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You were expecting only a couple of people.  And you have a couple bags of chips, some beer and a few soft drinks; that should be plenty.  Somewhere in the back there’s probably some pretzels and seltzer if things get low.  But then the door opens and people keep pouring in.  The living room fills, the kitchen, even the bedroom.  You squeeze through and look out the window, and the entire street is mobbed with people coming over.  No doubt about it: your supplies have crashed.

We know how you feel.

As our regular readers know, we’ve been working on building up the eCFR, so our systems mastermind, Nic, has been keeping a close eye on our load numbers.  But because we’re building things — hammers everywhere, and piles of plywood, and mind the cord please — when our numbers started to spike one evening a few weeks ago, Nic figured that it was some extra overhead from the feature deployment that was running.  Whatever it was, it was heavy: Nic said it was the only time he’d seen Nginx, the web server, run out of available worker processes.

But it wasn’t our the deployment.  Nic looked more closely at the server logs, and it was just an enormous spike in traffic.  Not enough to actually crash the site, but enough that not everyone was able to get the information they were looking for.  Nic kept digging.  It was puzzling: the huge wave of hits came at a very specific time — between 9:20 and 9:40 at night.  They were all from different locations, so it wasn’t a crawler run amok.  What was everyone looking for?  Did someone think we had early Star Wars tickets or something?

Well, the clue was in the specific information people were looking for.  Everyone, it seemed, was suddenly interested in the 14th amendment. Cross checking that against a news twitter stream, and there was the answer.  As it turns out the Republican Presidential debate was that night.  At some point shortly after 9:20, someone mentioned the 14th amendment.  And the next thing you know, we’re out of chips and pretzels.

But of course we at the LII, being hospitable folk, don’t like to run out of munchies.  So we’ve got a plan to make sure it doesn’t happen again.  Nic is gearing up to implement demand-driven autoscaling.  This will set up an automated monitor which keeps track of our load numbers, and then, if it detects a spike, adds a new machine and balances the workload between them.  Once the traffic slows down, the extra machine can quietly switch back off.

So next time the house fills up, we hope to have an extra tent ready to pitch itself automatically, and a whole tub of munchies in the garage.  Because rest assured, we’re here to welcome you, and no one likes a party without something to snack on.

Great was the rejoicing in the south tower of Myron Taylor Hall, headquarters of the LII, when we got notice of the bulk release of the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR) in XML format.

What was not to like? The data was as up-to-date as the CFR could get, the XML was much cleaner than the book version, it had a friendly user guide etc., etc., etc..

It was also different enough from the book XML of the CFR, that we could not simply run it through our existing data enrichment process and serve it to the public as is. So, we curbed our enthusiasm long enough to put together a measured plan to re-do our code.

We have heard enough from you, our wonderful readers, that text indentation was one of the most valued features of our data presentation. Thus, it was the first feature we chose to implement.

All this verbosity is the set-up for a look at some of the messy sausage making details of adding indentation to the eCFR.

***

If you’re not familiar with XML (eXtensible Markup Language), it’s simply a way of marking up data with a predefined, consistent set of descriptive tags that are both easily human and machine readable. So, when we get XML data from the GPO, it looks something like this…

