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Tools for Democracy Project Facing Deadline—By Camas Frank

Cal Poly SLO has a reputation for being among the best schools in California for engineering and science, but under the State University system, faculty and students haven’t gotten the kind of marathon research projects that go to Cal Berkley or UCLA.
That’s all changing with the Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy’s presence on campus. The Institute is housed in the Warren J. Baker Center for Science and Mathematics but the public policy think-tank isn’t actually part of the school. They’re not a typical research foundation either and they’re not about publishing white papers on a predictable basis.
Instead, they’ve been coming up with hands-on solutions to specific issues. And for 2015, they’ve got major development milestones lined up for all of their projects, which include technology in education, energy sustainability for California and an ambitious open government project.
Cal Poly computer science professor, Foaad Khosmood, is working on his biggest project so far at the university, as one of two institute senior research fellows. It’s the Digital Democracy – fellows. It’s the Digital Democracy – Open Government Program — that’s had him, along with three other faculty and 20 master’s degree students, working through the academic break to have a sophisticated language recognition and user interface (Online Transparency Platform) up and running in time for the next legislative session in Sacramento.
The platform is designed to convert existing video files of State Legislature hearings, plus all future ones, into “accurate and searchable transcripts that are freely available to the public.” It’s more than a simple computerized stenographer — the software is designed to be “context sensitive,” and offer information on who’s talking at the moment, what they’re talking about, voting records in the chamber.
The Institute’s founder, former State Senator Sam Blakeslee noted the program will help the public recognize the paid professional witnesses that show up week-to-week without the general public being any the wiser.
The platform has been in beta testing as a concept for some 200 current and former staffers, members of the lobbying industry, journalists and non-profit executives to collect feedback on what features work, and what needs work.
However, the heat is now on with a $1.2 million grant propelling the program towards an even tighter delivery deadline.
The money came from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation specifically for the Digital Democracy platform, with the caveat that they get it up and running for the public by spring of 2015.
Indeed, Blakeslee said, there was a sense of urgency when they went looking for funding; more that donors wanted to see the product out already than wondering if it was useful.
Kelli Rhee, vice president of venture development at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation explained their donation in a press statement, “State and local issues have become increasingly significant in today’s gridlocked Federal Government. Digital Democracy provides the tools and information needed to search and follow relevant statehouse legislation, allowing the public to better understand how state policy decisions are being made.”
Statistics released by Cal Poly in announcing the grant estimated that “California’s 120 full-time lawmakers introduce an average of 5,000 bills each legislative session.”
While all of the debates and information in those bills, along with the registered client lists of lobbyists and the names and affiliations of everyone speaking on record has theoretically been public information, Khosmood and the team are the first people ever tasked with actually placing the information in one unified format.
It speaks volumes about the disorganization of the current record keeping and just how hard it is for the public to know what’s going on that they found it easier to work in an emerging field of artificial intelligence.
“This isn’t Siri or Google,” he explained. “It’s more difficult than asking a computer to understand a core set of common commands,” adding that their innovation is coming from a dedicated group of individuals rather than crowd sourced content and number-crunching. “We’re creating multi-disciplinary teams and giving them real world experience to create a solution. The students here are doing actual work through the quarter that can be built on.”
As the first of three core projects to come all the way to having a finish date in sight, the Online Transparency Platform is a challenge and a test for the Institute as well.
“What’s next is delivery,” Blakeslee said. “We’re going to be stretched. This isn’t easy work. The timetable has been compressed with the donation.”
“We actually have to be ready by February,” Khosmood added. “The data collection has to start this year for the next legislative session, so if we missed that we’d be in real trouble.”

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