Are you having trouble accessing old bills on the Legislature's website? I've got the fix, straight from Pierre.
Since the Legislative Research Council's revamp of the Legislature's website, I've been having a little trouble linking to bills from previous Legislative sessions. For instance, this morning I wrote about Senate Bill 171, the animal cruelty bill, from the 2013 session. From the LRC's home page, I click on Legislative Session>>2013, then on Bills, then scroll down and click on SB 171. Up comes 2013 SB 171's main page, with its sponsors, purpose, actions, and links to text and PDF versions. Those links all work.
But check out the URL that appears in the browser address bar when I view the main page for 2013 SB 171:
Compare that to the URL that appears when I access a bill from the current, 2014, session, like this year's Senate Bill 6:
See the similarity... and the problem? The only difference between the URL displayed for a 2013 bill and a 2014 bill is the bill number at the end. When I copy the URL for the 2013 bill and add it as a hyperlink in a blog post or share it in an e-mail, the person who clicks on that shared hyperlink will get the current 2014 version of SB 171, which has not yet been filed but which when filed will be an entirely different bill. The same happens if I try to share the link for 2012's House Bill 1234 (Gov. Daugaard's referred and defeated school reform bill) or 2010's HCR 1009 (Don Kopp's infamous climate-astrology resolution).
The Legislative Research Council took a moment this morning to explain the problem and help me fix it. The new website accesses sessions back to 2008 through a new query system. When you click on the 2013 session, the system stores "2013" as a variable and assumes your subsequent queries apply to that session. If you leave the LRC website and come back later, or if you pass the URL on to someone who hasn't been on the LRC website today, the system defaults to interpreting any bill URL as a request for the bill from the current session.
Here's how to fix that problem: if you have a URL for a bill from a previous session and want to share the link, add a session variable to the end of the URL:
- http://legis.sd.gov/Legislative_Session/
Bills/Bill.aspx?Bill=171&Session=2013 - http://legis.sd.gov/Legislative_Session/
Bills/Bill.aspx?Bill=1234&Session=2012 - http://legis.sd.gov/Legislative_Session/
Bills/Bill.aspx?Bill=HCR1009&Session=2010
LRC indicated that they will look for a way to remove this problem to make it easier for citizens to share links to bills. How's that for responsive government?
The first thing required to make something work is to understand the basic problem. We have a state government designed to hide anything and everything from public view. A requirement for open government is easy access to the information necessary for citizen participation. If the people who own the government cannot access the data, the people in temporary charge of the system own the system and all it holds. We do not have system managers directing their designers to make the processes ergonomically open.
If you design a system to hide past actions, complicate everything possible. You have found another example of the hide everything mentality.
On last thing I notice is a systemic problem related to using one of the worst programming languages to manage the data. The state appears to be using vb.net. I won't go into details here but if you want to hide something and make it complicated to boot, use vb.net and ms-sql.
Cory,i am a totally illiterate hillbilly on the computer so they have got me locked out already!!!!!! I have tried several times to pull up who voted for what and when in the past and recently, but always run in to a road block!!!!!!!
while i have your attention could i bother you to direct me to some place or some one where i could get the info on the cement plant sale? Where the money went, what was it to be used for,where it is now etc.. Don't send me the name of the district 26 senator!!!! He is a total DUD!!!!!
Testor, you sound a little tinfoily there. This is a simple disconnect between designer and programmer. I would say the programmer is more to blame since they are using session variables to deliver content and not having them mutually exclusive from the url. If info from prior user selections is needed to display some content, then you should not allow organic traffic to reach that page unless you are showing the default values you have selected. I'm sure if the year is not in a cookie or session variable, they are simply defaulting to the current year but not displaying that correctly. I highly, highly doubt this is some attempt to hide information on purpose. It is just shitty architecture.
And I have no idea where you are even going with this comment: "I won't go into details here but if you want to hide something and make it complicated to boot, use vb.net and ms-sql."
I would love to hear those details.
I'm surprised an old hack like myself wandered through it and the maestro CH hit the log jam. That said, I was disappointed the site was down so much of the time late in the year when I wanted contact with the legis. For someone to tell me a site needs to be incapacitated for new pages or design to come is unbelievable.
Speaking of such oddities, do you need a few more gig of ram and a new processor Cory?
Wow, between Testor15 and rollin potter, you make me feel like I am not as dumb as I used to think I was. You hit the nail on the head on so much of what is wrong with the LRC and our State government in general. When Cory was asking for suggestions for bills, I said move the Capitol out of Pierre and to somewhere else in the State. I was not kidding. It drives me nuts that if a citizen wants to participate, they have to use this outmoded piece of crap, which is like a maze, to do so or drive a couple of hundred miles in the dregs of winter to go before a committee and then be ignored on top of it all. Our democracy at the State and Federal level is broken and sad to say, I don't see an easy fix.
DB, just look at how all the SD 'open government' websites work. These websites are meant to be cumbersome / clumsy, without the user's ability to receive full answers to the questions asked.
This is not tinfoily. There is a consistent problem with many organizations, businesses and governments who do not wish to be audited.
Responsive government would have been to not break what was not broken. Explaining a bunch of jibberish that an old man like me can't follow is not responsive government. Responsive government would be to fix it. How about explain why they broke it in the first place. And why is it so much slower now? Between this LORZ website and Madville it is like the whole internet has become slow as a week in jail.
"These websites are meant to be cumbersome / clumsy, without the user's ability to receive full answers to the questions asked."
So what does that have to do with the programming language, specifically vb.net and ms-sql?.......Nothing.
As I said before, clumsy and cumbersome is more or less the result of crappy programmers and designers. It really doesn't matter what language they are using. Now, whether or not that was their intentions.....I highly doubt it but you can go ahead and think that.
(Les, grudz, I noticed load times here have slowed down this week. Not sure what's up! Suggestions?)
I actually haven't found the LRC website that cumbersome. There are certainly features I'd like to add (#1: more comprehensive, searchable, sortable voting records), but I like the simple, straightforward design of the session bill lists.
And it appears that LRC has already fixed the link problem mentioned above. Click on a bill, and the session-year variable appears in the URL. Problem solved! Whoo-hoo!
Where do you host yr site Cory? Web itself doesn't appear bloated. Traffic man, gazzoooom?
.
Though I found my way through the lrc site, if I had to make my living as in my own world, dependent on the web, I'd have cleaned house long ago on those in charge of easy access. Everyone from grandpa to junior expects easy access and comprehension from our webs. I could could have done better and have with no education in that field.
We are a bunch of volunteers and starting a new scheme in our community.
Your website offered us with helpful info to work on.
You've performed an impressive job and our whole community might be grateful
to you.