March 2021 Update

 Posted on March 29, 2021  |  James Turk

The first 3 months of 2021 have flown by, which means it is time for our quarterly update! As mentioned in the end-of-2020 update the big focus this year will be on data improvements across the board. We also have some exciting developments for the Open States community as we strive to make the project more accessible to developers and potential contributors. Data Updates New Sessions The focus of the first quarter tends to be on new session updates. [Read More]

Open States Joins Civic Eagle

 Posted on February 4, 2021  |  James Turk

This post and a companion also appear on the Civic Eagle blog: Open States Joins Civic Eagle Civic Eagle Acquires Open States and Invests in the Future of Civic Data The project that’s become Open States began back in 2009 while I was an employee at Sunlight Foundation. There was great enthusiasm for civic tech at this time, but not much direction for developers interested in getting involved. How could we rally the community and concentrate this surge of energy toward places where it had the best chance to create meaningful change? [Read More]

December 2020 Update

 Posted on December 29, 2020  |  James Turk

In 2020 we put out our most ambitious roadmap in a long time. It included launching bill tracking, bulk data, and API improvements. Thanks to the funding we received, we launched all of the major features we had planned, and then some. We also wound up putting out some surprises we hadn’t planned on, like our COVID-19 legislation tracking, new municipal data, and our new shiny API v3, which is already seeing great adoption! [Read More]

Open States API v3 & 2021 Plans

 Posted on November 25, 2020  |  James Turk

API v3 is here! Back in September, I announced the beta of Open States API v3 and as of today it is moving from beta status to fully supported. Since the initial release there have been quite a few updates, all noted in the changelog. While API v3 will continue to improve, it has been moved to production servers, backwards-incompatible changes will be kept to a minimum and announced well in advance, and rate limits are a bit higher than they were during the beta accordingly. [Read More]

Open States API v3 Beta

 Posted on September 10, 2020  |  James Turk

The original Open States API was released ten years ago this fall, and we consider it the most important part of the project after the scrapers. While we released the GraphQL API several years ago, we found that the ease of use of API v1 meant that quite a few (nearly 40%) of API users stuck with API v1, so it has long been on the wishlist to have a successor that was closer to a 1:1 replacement for the API v1 methods that so many projects and organizations depend upon. [Read More]

August 2020 Update

 Posted on August 10, 2020  |  James Turk

August 2020 Update While this year’s legislative sessions have been quite unusual, Open States' work has continued on mostly uninterrupted. June was the busiest month ever for our APIs with lots of attention being paid to state legislatures as people push for policing reform and state-level Covid responses. We’re pushing ahead with our planned roadmap, adding municipal & executive data to Open States for the first time, introducing a new guide to contributing, and planning the future of our API offerings. [Read More]

April 2020 Update

 Posted on April 10, 2020  |  James Turk

As legislatures adapt to the new reality that is unfolding, our work continues mostly uninterrupted. I hope everyone out there is staying safe and taking care of themselves. I wanted to give an update on where we’re at on our 2020 Roadmap, the status of our subscriptions beta, and our COVID-19 resource. Bill Tracking For Everyone In case you missed the announcement in February, we now have bill tracking & notification features available on OpenStates. [Read More]

Tracking Legislation on OpenStates.org

 Posted on February 25, 2020  |  James Turk

Update: For an evergreen version of this post and a guide on how to use our new feature see https://openstates.org/about/subscriptions/ We’re excited to announce that our most-requested feature, bill tracking and alerts, has come to the new OpenStates.org! Here’s what’s new: Login & Profile Pages Our new sign up page is live, and lets you sign up for an account with common social media accounts or an email and password. [Read More]

January 2020 Update

 Posted on January 31, 2020  |  James Turk

It’s been a busy year so far for the Open States team! Of the thirteen items on the 2020 Roadmap, three are already nearly complete, and significant progress has been made on a few others. Here’s what we’ve been up to so far: OpenStates.org Bill Tracking Alpha You can now create an account on OpenStates.org, and if you fill out our short survey we will bring you into the private preview of bill tracking. [Read More]

Introducing Dan Schneiderman

 Posted on December 19, 2019  |  Dan Schneiderman

We’re incredibly excited to have Dan joining the team under our NSF Contract. Dan will be working to improve our historical data and data quality tools pipeline, while also making broader contributions to the project as time allows. - James I had originally worked on the Open States project as my first co-op at RIT during the summer of 2010. This was back when the project was named the 50 States Project and was based out of Sunlight Labs. [Read More]