Why is it so hard to find bills online?

One of the major "online sunshine" headaches for Dome — as well as state political bloggers — is the difficult of finding legislation on the state Web site.

For example, this morning we linked to a story about how water bills became private in 2001. We wanted to add a link to the bill that made them private.

The N.C. Legislature Web site allows you to search for old legislation by year and keyword, but that can be a frustrating and time-consuming process.

Type in "utilities" for the 2001 session and you get 135 bills, arranged in no apparent order. Narrow it down to ratified bills and you still have 59. The bill appears to be this one, but it would have been a lot easier to find by searching for the sponsor — an option that is not available for older bills.

But don't just take our word for it. Progressive blogger James Protzman says he has the same problem.

"It's important to draw a distinction between simply having information available and having information that's understandable and easy to use," he writes. 

Welcome to Sunshine Week!

All this week, state newspapers will be looking at public records and open government here in North Carolina, beginning with interviews with statewide candidates in the Sunday paper.

Here at Under the Dome, we'll also be looking more closely at what we call "online sunshine" — the use of the Internet by state government to make records available.

We've already discussed some principles of online government: Require government to post records online. Think of the user. Put similar information in the same place. Allow direct linking. Give users breadcrumbs. And a whole list of other ideas:

* Broadcasting the legislature on the Web. This idea has been endorsed by Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Graham, the state NAACP and state Sen. Robert Pittenger, among others. Read more here, here, here, here, here and here.

* Requiring local government to post public records online. The Mecklenburg County Board of Elections is considering putting campaign finance reports on the Web. That would help when local officials — such as the mayor of Charlotte — decide to run for statewide office.

* Allowing anyone to search state contracts worth more than $10,000 and state budget information on the Internet. That would help regular citizens, bloggers and journalists alike to uncover overly generous contracts, excessive spending and other problems.

* Post financial disclosure forms submitted by legislators, elected officials and appointees to the N.C. Ethics Commission online. The forms are currently only available to people who have the time and money to get them in Raleigh.

Robert Pittenger wants to Webcast the legislature.

The Republican candidate for lieutenant governor told Dome that he thinks the General Assembly should be broadcast on the Internet.

A state senator since 2002, he argued that would improve transparency and spur the Democratic leadership to open up the floor to votes on issues such as tax policy, immigration and gay marriage.

"Wouldn't it be great if the public could see the iron-fisted manner in which control of the debate is limited?" he said. "I don't think you'd see the same stronghandedness from the Democratic leadership. I think they would have an epiphany."

Pittenger said that he and state Sen. Eddie Goodall have often talked about televising the legislature. Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Graham and the state NAACP have also called for legislative webcams.

A Virginia nonprofit is also trying the idea.

Online sunshine isn't just for state government.

It's tempting for a local official to think that keeping public records in a three-ring binder in a downtown office building is good enough. After all, why would anyone in another city want to see the mayor's campaign finance records?

Except when the mayor's running for governor.

Dome — and many other reporters, bloggers and citizens — is curious about where Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory has raised his money in the last year. (Especially since he won't have to file a campaign finance report for his gubernatorial run for a while yet.)

But those records are at the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections in Charlotte.

As Jim Morrill has noted, the county's elections director is considering putting the records online to make it a "24-7 public records office."

Unfortunately, that would only be for records going forward.

What would a YouTube legislature look like?

Virginia is about to find out. Using a $2,500 grant from the Sunlight Foundation, the nonprofit Richmond Sunlight Web site will purchase the closed-circuit video of an entire legislative session.

The video will then be converted to QuickTime, posted on the online video-sharing site YouTube on a daily basis and integrated into the nonprofit's Web site. 

Once on YouTube, the videos will be available for embedding on any blog or Web site anywhere with minimal effort—opening the doors to the legislature 24/7 from now until forever.

In recent weeks, both Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Graham and the state NAACP have called for legislative Webcams. 

The Virginia experiment shows that's a less expensive proposition than you might think.

Earlier this week, 810,000 people watched Barack Obama's response to the State of the Union.

