Library of Congress Announces Legislative Data Challenge Winners

Nore: For More Info About the Challenges See Our Post From September 10, 2013.
From LC:

The Library of Congress today announced the winners of two legislative data challenges conducted using the Challenge.gov platform. The challenges, conducted at the request of the U.S. House of Representatives, will advance the exchange of legislative information worldwide.
Jim Mangiafico is the winner of the “Markup of U.S. Legislation in Akoma Ntoso” challenge. Mangiafico and Garrett Schure won first and second place, respectively, in the “Legislative XML Data Mapping” challenge.
“Markup of U.S. Legislation in Akoma Ntoso” invited competitors to apply the Akoma Ntoso schema to the text of four U.S. federal bills.
Akoma Ntoso is a framework used in many other countries around the world to annotate and format electronic versions of parliamentary, legislative and judiciary documents.
Mangiafico was awarded first place and a $5,000 prize for his submission, which explained the practical decisions and difficulties required to apply the Akoma Ntoso schema to U.S. bill text. Mangiafico, who earned a doctorate degree from Vanderbilt University and a J.D. degree from the University of Michigan Law School, is an attorney in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.
“Legislative XML Data Mapping” invited competitors to map the Akoma Ntoso schema to established U.S. and United Kingdom legislative markup languages to improve Akoma Ntoso’s support of U.S. and U.K. legislative data.
Mangiafico’s submission earned first place and a $10,000 prize. Schure’s submission garnered second place and a $5,000 prize. Both submissions accomplished the mapping using open source software, which resulted in foundational options that can be learned from and expanded on by others.
The Library put together a panel of judges with expertise in all aspects of the challenge elements – U.S. legislation XML standards, U.K. legislation XML standards and the Akoma Ntoso legal schema. The Library is participating in standards bodies tasked with examining the potential for an international standard, and will apply information obtained through these challenges to ensure U.S. federal legislative information can be more broadly accessed and analyzed alongside legislative documents created elsewhere.
Submissions for both challenges, including those of the winners, can be viewed on the Challenge.gov website at akoma-ntoso-markup.challengepost.com and legislative-data-mapping.challengepost.com.

See Also: Akoma Ntoso Converter (Chrome Extension)

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