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From YouTube: Decentralizing the People’s Branch Project
Description
There are over 100 national and multinational libraries, most of which have a team of legislative researchers to write reports and inform elected representatives. Legislative Reports on Filecoin: Will aggregate the world’s legislative reports and distribute them using Filecoin. The people’s reports from all over the world will be preserved and made accessible to the people themselves.
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Chapters
00:00 Introductions
01:10 What are legislative reports?
02:20 Why would you want to access this resource?
03:59 The importance of non-partisan resources
06:30 Who is accessing these reports
07:48 What is the problem being solved?
09:45 Congress.ai + Filecoin is the solution
11:10 The Process Matters
14:30 Q&A
A
B
And
I'm
bill
marzak,
I'm
a
postdoctoral
researcher
at
berkeley,
I'm
also
a
fellow
with
citizen
lab,
where
I
focus
mainly
on
research
into
surveillance
and
censorship
and
focusing
on
attributing
you
know:
internet
surveillance
and
censorship
to
various
vendors
that
are
involved
in
this.
So
I'm
definitely
excited
to
to
be
working
working
on
this
project
with
filecoin.
A
All
right
so
back
when
I
was
a
congressional
intern,
I
was
I
had
available
to
me
the
congressional
research
service
reports,
which
are
legislative
reports
written
by
the
u.s
library
of
congress,
and
these
reports
are
meant
for
legislators
and
their
staff
so
that
they
can
be
briefed
on
topics
that
they
might
not
be.
Experts
in
just
because
they're
elected
to
congress
or
parliament
doesn't
mean
that
they're
knowledgeable
in
every
aspect
of
legislation
and
so
around
the
world.
A
We
have
these
research
teams
that
create
reports
that
inform
our
legislators
and
they're
highly
valuable
reports,
and
my
undergrad
thesis
was
on
u.s
reproductive
health
policy.
So
I
wanted
to
cite
this
report,
but
it
wasn't
available.
Broadly,
there
was
some
closed
network,
the
intranet
in
congress,
and
then
there
was
lexus
nexus
and
fein
law,
but
there
was
no
open
source
option
for
this,
which
led
bill
and
I
to
create
a
archive
of
congressional
research
service
reports.
So
that's
the
legislative
reports
for
just
the
us
congress.
A
A
We've
got
the
top
right:
the
german
parliament,
research
services,
giving
a
briefing
on
tick
tock
and
its
relations
in
the
u.s,
as
well
as
the
uk
house
of
commons
library,
briefing
paper
on
the
economic
impacts
of
coronavirus,
as
well
as
indian
parliamentary
library
report
on
reorganizing
the
states
of
india.
So,
as
you
can
imagine,
if
you
are
a
researcher
or
simply
interested
in
international
politics,
this
could
be
a
good
archive
or
resource
for
you
to
access.
A
A
There's
other
civic
tech
organizations.
Like
my
favorite
sunlight
foundation.
They
are
located
in
provided
public
access
to
25
000
reports
bill
and
I
went
ahead
and
created
a
similar
project
and
released
to
the
public
34
000
reports.
So
that's
a
background
on
only
the
us
research
services
and
we're
taking
a
look
at
the
global
research
services.
Next,
but
first
a
little
bit
more
from
bill.
B
Yeah,
so
I
think
you
know
one
of
the
things
that
we
think
is
very
important
about
these.
These
reports,
both
in
the
us
with
crs
reports
as
well
as
abroad,
with
with
you
know
the
parliament
or
congress
of
various
other
countries
producing
these
reports
is
at
least
within
these
countries,
they're
sort
of
generally
seen
as
non-partisan
resources.
And
if
you
look
at
you
know
the
us,
for
example,
you
can
see
groups
like
you
know:
everything
ranging
from
conservative
groups
to
libertarian
groups.
B
Open
government
groups,
demand
progress,
they're
all
sort
of
behind
this
notion
of
increasing
transparency
to
these
reports,
not
not
just
for
transparency's
sake,
but
because
they
think
that
you
know
by
increasing
access
to
these
reports.
This
will
better
educate
the
citizenry
about
issues
before
congress,
and
I
think
this
is
true
in
in
the
united
states,
as
well
as
as
well
as
countries
abroad,
and
especially
true,
given
that
you
know
all
this
sort
of
discourse
like
oh
we're
living
in
a
a
post-truth
society.
B
Truth
is
all
relative,
but
fortunately
you
know
there
are
still
these
resources
that
people
can
go
to
that.
There
is
sort
of
broad
agreement
across
the
political
spectrum
on
what
is
factually
true
and
the
results
of
studies
that
have
been
conducted.
So
I
think
that
you
know
making
access
to
these
sorts
of
reports
more
broadly
available,
aggregating
across
different
countries.
