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Source Control For Bills In Congress?
grepya writes "An article in Slate talks about the sneaky way a major change in the Patriot Act reauthorization bill was made by (possibly) a Congressional staffer without even his boss knowing about it. (The change increased the power of the Executive at the expense of the other two branches of government.) Now, I write software for a large and complex system containing millions of lines of code and I know that nobody could slip a single line of code into my project without my knowledge. This is because everything that goes into the build goes into a source control system, and email notification is generated to interested parties. This is for a body of work that affects perhaps a few hundred thousand people at most (our company and the combined population of all our customer organizations). Shouldn't the same process be applied to bills being debated in national legislatures that affect potentially hundreds of millions of people?"
... maybe the US Congress should read the bill before they pass it into law.
They want it to be this way by design.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Shouldn't the same process be applied to bills being debated in national legislatures that affect potentially hundreds of millions of people?
You mentioned getting email notifications about changes to the repository. You work with the code every day (or nearly every day). You see, these representatives in congress often times vote on bills which they have not even themselves read. They get the executive summary.
That is like the difference between you reading the code for a newly modified parser class and getting one of your underlings to brief you about the changes. You might spend an hour or more reading source code for a whole new class, and only two minutes getting briefed on it. You have to get them actually read the bills first.
Maybe we should require that all bills be read aloud in their entirety in an open session of congress?
Its all done with paper.
Maybe if some of the politicians passing laws about technology were a bit more tech savvy we wouldn't see any of this. Corruption by camouflage. I bet that even though the changes weren't supposed to be in there. They won't be amended. That would just be silly.
Make Congress Read the Bills. If they have to sit through a reading, maybe they'll cut down on the length and complexity of the laws. Here, apparently nobody knew what they were passing into law.
That would make "earmarks" and "pork" very difficult to insert in bills without leaving evidence of who did it. Congress would never allow such things to be audited.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
people shouldn't vote for these fools.
If we could pass laws/amendments to "sunset" EVERY existing law, then our esteemed representatives could spend their time deciding what laws are important enough to renew, rather than making up new malarkey.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
If we shouldn't have any method of auditing votes for who we put into office, why should we have a method for auditing the revisions made to the bills the people we vote into office author?
As if we can expect people who think global warming and evolution are "completely lacking any evidence" and who believe the internet is a series of tubes to actually understand what version tracking is, anyway!
Maybe if we just didn't elect corrupt morons and elected people who actually give a damn about freedom and this country.
Yeah - it's already required by law for public trading companies - it'scalled Sarbanes-Oxley. Maybe you've heard of it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
Such things already exist. I know someone who works for a company that makes version control software for documents. Their biggest customers are law firms. Nobody in a fortune 500 company wants some new hire paralegal modifying a clause in a billion dollar contract that it took months to negotiate. Congress people know the system could be made more fool proof but that would remove one more venue of plausible deniability they can use with their constituents. In Washinton crap just doesn't naturally roll down hill, it's designed to do so. Just as "Scooter"...
That's one of the most brilliant ideas I've heard in years.
However, to be successful, it requires that legislators actually *care* what they are voting on. Realistically, they must have something like source control already. Voters have to send them the message that ignorance is no excuse. It's not technology that's holding them back.
Voting on a bill without reading it, if it can be proved, should result in expulsion. If you sign a contract on behalf of your employer without reading it, you would almost certainly be fired on the spot. If you work at a bank but "didn't read" the part about the amount of money, chances are you would go to jail.
but i don't see anything there that indicates to me that their use of XML constitutes a document control system.
and another thing, as many are alluding to, a document control system won't prevent the compiling of assinine code. but what it will do is give you a forensics system. it makes people accountable in a way which is easily monitored. if bad legislation is enacted, you can always make amendments, and the dcs will make it easy to highlight exactly what was changed so that you may check it with a minimum of labor at the last minute before voting again. both legislators and congressional aides would have little excuse for their improper actions and inactions.
now for the bad news. the system relies on computers, and most of your legislators (senators at least, and probably most representatives) are still computer illiterate. their aides aren't, of course, but most of these people just want you to show them the piece of paper to sign, or the yes/no button to push, so that they can get back to their golfing/schmoozing.
and also, who controls the document control system? it would be necessary to have complete openness so that the googles of the world could record every change as it occured in real time. and for matters of national security, much of the publicly-accessible law would have to be redacted. perhaps something like a checksum for redacted material could be provided to at least ensure that unviewable text hasn't been tampered with.
Well, that would be a start, but I still don't think that it obviates the sort of version-control system that the GP is talking about.
... maybe it's because they're pushing half-baked, half-assed stuff out the door to the "users" (citizens)?
Just think: if you were working on a big software or documentation project, would you want your QA process to involve nothing but some guy standing up and reading the source code out loud? No way -- everyone would be asleep or bored to tears (well, unless it was Perl, then they'd probably be waiting for his face to just fall off).
