Preserving State Government Digital Information:
Core Legislative XML Schema working group meetings

Overview of XML Schema Working Group

Members of the XML Schema Working Group include representatives from the Minnesota Office of Revisor of Statutes, XMaLpha Technologies, and Thomson Reuters. This working group was created out of discussions in a Minnesota Partners meeting, who felt that creating an XML schema would be beneficial.

The first meeting of the XML Working group was in June 2008, ongoing discussions and additional meetings have led to the creation of a draft metadata crosswalk and core legislative xml schema. Current plans are to test the XML schema and metadata set using selected Minnesota and California legislation.

June 6, 2008

Overview

The Minnesota Historical Society met with representatives from the Minnesota Office of Revisor of Statutes, XMaLpha Technologies, and Thomson Reuters to begin developing an XML schema for state legislative content.

The participants discussed the nature and scope of the proposed XML schema for this project's immediate partners, but they also gave consideration to possible long-term outcomes of a practicable schema.

Meeting Materials and Information

Agenda (PDF)
Meeting Participants (PDF)
Meeting Summary (PDF)
Presentation Slides (PDF) by Bob Horton, Minnesota Historical Society
Observations (PDF) by Minnesota Revisor's Office staff on their XML schema for bills

September 12, 2008

Overview

The Minnesota Historical Society met with representatives from the Minnesota Office of Revisor of Statutes and Thomson Reuters to discuss the idea of a standardized XML schema for legislative records.

The participants discussed that creating a standardized XML schema for bill drafting systems is problematic for a number of reasons. Instead, a more feasible approach would be an XML wrapper for legislative information exchange, which would contain a standard set of metadata elements as well as legislative data in original formats (e.g., Word, XML) and any other instances (e.g., PDF , HTML).

Meeting Materials and Information

October 29, 2008

Overview

The Minnesota Historical Society met with representatives from the Minnesota Office of Revisor of Statutes and Thomson Reuters to review the metadata crosswalk and determine which elements would be needed for legislative records. The group also reviewed a proposed XML core schema.

Following the meeting, the metadata crosswalk was updated for Minnesota legislative records and the XML core schema will be tested using legislative data from Minnesota and California.

Meeting Materials and Information

Agenda (PDF)
Meeting Summary (PDF)

March 6, 2009

Overview

The first draft of the XML wrapper schema was complete in January 2009. Workgroup members made comments and suggests which cumulated in another face-to-face meeting focused on how to account for schemas within the wrapped bills.

A schema registry was identified as a workable approach and an additional metadata tag, catalog ID, will be added to the wrapper to allow for schema references in such a registry in the future, though it was deemed unnecessary for the proof of concept. Please review the meeting summary for the complete discussion.

Meeting Materials and Information

Meeting Summary (PDF)

June 25, 2009

Overview

The Library of Congress hosted a conference of all NDIIPP partners in Washington DC on June 24-26. Team members participated and gave a presentation about the legislative metadata schema developed by the XML Working Group.