Links with parentheticals to the ORS

I leveraged our ORS database to enhance the OARs:

To show this info about the ORS, we need to query its database for the statute titles, and then insert them into the OAR pages. We'll be rolling out more of these improvements as we go, building on the data we're collecting.

Improved fraction typography

A small change, but I love these creating little features that improve the reading experience. Here's Rule 603-022-0305, Egg Quality Grade Standards:

Before:

After:

Give us feedback

We ramped up our feedback forum: submit ideas and vote on others.

Sharp readers (and pedants) may say, "But there is no such thing as the '2020 ORS'!" And in a sense — the authoritative sense to be sure — that's correct. For these people, we properly cite and link to the 2019 ORS, e.g.:

But we're trying something new: Now that the Oregon legislature has concluded its curiously short session, we've added our customary inline annotation with a link to the bill passed, i.e.,:

The new feature is labelling this collection the ORS for 2020, and making clear that our site is now up-to-date through 2021. We think this will help the 95% of our visitors who simply want to be sure they're reading the current law.

What do you think? Is this an improvement?

as well as every statute section page, right below the link to the original source document:

Now the Codes join the Nevada Revised Statutes and Oregon Administrative Rules in always showing content which was refreshed within the past 24 hours.

Please consider pitching in $5 or $10 per month to support public service and enable me to me spend more time on development. This is currently a labor of love which I work on nights and weekends. Thank you!

This new public service is the result of many late nights and weekend work. (This is still a part-time labor of love!) I want to get it in front of everyone to help guide the design and make it useful. I'm focussing on what kinds of headings an "navigational sign-posts" should be shown.

What's Finished - Highlights

• Always up-to-date. All content is checked and refreshed nightly. Currency information is displayed with a Last accessed note.
• Re-outlining. The site uses the natural structure of the text to display it visually as an outline.
• Links to every source. Each page links back to the original rule. "Trust but Verify".
• Raw data freely available. A new public service, I've made the nightly parse results available for download. If you have a programmer or data science student in your team, they'll know what to do with a GitHub link.

What's Coming Next

• Links to ORS and other authority / implementing laws.
• Links from relevant ORS sections back to the Rules.
• Display of each Rules' history.

Please consider pitching in $5 or $10 per month to support my work and public service. Thank you!

A short note to let you know that after a weekend of work, I've updated the oregonlaws.org ORS to show the 2018 session laws. E.g.:

The next update will come in 2020, when the state publishes the 2019 ORS. In the meantime, I'm moving the ORS to the new nightly update system. This is the new platform which is providing always-current Oregon Administrative Rules (OARs).

We've expanded our public service: All visitors from these domains now have ad-free browsing and other new features as we roll them out.

.edu .gov .mil .org .us

Some organizations don't follow the usual naming schemes, such as cityofsalem.net and austin.com. So we've added special configurations for them. But we've likely missed some, so send us an email if you believe you should be upgraded but aren't.

• We significantly reduced the page "weight" in Kilobytes;
• simplified and removed redundant Javascript;
• doubled the server's RAM and CPU power, and
• customized the code to gracefully handle unique content sections.

A: Two things are a need to know the law, and a desire to discuss it.

So I conclude that the ability to find, read, and share the law online is a good thing. It might even be the beginning of a more transparent and democratic era. These screenshots show people participating in exactly this way, who were helped out by this website. (Awesome!)

This all might look easy, e.g., "So just make a website, and people can link to it ... what's the big deal?" In reality, though, it's difficult to pull off, and so the status quo is, it doesn't happen.

Just look around the web: most pages don't have permalinks ("Persistent URLs", "PURLs") that people can use. And often, even if a web page does have a URL that seems good for linking, there are other show-stoppers: it may not stay working. Or if it does stay working, then it may not contain the same content in a few months' time.

Some great people have taken the story further, writing lighthearted web pages (Tim Berners-Lee), and creating videos (Citability.org).

The U.S. Postal Service denied our FOIA request for a list of current ZIP Codes, because the information is "proprietary business information" and its release would not be considered a "good business practice".

This followed their refusal to license us their online ZIP Code API because we were not planning on using it for USPS shipping. They suggested that we purchase a $3,000

"data product" containing the information. This offering, however, has so many technical and licensing hurdles that it's essentially unusable.

Our Hunt for ZIP Codes Started When We Became Interested in Mapping Restaurant Health Inspections

We create apps which increase access to laws and government info. This is mostly a labor of love, earning enough money to cover the costs of running the Internet servers.

There isn't yet an app or website for easily browsing restaurant health inspections in Multnomah County, Oregon. The County does have a web app, but it has a lot of issues, and won't be upgraded until late next year.

Critically, while sorting through the County's data for each restaurant, we found that the city is missing, although the ZIP Code is there. And so to place these on a map we needed a current list of ZIP Codes and corresponding city names.

Our search for this simple information culminated in this rejected FOIA request to the U.S. Postal Service. This is because our "open source" open-government use of the data is not an acceptable reason to either 1) provide us online access to the USPS API, or 2) send us a current list of ZIP Codes and cities.