Snippet 1: XML from Title 1 of the CFR
==============================================
<?xml version=1.0 encoding=UTF-8 ?>
<DLPSTEXTCLASS>
<HEADER>
<FILEDESC>
<TITLESTMT>
<TITLE>
Title 1: General Provisions</TITLE>
<AUTHOR TYPE=nameinv>
</AUTHOR>
</TITLESTMT>
<PUBLICATIONSTMT>
<PUBLISHER>
</PUBLISHER>
<PUBPLACE>
</PUBPLACE>
<IDNO TYPE=title>
1</IDNO>
<DATE></DATE>
</PUBLICATIONSTMT>
<SERIESSTMT>
<TITLE>
</TITLE>
</SERIESSTMT>
</FILEDESC>
<PROFILEDESC>
<TEXTCLASS>
<KEYWORDS>
</KEYWORDS>
</TEXTCLASS>
</PROFILEDESC>
</HEADER>
<TEXT>
<BODY>
<ECFRBRWS>
<AMDDATE>Jan. 30, 2015</AMDDATE>
<DIV1 N=1 NODE=1:1 TYPE=TITLE>
<HEAD>Title 1 – General Provisions–Volume 1</HEAD>
<CFRTOC>
<PTHD>Part </PTHD>
<CHAPTI>
<SUBJECT><E T=04>chapter i</E> – Administrative Committee of the Federal Register </SUBJECT>
<PG>1</PG></CHAPTI>
<CHAPTI>
<SUBJECT><E T=04>chapter ii</E> – Office of the Federal Register </SUBJECT>
<PG>51</PG></CHAPTI>
<CHAPTI>
<SUBJECT><E T=04>chapter iii</E> – Administrative Conference of the United States </SUBJECT>
<PG>301</PG></CHAPTI>
<CHAPTI>
<SUBJECT><E T=04>chapter iv</E> – Miscellaneous Agencies </SUBJECT>
<PG>425
</PG></CHAPTI></CFRTOC>
<DIV3 N=I NODE=1:1.0.1 TYPE=CHAPTER>
<HEAD> CHAPTER I – ADMINISTRATIVE COMMITTEE OF THE FEDERAL REGISTER</HEAD>
<DIV4 N=A NODE=1:1.0.1.1 TYPE=SUBCHAP>
<HEAD>SUBCHAPTER A – GENERAL
</HEAD>
<DIV5 N=1 NODE=1:1.0.1.1.1 TYPE=PART>
<HEAD>PART 1 – DEFINITIONS </HEAD>
<AUTH>
<HED>Authority:</HED><PSPACE>44 U.S.C. 1506; sec. 6, E.O. 10530, 19 FR 2709; 3 CFR, 1954-1958 Comp., p.189.
</PSPACE></AUTH>
<DIV8 N=§ 1.1 NODE=1:1.0.1.1.1.0.1.1 TYPE=SECTION>
<HEAD>§ 1.1 Definitions.</HEAD>
<P>As used in this chapter, unless the context requires otherwise – </P>
<P><I>Administrative Committee</I> means the Administrative Committee of the Federal Register established under section 1506 of title 44, United States Code; </P>
<P><I>Agency</I> means each authority, whether or not within or subject to review by another agency, of the United States, other than the Congress, the courts, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the territories and possessions of the United States; </P>
<P><I>Document</I> includes any Presidential proclamation or Executive order, and any rule, regulation, order, certificate, code of fair competition, license, notice, or similar instrument issued, prescribed, or promulgated by an agency; </P>
<P><I>Document having general applicability and legal effect</I> means any document issued under proper authority prescribing a penalty or course of conduct, conferring a right, privilege, authority, or immunity, or imposing an obligation, and relevant or applicable to the general public, members of a class, or persons in a locality, as distinguished from named individuals or organizations; and </P>
<P><I>Filing</I> means making a document available for public inspection at the Office of the Federal Register during official business hours. A document is filed only after it has been received, processed and assigned a publication date according to the schedule in part 17 of this chapter.</P>
<P><I>Regulation</I> and <I>rule</I> have the same meaning. </P>
<CITA TYPE=N>[37 FR 23603, Nov. 4, 1972, as amended at 50 FR 12466, Mar. 28, 1985]
</CITA>
</DIV8>
</DIV5>
</DIV1>
</ECFRBRWS>
</BODY>
</TEXT>
</DLPSTEXTCLASS>

The text of the regulations are enclosed within tags that provide some context for what you’re looking at, have meaning for how it should be displayed or provide additional metadata that may be useful to the enrichment process.

As a first step, we consulted the user guide to see if there was any information on how to indent the text. There was something! On page 13, was this snippet of XML (Figure 1) with the enumeration indicators highlighted. The next page had a suggestion for how that could be displayed (Figure 2).

Figure 1: 5 CFR 151.101 in XML format

Figure 2: Presentation suggested by the Government Print Office for 5 CFR 151.101

Obvious to us and as indicated by the user guide itself, there was no way to achieve this display given just the information from the markup. A good place to look for extra information was within the CFR itself.

We found what we were looking for in Title 1, Section 21.11, which is about how the CFR enumerators are organized, or more accurately, are supposed to be organized. Of particular interest was the hierarchy of paragraphs given by subsection 21.11(h):

(h) Paragraphs, which are designated as follows:
level 1(a), (b), (c), etc.
level 2(1), (2), (3), etc.
level 3(i), (ii), (iii), etc.
level 4(A), (B), (C), etc.
level 5(1), (2), (3), etc.
level 6(i), (ii), (iii), etc.

In our first iteration of indentation, we added attributes to each paragraph defining a depth of indentation corresponding to the 6 levels above. Section 151.101 of Title 5, the example in the user guide pages above, looked lovely. But, (you knew it would not be that simple, right?) this implementation worked fine for only about 60% of the random selection of sections we tested it on.

Where the algorithm did not work, the main reason for failure was the presence of multiple enumerators within a single paragraph. In other words, each enumerator should have its own paragraph but not all paragraphs were marked as such.

Snippet 2: XML from 9 CFR 2.1
==============================================
<p>(a)(1) Any person operating or intending to operate as a dealer, exhibitor, or operator of an auction sale, except persons who are exempted from the licensing requirements under paragraph (a)(3) of this section, must have a valid license. A person must be 18 years of age or older to obtain a license. A person seeking a license shall apply on a form which will be furnished by the AC Regional Director in the State in which that person operates or intends to operate. The applicant shall provide the information requested on the application form, including a valid mailing address through which the licensee or applicant can be reached at all times, and a valid premises address where animals, animal facilities, equipment, and records may be inspected for compliance. The applicant shall file the completed application form with the AC Regional Director. </p>

In the snippet above, we have the case where there are 2 enumerators at the beginning of the paragraph. Since our algorithm assumed one enumerator per paragraph, it would only find (a) but not (1). We fixed that in the second iteration.

