Digital Government

Automatic Bill Recommendation for Statehouse Journalists

foaad — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 19:49:18 +0000

Automatic Bill Recommendation for Statehouse Journalists

foaad Wed, 09/06/2023 - 12:49

Authorship

Michelle Perkonigg and Foaad Khosmood

Publication

Electronic Government

Conference

Sunday, August 20, 2023 - 12:00

Tags

EGOV 2023 Proceedings

Abstract

AI4Reporters is a project designed to produce automated electronic tip sheets for news reporters covering the statehouses (state level legislatures) in the United States. The project aims to capture the most important information that occurred in a bill discussion to allow reporters to quickly decide if they want to pursue a story on the subject. In this paper, we present, discuss and evaluate a module for the tip sheets that is designed to recommend additional bills to investigate for the reporter that receives the tip sheet.

Perkonigg_Electronic_Government_2023.pdf

Feature Engineering for US State Legislative Hearings: Stance, Affiliation, Engagement and Absentees

foaad — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 00:32:22 +0000

Feature Engineering for US State Legislative Hearings: Stance, Affiliation, Engagement and Absentees foaad Sat, 07/29/2023 - 17:32

Authorship

Joshua Grace and Foaad Khosmood

Publication

Digital Humanities 2023

Conference

Location

Graz, Austria

Saturday, July 1, 2023 - 12:00

Tags

DH 2023 Paper

arXiv preprint version (2021)

DH 2023 Proceedings

Abstract

In US State government legislatures, most activity occurs in committees made of lawmakers discussing bills. This paper presents systems to extract legislators' engagement and absence during committee meetings and the stance and affiliation of non-lawmakers making public comments. We propose a system to track the affiliation of organizations in public comments and whether the organizational representative supports or opposes the bill.

Government Transparency at The State Level and the Challenge for Democracy

foaad — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 00:04:00 +0000

Government Transparency at The State Level and the Challenge for Democracy

foaad Sat, 07/29/2023 - 17:04

Authorship

Foaad Khosmood

Publication

Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies Conference

Poster or Panel Discussion

Location

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Wednesday, March 29, 2023 - 12:00

Tags

Conference Agenda

RMCLAS website

Abstract

Government transparency challenges exist in many forms but at the level of US State legislatures, but they are particularly egregious as public hearings are not documented in text. No official written record of public legislative meetings exists in any state legislature in America. Although a number of states have close captioned videos, these are not accurate or searchable. They are only in English. There is also no identification of speakers, bills, votes, locations, committees, etc.

Making California Legislative Process Transparent

foaad — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 03:35:59 +0000

Making California Legislative Process Transparent foaad Sun, 08/14/2022 - 20:35

Authorship

Foaad Khosmood, Hisham Assal, Johanna Snyder, Franz Kurfess

Publication

Cal Poly Position Paper

Non refereed paper

Location

San Luis Obispo, California

Monday, July 15, 2013 - 12:00

Tags

Abstract

This White Paper describes the research and design of the software system called Digital Democracy. The Digital Democracy system will provide its users: individuals with interest in public policy, journalists and media organizations, public interest and government watchdog groups, and lawmakers with direct access to videos and transcripts of State Legislative Committee hearings, as well as analytical tools enabling users of the system to conduct in-depth research of public policy issues and the attitudes of state legislators towards them.

DigitalDemocracyWhitePaper.pdf

Gaining efficiency in human assisted transcription and speech annotation in legislative proceedings

foaad — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 01:47:08 +0000

Gaining efficiency in human assisted transcription and speech annotation in legislative proceedings

foaad Sun, 08/14/2022 - 18:47

Authorship

Thorsten Ruprechter, Foaad Khosmood, Toshihiro Kuboi, Alex Dekhtyar and Christian Gütl

Publication

Proceedings of the 19th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research: Governance in the Data Age

Poster or Panel Discussion

Location

Delft, Netherlands

Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - 12:00

Tags

ACM DL

Abstract

We present a study using the Digital Democracy transcription tool. Human transcribers work to up-level and annotate California state legislative proceedings using the tool. Four phases of UI and functionality improvements are introduced and for each phase, the resulting change in efficiency is measured and presented.

