Platform Highlights

The Open Law Platform focuses on features that can make a difference for you every day. See a little bit of what we can bring to the table.

Website: Updates and Maintenance of Online Code

  1. Code reflects each code-changing ordinance on the later of a) the ordinance’s effective date or b) 7 days after receipt of ordinance;
  2. Each section of the code prominently displays historical annotations detailing the provenance of that section of the code;
  3. Correction of errors in code within 7 days of written notice;
  4. Feedback solution permitting general public and government employees to provide notice of errors in the code and provide other comments regarding the code.

Website: Search Capability

  1. Google-like, smart-bar search functionality with live-updating search results directly below the search bar;
  2. Support complex queries, including Boolean search, and provide tutorial on how to formulate search;
  3. Display search results in order of relevancy;
  4. Full-text searching.

Website: Presentation and Use

  1. Single, progressive web application suitable for use across wide range of devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers;
  2. User-friendly: designed to load and respond quickly;
  3. Compatible with widely-used versions of browsers, having market share of 5% and above;
  4. ADA-Compliant;
  5. Table of Contents with links to corresponding sections;
  6. Browse function (next page, previous page – for viewing adjacent Code sections);
  7. Cross-references in code (to other sections, etc.) are hyper-linked;
  8. Publish both Code, and Laws in HTML and XML; We are happy to work with you to publish any other documents;
  9. Capable of being downloaded in bulk in HTML and XML formats;
  10. XML schema published publicly;
  11. Custom landing page with introductory text and links to other city information;
  12. Clean, human-readable URLs for each logical component of the code (titles, chapters, sections, paragraphs, etc.);
  13. Easily indexed by public search engines (Google, Bing, etc);
  14. Website and associated bulk content is available free to the public and released into the public domain;
  15. No terms of service restricting access or use of the Website or associated bulk content.

Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act Compliance

  1. Perpetual, unchanging Unique Resource IDs (URI) for each logical component of the code (titles, chapters, sections, paragraphs, etc.);
  2. Ensure all website connections use HTTPS;
  3. Automatic, distributed backups of all data;
  4. Cryptographic authentication of bulk downloads and distributed backups.

Law Drafting Tool

  1. Integrates as plug-in with Microsoft Word 2013 and later versions;
  2. Flag formatting, structural, and grammatical errors for correction by drafter;
  3. Generates XML format of the law for codification purposes.

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