In our third iteration, we went after more embedded enumerators (see snippet 3 below) by creating a category for these previously untagged enumerators. We named them, nested paragraphs, and tagged them as such.

Snippet 3: XML from 8 CFR 103.3
==============================================
<p>(a) <i>Denials and appeals</i> – (1) <i>General</i> – (i) <i>Denial of application or petition.</i> When a Service officer denies an application or petition filed under § 103.2 of this part, the officer shall explain in writing the specific reasons for denial. If Form I-292 (a denial form including notification of the right of appeal) is used to notify the applicant or petitioner, the duplicate of Form I-292 constitutes the denial order.</p>

In the last snippet, the paragraph has 3 enumerators, (a), (1), and (i). We’ve developed a library of patterns that our algorithm uses to find them all. In title 26 alone, we find and tag 13,563 nested paragraphs!

So, we now have a pretty nice indentation feature, that while not completely finished, is already an improvement over what we were able to do before for the CFR. See 8 CFR 103.3 (a)(1)(iii)(A) and its corresponding eCFR version for an example of this.

We’re putting it on the back burner for now but there is more to come for indentation. For instance, we know from extensive study of the markup that there are actually 8 levels of nesting to be had, not 6. And, we have to provide special handling for sections that do not follow the numbering scheme in 1 CFR 21.11.

We’re grateful for our beta testers and readers. If you come across places where our current indentation scheme does not work, please let us know. In the interim, we’ll be devoting some brain cycles to adding cross references and other links to the eCFR.

Quoting Tom, LII director, who was channeling Frank Wagner, the longest serving Reporter of Decisions for the US Supreme Court,

“The work of a legal publisher is an exercise in serial nitpicking.”

No quibbles with that. I’ve been indulging in some nitpicking. Until this morning, this is what a portion of 26 CFR 1.263A-3 looked like on the eCFR tab:

Enumerator and its enclosing braces are not properly bolded.

Note how the enumerators 1, i, ii, 2, and their enclosing braces are not properly bolded. Not good! Since I am the sort that deems suspicious, anyone who posts a Craigslist advertisement with grammatical errors, I can see why someone would take issue with a publisher improperly rendering the bolding on a piece of text. So, it’s fixed.

Now, since I am also basking in the euphoria induced by fixing this presentation problem, I will not bore anyone with the details of negative look-ahead, greedy, non-greedy, capturing, and non-capturing pattern matching with regular expressions in python, while carrying my laptop, uphill, both ways to and from my office, ….

… there’s another kind of detail that no shop manual goes into but that is common to all machines and can be given here. This is the detail of the Quality relationship, the gumption relationship, between the machine and the mechanic, which is just as intricate as the machine itself. Throughout the process of fixing the machine things always come up, low quality things, from a dusted knuckle to an accidentally ruined “irreplaceable” assembly. These drain off gumption, destroy enthusiasm and leave you so discouraged you want to forget the whole business. I call these things ‘gumption traps’.

– Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

We’re in a gumption trap, and it’s slowing down our eCFR feature rollout.

We’ve met some unexpected challenges (unexpected, except insofar as you expect, in a general way, that all projects have challenges). In a group as small as ours, passing around a cold can be enough to stall a project for a week – or two. Right now, though, one of the three team members who has been working on the eCFR is leaving for a new job, and this will naturally slow things down for the next few months.

We’re still working on stuff: improving our indents, for instance. But some of the new features which we have beautifully, intricately constructed in our heads — our ideas of Quality —  are going to take a while longer to get out into the real world.  We’re down a mechanic.

All projects have difficulties complications, setbacks, gumption traps. They’re not covered in the shop manual. We spend our days skinning our knuckles on coding details, saying “wait, this regex needed to be capturing and that one needed to be non-capturing!”. It’s nice, at the end, when you’re seeing the beautifully humming final product, to forget them. But they’re an essential part of the process.

In other words, “Motorcycle maintenance gets frustrating. Angering. Infuriating. That’s what makes it interesting.” Something to bear in mind when you start turning the first bolt.

The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) compiles regulations promulgated by various regulatory agencies — part of the executive branch. But that regulatory power is grounded in legislative power. At some point, some Congress — drunk or sober —passed a law enabling the agency to make such a rule.

And sometimes, reading through the laws, you want to know more than what the rule currently is. You want to know where it came from. You want to know…

Who authorized this?!

So, as one of the basic features of the CFR we provide hyperlinks from each regulation to the point in the U.S. Code which provides the basis for its rule-making authority. This week we restored those links to the eCFR text.

Here’s an example. According to federal regulations, schools can’t share your grades with your parents once you’re a grown-up, which is how you managed to keep that D+ in History 101 from Daddy (thank goodness!). But who said they could do that? If you look at the hyperlinks for “authority”, you’ll get to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (with various later amendments). So before 1974, that D+ was fair game, which was why Grandaddy grounded Daddy for a month that one time.

Of course there are a bunch of nitpicky details to take care of in order to mark up the authorities correctly. More on that soon.