Gaining efficiency Poster-DGO 2018.pdf

Learning alignments from legislative discourse

foaad — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 01:37:02 +0000

Learning alignments from legislative discourse

foaad Sun, 08/14/2022 - 18:37

Authorship

Daniel Kauffman, Foaad Khosmood, Toshihiro Kuboi and Alex Dekhtyar

Publication

Proceedings of the 19th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research: Governance in the Data Age

Poster or Panel Discussion

Location

Delft, Netherlands

Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - 12:00

Tags

ACM DL

Abstract

In this work, we seek to quantify the extent to which a legislator's spoken language indicates their degree of alignment toward an organization that has a taken a documented position on some legislation. To perform this study, we use a corpus of bill discussion transcripts provided by Digital Democracy1. We then apply proven learning methods in the field of natural language processing to predict alignment scores between each member of the California state legislature and a select set of state-recognized organizations.

Kauffman_Alignments_DGO2018.pdf

kauffman-dgo-poster.pdf

3D visualization of legislative relationships

foaad — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 01:24:31 +0000

3D visualization of legislative relationships

foaad Sun, 08/14/2022 - 18:24

Authorship

Alexander Ehm, Gudrun Socher and Foaad Khosmood

Publication

Proceedings of the 19th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research: Governance in the Data Age

Poster or Panel Discussion

Location

Delft, Netherlands

Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - 12:00

Tags

ACM DL

Abstract

Government relationships can be complex and difficult to understand. The relationships between members of a legislature, bills, votes and lobbyists who promote various causes are important to understand in representative democracies, but difficult to retrieve using current methods. In this paper, we propose a 3D visualization system to explore such legislative relationships for users. We use real data from California state legislature obtained from the Digital Democracy project.

Visualization Poster DGO 2018.pdf

Exploring Reporter-Desired Features for an AI-Generated Legislative News Tip Sheet

foaad — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 00:47:21 +0000

Exploring Reporter-Desired Features for an AI-Generated Legislative News Tip Sheet foaad Sun, 08/14/2022 - 17:47

Authorship

Patrick Howe, Christine Robertson, Lindsay Grace and Foaad Khosmood

Publication

International Society of Online Journalists Journal Special Issue Theme: AI and the News

Journal

Friday, April 1, 2022 - 12:00

Tags

ISOJ

Abstract

This research concerns the perceived need for and benefits of an algorithmically generated, personalizable tip sheet that could be used by journalists to improve and expand coverage of state legislatures. This study engaged in two research projects to understand if working journalists could make good use of such a tool and, if so, what features and functionalities they would most value within it. This study also explored journalists’ perceptions of the role of such tools in their newswork.

Deconstructing Human Assisted Video Transcription and Annotation for Legislative Proceedings

foaad — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 00:40:12 +0000

Deconstructing Human Assisted Video Transcription and Annotation for Legislative Proceedings foaad Sun, 08/14/2022 - 17:40

Authorship

Thorsten Ruprechter, Foaad Khosmood and Christian Gütl

Publication

Journal of Digital Government: Research and Practice

Journal

Wednesday, November 18, 2020 - 12:00

Tags

ACM DL

Abstract

Legislative proceedings present a rich source of multidimensional information that is crucial to citizens and journalists in a democratic system. At present, no fully automated solution exists that is capable of capturing all the necessary information during such proceedings. Even if professional-quality automated transcriptions existed, other tasks such as speaker or rhetorical position identifications are not fully automatable. This work focuses on improving and evaluating the transcription software used by the Digital Democracy initiative, named Transcription Tool.

Automatic News Article Generation from Legislative Proceedings: A Phenom-based Approach

foaad — Sun, 14 Aug 2022 20:28:57 +0000

Automatic News Article Generation from Legislative Proceedings: A Phenom-based Approach foaad Sun, 08/14/2022 - 13:28

Authorship

Anastasia Klimashevskaia, Richa Gadgil, Thomas Gerrity, Foaad Khosmood and Christian Gütl

Publication

9th International Conference on Statistical Language and Speech Processing (SLSP-21)

Conference

Location

Cardiff, UK

Monday, November 1, 2021 - 12:00

Tags

Springer Link

Abstract

Algorithmic journalism refers to automatic AI-constructed news stories. There have been successful commercial implementations for news stories in sports, weather, financial reporting and similar domains with highly structured, well defined tabular data sources. Other domains such as local reporting have not seen adoption of algorithmic journalism, and thus no automated reporting systems are available in these categories which can have important implications for the industry.

Automatic News Article Generation from Legislative.pdf