There's a reason that change management is a big issue, in addition to peer review and transparency. In fact, they compliment each other. When you can produce a list of what each person has changed, you have a basis for what you want to concentrate your reviewing efforts on.
Now, change-management isn't a cureall -- anyone in software knows that just because something hasn't changed, doesn't mean it's not buggy. You could change something that causes something that hasn't been changed to break, or you could just discover a bug later; either of those things are possible with laws as well as software. Unless you also have some way of tracking dependencies within the bills (cross references, etc.), it might be possible to "break" the law (make it internally inconsistent) with a minor change somewhere else. So that would still require full readings.
Still, it's ridiculous that there isn't something in place right now, to prevent some staffer from just sneaking language into a bill that's a surefire pass, without anyone noticing until it gets printed up in the Congressional Record.
On the whole, maybe Congress needs to hire some QA people? I mean, it's obvious they have a "client satisfaction" (voters) issue, and that the "deliverables" (laws) really suck
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You talk like paralyzing government would be a bad thing. No one's wallet is safe while Congress is in session. And besides, I think some bills Congress passes can honestly be considered threats to national security....
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Just think: if you were working on a big software or documentation project, would you want your QA process to involve nothing but some guy standing up and reading the source code out loud? No way -- everyone would be asleep or bored to tears (well, unless it was Perl, then they'd probably be waiting for his face to just fall off).
Reading source code out loud is a whole different beast, and, in my opinion, not a good analogy. In source code, you have variables, case-sensitivity, quotes matter, etc. Reading the English language aloud is quite different.
Not to be an ass, but have you ever read a law in its original form?
I'd hardly call it english. Legalise really is its own form of code.
I think the GP's point stands, it'd be useful to have some sort of independent QA organization that would validate a bill against its intent.
Of course, then again, I think Pork should be illegal as well. Putting a $100 million into a defense spending bill for Senator Tube's state to build a bridge to an island of 50 people should get someone hung.
Or maybe we shouldn't invest so much power in governments that create laws so complex that nobody can read and understand them prior to voting on their passage? You know--power, money => government == whiskey, car keys => 12 year old boys
Isn't it ironic we're all expected to read and understand tax law (and the changes every year), yet law makers never bother to read the laws they pass?
On a sidenote, taxes are in addition to jobs. Laws ARE their job.
The end of Big Government used more than a campaign slogan. This problem occures because the government has it's hands in way to many things. Our Federal government is bloated to an all time high thanks to FDR, the feds should only worry about military/national security (this would include highways), international trade, and disputes between the states. Not pandering to companies for campaign money or minorities/unions for votes with the promise of tax breaks or other incentives.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
I find your ideas amusing, all the more so because you have no idea what you are talking about, Mr. Anonymous Troll. Which 'honorable' countries are you referring to?
Spain? Raped and plundered the new world, lost some wars, was never a big player again.
France? Revolted against its 'Honorable Feudal systems'- because they were stupid. Revolted agaisnt most of its other systems too. "The French are revolting" has been true at almost every point in History.
Britain? Got involved in world conquest, but probably one of the most honorable governments, because they had a system of checks and balances.
Germany? WWII demonstrated the honor of the Germans.
Japan? Japan's war crimes- the mass rapes and slaughter- all occured under a feudal system.
Italy? Not only do they have no honor, they needed the Germans to bail them out.
Russia? Communism is arguably a step up from their feudal system- which should tell you how bad feudal systems are.
You probably read to many fanatasy novels as a kid talking about the glory of knighthood and chivalry. Read some real history and you'll find that the feudal system was typically a nightmare for the average person, and certainly did nothing to discourage warfare or strife.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
This is the point of having a painfully slow congressional process. Anyone who has ever watched the House debate something on the floor via c-span (or committees online) knows that the time taken to decide anything (*especially to decide that something is worthy of a decision) is outrageous. And that is exactly what the framers had in mind when they established the rules for engaging in Congressional debates.
"Now Sen. Specter (R-PA) says his staff was responsible for inserting that US Attorney provision into the Patriot Act. He didn't know anything about it until Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) told him about it."
linky linky linky
Seriously. Their job is to consider bills and make decisions. We don't just pay them to vote on bills. If all we wanted was 535 people who voted on bills with no clue what's in them, we could take 535 homeless people off the streets of DC and pay them a fraction of the amount to do it. At least that would be putting some unemployed people to work. The idea of a "Congress" that makes those decisions for us in an intelligent way is fabulous. I just don't think we have that at the moment.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Do you think that part of the problem might be a set of rules that cause essentially every player in the game to behave the same way? The rules that Congress plays by to write and pass laws practically guarantee that type of outcome. Replacing the players and tossing new ones into the same game with the same rules and goals won't change anything, regardless of how great the newly elected members are.
The way to make a difference is to support people who actually try to change the rules. People who support something along the lines of the Read the Bills Act have my vote. People who fight against those changes don't have my vote. We simply need to make noise to encourage the scrapping of a system that can turn even those with the best intentions into the people we're complaining about.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"