Exploring gaps in California Proposition 54 (2016)

Abstract

California Proposition 54, 2016 (Prop 54) attempted to address gaps in government transparency at the state level by requiring legislative proceedings to be published on the internet, but failed to consider the traditional barriers that limit citizen participation in policy. This study aims to understand where Prop 54 falls short in regards to improving government transparency, evaluating the traditional barriers that prevent citizens from participating in government, identifying the improvements that should be made to increase the impact of Prop 54, and proposing ways artificial intelligence can help with these improvements. Prop 54 makes an overwhelming amount of information to be made available online, an amount that is not searchable by people. The data includes thousands of recordings of legislative sessions which are over an hour on average, but lack transcripts, summaries, or even a descriptive title. In addition, a barrier which prevents everyday people from participating in policy that remains is that most citizens lack the ability to comprehend sophisticated legal terminology presented in the released data. The research method used in this paper is a literature review, and this paper proposes addressing these challenges by implementing artificial intelligence-based solutions with natural language processing and computer vision. These tools can be used to create high-quality, searchable transcripts and generate simplified summaries of legislative proceedings, addressing both of the previously mentioned problems.