Good points

Anglico — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 11:08:11 -0500

I find the website infuriating and very difficult to use for exploratory research. You have to already know most of what you're looking for, which pretty much defeats the purpose.

Another principle of online sunshine

ryanteaguebeckwith — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:45:40 -0500

The legislature's Web site is useful, but it's not user-friendly.

Consider legislation. You can find current bills by going to the home page, clicking House, then House Member List, then choosing the politician. Under the tab for Introduced Legislation, you can see all of the bills he or she sponsored or co-sponsored.

That's not quite as simple as the U.S. House, which has a Browse Bills by Sponsor pull-down menu on its home page, but it's not that bad.

But if you're looking for legislation from a previous session, you practically need someone to show you.

Go to the home page, click Legislation/Bills, select Bill Inquiry, choose the session you're looking for, click Sponsor on the left-hand side, click Add to Search Criteria, then click Search and you can see all of the bills for that session.

This violates a key principle of online sunshine: Think of the user.

If I'm interested in a state representative, why is it so hard for me to find legislation from previous sessions? Most legislators serve multiple terms, so presumably my interest will be based on their track record over a number of years.

Even worse, it violates another principle: Allow direct linking. The results of your search do not have a distinctive address to allow you to link to them.

newsobserver.com projects - Another principle of online sunshine - Comments

Good points

Another principle of online sunshine