JIM CARALIS

Founder, OpenMass.org

By PAUL MCMORROW

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Jim Caralis used to be frustrated with politics. As a kid, he grew up watching the Saint Patrick's Day breakfast on television, but when the Everett native and Northeastern grad decided that he wanted to get "more involved" in local politics, he realized "there was no outlet for me to participate." He had been reading and posting on Blue Mass Group, but when he'd try to follow policy debates raging on the site by scouring the state's websites, he often found them to be fractured, illogical and difficult to navigate. More often than not, keeping himself informed was more trouble than it was worth.

"People would be talking about a bill, and it would be really hard to look up what the bill actually said and where it was," he says.

So, Caralis, a software engineer, spent four months of his nights and weekends coding a website to give casual political observers access to the kind of information they'd need to keep on top of the Byzantine machinations happening inside the State House -- to "get people the information they need so they could get properly engaged." He ripped off the architecture of OpenCongress.org, dubbed it OpenMass.org, and then emailed the OpenCongress crew, asking if they minded. "They said, 'No, it's great, it's exactly what we hoped would happen.' "

OpenMass, which launched four months ago, is ridiculously easy to navigate. Users can search budget earmarks, access bill texts and histories, and sort legislation by sponsor, issue category and hearing date. On Mass.gov, you'd need to have three or four different windows open and working independently of each other to compile the same information. OpenMass also aggregates news stories and blog posts from across the political spectrum. And the whole thing is almost completely automated.

"The site isn't reactive," Caralis says. "You can track bills, see where they're going and do something about it." He's working on adding citizen-oriented tools to make the site "more proactive." One would link data from the secretary of state's lobbyist division to individual legislators and bills, so individuals could see the moneyed interests behind bills. Another would post open letters to legislators on their OpenMass homepage. "It might make them more responsive," he speculates.

Despite the vast disparities in performance, Caralis isn't comfortable calling out the state for its crappy websites. "I doubt they have it in their budget [to overhaul their systems]. I've worked in companies before that have old legacy systems trying to work together. It's fairly typical, unfortunately."

"Ultimately," he adds, "the goal is that the state creates a site well enough that I don't have to do this anymore. Although, you've got to think that they'll never put contributions alongside bills."

[openmass.org]