Not in person. Not on television. On YouTube.

Along with that tiresome Obama Girl, the online, on-demand video service has created a new wrinkle in the world of politics: Speeches, when you want them.

C-SPAN televises a lot of political events, but it's not exactly appointment television. While you may see a great speech on the channel, odds are when you tune in they're rebroadcasting the fifth meeting of the subcommittee investigating long-term interest rates.

But YouTube allows time-shifting. Once something is up, you can watch it when you want. Sometimes an older item that has taken on new relevance makes its way into the most-watched. (C-SPAN has some online video, but it's a chore to use.)

With Bill Graham and the NAACP calling for legislative webcams, this points to another principle of online sunshine: Make it available 24/7.

Live-streaming of the legislature isn't enough, since sitting at your computer to watch a 2 p.m. session is just as impractical as seeing it live for most working people.

The State Board of Elections does a good job posting the reports from political action committees and candidates on its Web site. But its design is a headache. 

You can search for reports here, but you have to know the campaign's name. Type in "Robert Orr" or "Bob Orr" and you get nothing, since his campaign is listed as "Orr 2008." Want to look up the CAPA-PAC? You'd better know that stands for Carolina Asphalt Pavement Association, or you won't find it.

One nice thing: The SBOE allows you to download the reports as a database (CSV) or an image (PDF). That's the best of both worlds: Usability for searching the files, but transparency for those who want to double-check what the candidate turned in.

(Topic for discussion: Should candidates still be allowed to turn in handwritten reports?)

Another problem: The data doesn't always add up. 

Consider Republican gubernatorial candidate Fred Smith's report: The summary sheet lists $661,807 in contributions from individuals and $29,115 from PACs. But it then gives the total as $662,099.

That's an obvious typo—someone added $291.15 instead of $29,115. But why should it be done manually at all? If row 8 is always the total of rows 5, 6 and 7, why not add them automatically?

The site allows you to link to pages of campaign contributions, though not to individual entries. But as pointed out here, it does not give you a trackback to verify what you're looking at or see other data from the same report.

That leads to our next principle: Give users breadcrumbs. Always include links to related pages or the Web site's home page to allow users who follow a link to see where they are.

Max Borders says government has no incentive to be transparent.

In a post on Red Clay Citizen, the libertarian blogger writes that government, unlike the private sector, does not benefit from making life simpler for users.

"Unlike Google—which profits from its usability—the government has only a minimal incentive to comply. If there is no statutory directive to be transparent or user-friendly, then they have even fewer incentives," he writes.

(Dome would argue that government actually has a disincentive, since transparency exposes problems.)

Here are a few of his ideas to promote transparency:

* Start a wiki-based open-source platform for state government.

* Contract with a tech company to unify state government Web sites.

* Form a nonprofit to promote transparency. 

* Use college students as volunteers to collaborate on software.

* Hold a contest for the best ways to make government more open.

* Donate to Civitas' Citizen Legislature project. 

Dome doesn't actually have $2,000 to promote a contest, but we do have some swag. So here's the deal: The best idea for a cheap, easy and effective improvement to a state government Web site gets you a free N&O hat. Post your ideas below. 

State government does not have one Web site—it has hundreds.

Each department and division of state government runs its own site based on its own responsibilities, but this creates a huge problem for users.

Consider a newly registered voter. You've misplaced your registration card, but you'd like to check up on your representation in the legislature.

Let's see. You could go to your local Board of Elections and check. Who runs that again? The county? Hopefully you know that, but you could be forgiven for forgetting.

You could go to the State Board of Elections Web site and search its voter database. Another click and you can see your voting districts as well.

Now, then, who represents the 17th House District and the 8th Senate District? It doesn't say.

You have to go to the legislature's Web site for that and search again. Make sure you open a new window in your browser, though, since you may forget the district numbers by the time you click on Representation, click on Representation again, select a House District and hit go, then repeat the process for the Senate.

Why are these two functions—looking up your voter registration and finding out your representation—on two completely different sites? Because they're run by different departments.

Of the same state government.

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.