B
This
is
a
resource
that
will
not
only
help
citizens
become
more
informed,
make
better
decisions,
hold
their
policy
makers
to
account
better,
but
also
you
know
as
antoine.
I
think
we'll
talk
about
in
a
bit.
It
enables
this
sort
of
research.
That's
that
goes
across
these
different
data
sets
because,
of
course,
while
there
might
be,
you
know
broad
sort
of
agreement
among
the
the
partisans
in
a
country
to
trust
this
sort
of
resource.
B
When
you
start
looking
internationally,
you
can
imagine
well,
like
maybe
india's
reports
and
and
reports
from
pakistan
are
going
to
have.
You
know,
sort
of
somewhat
conflicting
narratives
regarding
you
know,
issues
regarding
the
conflict
there,
so
I
think
that
you
know
being
able
to
to
combine
these
across
countries.
I
think
is,
is
you
know
very,
very
valuable,
but
I
think
the
main
point
here
is
that
there,
this
is
sort
of
you
know
by
by
working
on
this.
A
So
it's
been
a
really
promising
experience
so
far,
and
it
tells
us
that
there's
a
need
here
that
hasn't
been
filled
again,
there's
over
170,
national
and
multinational
research
services
for
us
to
work
on
so
the
method
that
we
choose
to
approach.
This
problem
is
very
important
and
it's
it's
quite
key.
B
Yeah,
so
so,
just
to
sort
of
recap
here
on
on
on
the
problem
that
we're
trying
to
solve
so
there's
no
single,
comprehensive
repository
for
the
world's
legislative
research
reports.
You
know
these
the
the
free
repositories
that
have
been
created
so
far
like
antoine's
favorite
organization,
the
sunlight
foundation.
They
had
a
repository.
I
believe
it
was
open
crs
just
focused
on
on
this
one
specific
country,
the
u.s,
but
I
think
it
was
in
in
the
end
of
2015.
B
They
ran
into
a
problem
which
was
that
they
didn't
didn't,
have
any
more
funding
and
eventually
the
sunlight
foundation,
I
believe,
shut
down
recently.
So
you
know
a
lot
of
effort
that
goes
into
these
sorts
of
projects.
One
of
the
problems
that
has
been
present
in
the
past
is
that,
of
course,
you
know,
funding
dries
up
and
then
oh,
the
website's
down
the
collection
is
no
longer
accessible,
and
you
know
the
free
resources
that
that
are
out.
B
There
are
typically
either
focused
on
one
country
or
focused
on
a
specific
topic.
Like
you
know,
arms
control
or
something
like
this.
A
perhaps
bigger
problem-
is
that
you
know
when
you
have
these.
These
reports,
which,
of
course,
are
not
classified,
not
sensitive,
not
secret
in
in
any
way,
but
if
they're
practically
not
accessible
to
the
people
at
large
and
practically
only
accessible
to
members
of
the
legislative
branch.
Of
course,
this
sort
of
situation
enables
at
least
in
the
u.s
these
situations,
where
you
have
pay
to
play.
B
Where
you
know
someone
says:
oh
well,
you
know
hey
friend
in
congress,
can
you
access
this
report
and
send
this
report?
Or
can
you
access
these
reports
and
share
them
with
me,
and
then
you
sort
of
get
the
commoditization
of
this,
where
you
have
lobbyists
and
other
middle
people
coming
in
and
selling
access
to
this
stuff,
which
you
know
it
should
be,
should
be
publicly
accessible?
And,
of
course
you
know,
the
problem
is
that
you
know
by
not
having
this
sort
of
resource
you're,
impeding
progress
towards
towards
good
governance.
A
Continuity
of
this
project
is
important
to
us,
as
mentioned
before,
a
lot
of
previous
efforts
to
simply
archive
the
crs
reports
have
withered,
and
we
want
to
make
sure
that
this
continues.
So
the
the
filecoin
decentralized
storage
network
that
allows
anyone
in
the
world
to
contribute
and
retrieve
legislative
reports
is,
is
key
to
us
and
finally,
process
matters
more
than
any
branch
of
government.
The
legislative
branch
represents
the
people.
A
A
We
want
to
make
sure
that
these
are
in
the
public's
hands
and
with
filecoin
we
can
empower
the
public
to
host
to
replicate
to
preserve
to
contribute.
So
this
is
an
optimal
connect
collection.
The
material
is
aligned
with
the
filecoin
vision
to
create
a
decentralized,
efficient
and
robust
foundation
for
humanities
information.
We
just
want
to
ensure
that
legislative
reports
from
the
nations
around
the
world
are
included
in
this
archive.
A
Finally,
we've
got
the
technical
aspects
of
this
project.
A
lot
of
it
is
built
off
of
what
we've
done
before
for
the
crs
reports
project.
