Drafting Legislation In XML: Has Pork Barrel Politics Met Its Match?

The Office of the Legislative Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives has adopted XML as a data standard for the exchange of legislative documents. Not only will authoring legislation in XML reduce errors, improve productivity, and speed up an overly-bureaucratic process, it may also make it increasingly difficult for politicians to sneak pork barrel provisions into legislation at the last minute. The Homeland Security Act fiasco is an excellent illustration of the problem. Document Type Definitions, Data Dictionaries, Element Descriptions and Content Models are available from the United States Congress XML website.