to highlight individual words or phrases, post a comment, and view comments left by others. One difference from the original Madison platform is that participants will sign in to comment with their POPVOX login, and sponsors will be able to choose either “open” comments (allowing anyone to participate) or “limited” comments (requiring review and approval). So, for example, the Natural Resources committee could choose to limit comments to those who participated in Step 1 (the request for input).
3. Official introduction of the bill
Official introduction of the bill will follow, as the committee draws upon the input received throughout its SIDE process. As with all bills, it will appear on POPVOX and allow individuals, organizations, and lawmakers to choose to “support” or “oppose,” share a statement, and will send individuals’ comments to their lawmakers.
4. Introducing “SIDE” input into the record
The next optional step in this first SIDE process is for a member of the Natural Resources committee to introduce the input collected at every step of the SIDE process into the record. At the moment, that would need to be printed text (accompanied by a digital version) of the input, which would be processed as letters, testimony, or other forms of input become part of a bill’s Congressional record. In time, there may be a way for this input to be managed as a part of the bill’s legislative history as structured data that is more easily available to the public in the future.
While technology is an important part of this first example of a SIDE process in a committee, the most important element was a member of Congress and staffers willing to try something new. We are especially grateful to Chairman Grijalva and the Natural Resources committee staff for their commitment to engaging new voices and openness to new processes within the legislative process.
Lessons Learned (and notes for funders) regarding the re-launch of OGF’s Madison
Decisions made by the OpenGov Foundation as it wound down provided this opportunity to “stand on the shoulders of giants” and allow the work of earlier innovators to be available again in a fresh shell. A few observations:
- There was a market and interest for technology like Madison but it still was unable to continue operations. For funders who care about democratic infrastructure, how can valuable civic technology and creators be more sustainably supported?
- The open-sourcing of Madison allowed its groundbreaking work to be carried on even after the organization supporting it could no longer be sustained.
- In this case, Madison and POPVOX use the same underlying framework (PHP Laravel), which made updating and integrating much easier.
- The “platform” model of POPVOX and LegiDash creates an opportunity for new and existing tools to be made available to the public and to Congress in one place (eliminating the need to build new systems of verification or distribution).
- POPVOX was able to adjust its strategy for LegiDash (funded by Democracy Fund) based on needs it heard from Congress because DF has allowed it flexibility in technical decisions as a part of its grant. That kind of flexibility should be encouraged in civic philanthropy.
Updating and integrating into POPVOX was not an easy process, and would not have happened without the extensive efforts of POPVOX CTO, Bryan Dease.
Special thanks to: all OpenGov Foundation team members, especially founder, Seamus Kraft; UC Riverside professor, Kevin Esterling and his student, David Silva, for contributions to updating the Madison codebase; Democracy Fund, and all who contributed code and resources to Madison over the years.
Marci Harris is co-founder and CEO of POPVOX, an online platform for legislative information and civic engagement.