But
of
course
the
back
end
is
going
to
be
filled
in
by
filecoin,
starting
off
with
scraping
specific
archives
such
as
the
internet
archive
and
legislative
librarian
collections,
as
well
as
focused
crawlers.
We're
going
to
be
able
to
identify
pdf
documents
that
are
probably
legislative
reports
of
one
kind
or
another,
we'll
be
storing
them,
deduplicating
them
and
then
identifying
them.
A
Previously.
With
the
crs
project,
we
have
used
a
tool
called
bounding
boxes
which
is
taking
the
typical
format
of
a
report.
Generally,
there
might
be
a
logo
up
at
the
top
left.
In
the
case
of
the
us,
it's
a
picture
of
the
capital
dome,
then
some
title
formatting
and
some
expected
locations
of
authors,
names,
report
formats,
report
ids,
which
are
number
alphanumeric
regex
that
we
can
identify
so
the
bounding
box.
A
We
can
create
a
custom
one
for
every
single
report,
but
what
we'd
really
like
to
do
is
is
scale
in
a
way
that
that
enables
us
to
attack
different
languages
and
so
we'd
like
to
introduce
some
nlp
to
content
identification
and
would
happily
welcome
any
advice
on
that.
We
have
some
ideas
but
like
to
push
it
to
the
limit.
A
A
So
that's
the
basic
of
our
basis
of
our
project
and
we're
going
to
be
doing
four
countries
worth
of
legislative
reports
by
the
end
of
this
year
and
then
moving
forward
with
the
rest.
We
are
doing
this
all
open
source
and
are
eager
to
take
any
suggestions
that
you
guys
have
or
that
the
community
finds.
We
found
a
lot
of
inspiration
so
far
throughout
the
file
coin
community
and
are
looking
forward
to
being
one
of
the
key
players
or
a
player
on
the
future
of
the
decentralized
web.
A
So
thanks
again
for
inviting
us
to
be
a
part
of
this
yeah
there's
a
question
about
verification.
So,
ideally
we
would
be
able
to
get
the
original
document
from
the
host
itself.
So
if
it's
the
uk
parliamentary
library,
we
know
what
domain
that
we
should
be
able
to
find
that
from
it's.
A
very
serious
problem
and
one
of
the
other
things
we
can
do
is
compare
it
to
other
variations
of
that
same
report.
B
Yeah,
so
one
of
the
ways
that
that
we've
sort
of
thought
about
approaching
this
so
far
is
that
you
know
in
in
the
ideal
case
you
know:
you'd
have
a
country
which
releases
their
you
know
the
full
volume
of
their
reports
on
an
official
government
website.
Now,
of
course,
in
practice,
that's
not
really
the
way
it
always
works,
and
there
have
been.
B
You
know
several
instances,
including
one,
I
think
was
in
2012
in
the
u.s,
where
there
was
some
political
pressure
I
believe
exerted
on
the
congressional
research
service
to
retract
or
change
the
conclusions
of
a
report.
I
think
about
something
about
tax
cuts,
or
something
like
that.
So
you
know
you
can't
always
necessarily
rely
on
the
official
government
resource
to
have
everything
which
really
you
know
you.
B
Ideally
as
a
researcher
or
a
citizen
like
to
have
including,
like
versions
of
past
reports,
that
may
be
retracted,
visualizing
changes
and
things
like
this
between
reports.
So,
ideally,
you
know
we
tackled
the
verification,
sort
of
wouldn't
be
an
issue,
but
of
course,
in
practice
it
is
because
we're
you
know
trying
to
collect
this
data
from
various
websites.
But
you
know,
even
in
cases
where
there
is
not,
you
know
full
publication
of
all
the
documents.
In
some
cases
there
is,
there
are,
is
metadata
available.
A
You
know
bill
I'm
going
to
interrupt
you
in
just
a
moment,
because
we
also
are
going
to
be
needing
to
rely
on
the
community
as
well.
So
one
of
the
things
that
is
interesting
that
we
found
in
older
crs
reports
is
that
they
were
physically
scanned
into
pdfs
and
and
then
and
then
post
it
on
the
on
the
public
web
and
in
those
cases,
things
like
authors,
names
or
just
the
style
and
the
formatting
of
those
older
documents
is
going
to
be
key
in
in
kind
of
forensics
and
identifying
false
reports.
A
The
more
content
you
have,
the
more
capable
you
are
of
identity,
identifying
irregularities,
because
if
somebody
just
puts
forth
one
report
and
says
this
is
this
is
valid
it
it's
hard
to
compare
it
against
others.
So
the
more
content
we
get,
the
better
we'll
be
at
identifying
those.
But
it's
a
real
challenge,
and
then
we
have
one
other
question
which
which
countries
or
multinat
multination
research
services
are
we
going
to
start
with,
and
that
is
the
us,
the
uk,
germany
and
south
korea.
We
aim
to
have
done
before
the
start
of
next
year.