provider. >> tim hwang, what is fiscalnote? >> a real-time platform that allows people to search, track, and analyze legislation, regulations, and case law in real time. >> when did you come up with the idea? >> i came up with the idea spring of last year. i had done all these different things, which we can talk about a little bit later. there was this problem i was having, which was essentially, i did not know what was going on in government. i found that incredibly frustrating and weird at the same time, because we live in a democracy. we should know what is going on, any given time. the traditional way of getting information -- news outlets, attorneys, lobbyists -- did not make a lot of sense. i thought, there should be a constitutional solution. we live in an age of google. we live in an age of rapid search and information retrieval.

it should be easy to figure this out. that is where this came from. >> is fiscalnote a search engine? >> it started off as a search engine, allowing people to be able to search legislation across all 50 states in real time. but it evolved into something more than that, involving analytics, forecasting, natural language processing that is on the cutting edge of computer science today. you use these analytics? how do you develop them? how can people use fiscalnote? >> let's say i am a fortune 500 or a large nonprofit, caring about a big constituency i represent. right now, i have a big policy staff, maybe 10 people, maybe 100 people, that sit on google and search what is going on in my company, that might affect my company and my constituency. they sit there compiling large reports. imagine being able to get

real-time alerts of information delivered straight to your phone, your e-mail, and on top of that, being able to look at different analytics like, what is the probability of the bill passing? and being able to leverage data and analytics to look at those types of things. >> how do you measure the probability of a bill passing? >> you take into account a lot of data sets, including rollcall data, campaign finance data, demographic data, electoral data, and crunch that on the backend. once we do that, we are able to look at things like, what is the profile of this individual legislator? how has he or she voted in the last 20 years? or happens to be a bill that relates to something they have looked at before. can we go back into the data and extrapolate into the future, and come with those outcomes? like this is done via an algorithm you developed? how old are you? >> i am 22. >> how did you get interested in all of this?

likes my own career has sort of taken a lot of twists and turns in the last couple of years. in they started off obama campaign in 2008, working in the field and then moving to the data side, initially looking at some of the more demographic type issues, those types of things, but moving more into issue-based things. after the campaign ended, i was thinking of what i could do. i was 17 at the time. and ended up really deciding to throw my hat into the race for a board of education seat that came up in maryland. and to my surprise, i won, the stone into the mix of politics very early, in 2009, right after the financial crisis, managing a lot of these issues as they came up. ain't in a financial crisis is interesting, because it allows you to think of creative ways of using your resources and using data and analytics to target

those things. sort of at the forefront in being able to leverage those types of things for education policy, not just in our jurisdiction but around the country as well. after my term ended, i decided, i should probably go back and do the whole school thing, right? i went to college -- >> ranson. >> i went to princeton and andied computer science, public policy, trying to understand, how can we use algorithms to detect fraudulent activity in government contracting, rfps? looking at open data policy -- how do governments publish their information as well as make it with the public? -- as communicate with the public? the thing at those issues allowed me to get the background for this company. >> before we introduce our third member of the panel, according

to your biography, you are on leave from harvard business school. what does that mean? >> i am deferring indefinitely, which basically means that i guess i could go back at some point in the future, but i am pretty much on leave at this point. >> and who uses fiscalnote? who are some of your clients? >> clients range from fortune 500's like allergan, i'd go -- , nonprofits like planned parenthood, the information technology council. we have a number of more medium-sized enterprises and law firms on the platform as well. but the democratic governors association, the republican governors association as well. >> both their research and policy steps use our platform. >> we're joined by tim, from "the hill."

>> you talked about having a hard time understanding what is happening in government, following government. you think that is changing if you are a nonprofit or a medium-sized corporation, not just because of things like fiscalnote, but the openness of the internet? is it easier to follow what is happening? >> unfortunately not. a couple of different factors play them. first, the complexity of government has exponentially increased in the past couple of years, not just at the federal level, but at state and local levels. i think what is even more interesting is that as our continues to globalize, companies are not just interested domestically, but internationally. or policya legal team team or government relations team in any of these enterprises to be able to monitor these things, with the complexity and scope increasing, and resources be decreasing -- it seems to a harder and harder problem. i think we have seen this

problem also in some of the media industry itself, in terms of journalism and in terms of the amount of coverage that people are able to get to. some of the most undercovered s in the united states are state capitals, city halls. even in the u.s. capitol, we only cover the major issues. there is no business model in terms of how to disseminate this information. and because of the increased complexity of things, the resources are not getting there to cover all these issues. >> what is making things more complex? how is it getting harder to follow? >> one is that the world is a lot more complex. there is a lot of these issues that we have never thought about before. and anything ranging from ,iotechnology, carbon emissions international train -- trade and tariffs. while these issues have to a certain extent been debated for hundreds of years, new

technologies and ways of areking are forcing -- they putting a lot of stress on our existing institutions. i just read the statistic somewhere that in the federal government, there was over a million pages of new regulations is,osed last year, which for any enterprise, a big entertaining -- undertaking to look through. and that is to find the two lines that might impact their business. i think there is a big friction between our large institutions and our society, between government, business, and commerce, that we all live in. >> we talk about open data, big data, all these new possibilities for resources. is that still in its infancy? have these opportunities not yet become full? what is the problem? >> i can talk a little bit about what we have to do it fiscalnote. the challenge in our company in the initial stages was trying to get the data.

i am not going to call out any states, but certain states were better than others. oftentimes, we had to deal with things like a state publishing their laws on a scanned or handwritten basis. we have to go in and track that information, pick it up, and run it through machine learning. people cannot just understand what is going on. that is what is facing us today. we try our best to work with governments, teaching them best practices, teaching them how to publish information correctly. that is still a large challenge today in the united states. the interesting thing today is actually, a lot of countries outside of the u.s. are much better, in terms of the governance and open data policy than we are. i just came back from a very long list of countries, trying to survey what is going on in these different countries. it is very fascinating to see that some of these countries are

able to come out with information in machine-readable formats, or information published in a way that we are able to pick up and in just. -- ingest. that is exciting for us as international business, frustrating to work with domestically as we try to continue to improve our algorithms and technology. >> can you give an example of a country doing it better in your view? >> even turkey. >> what are they doing? publishnformation they is machine-readable, which is a very big thing, which allows algorithms to be able to index information and make it searchable very quickly. it is not enough to be able to scan information and stick it online, right? what say you have a budget document, an 800 page document. if the entire thing is an image, there is zero way for an organization to search the document. being simplistic with things like that allows technology to

open up the transparency, to open up the possibility. >> how is fiscalnote different from thomas, it's the library of congress puts together? >> first thing, our scope is a lot larger. we are able to go off into locales and municipalities and aggregate everything into one place. the second thing is our analytics, which differentiates us from any other information provider. we can look at trends on issues going across different states. if california passes something, how likely is that going to impact passage in massachusetts or virginia? and looking at things from a broader perspective, in terms of product development. things we are working on in the regulatory spaces are very interesting, in that we are able to connect all the dots across the entire country. measureyou been able to your analytics? how successful or accurate have they been? >> right now, our algorithm is

about 94% accurate in terms of forecasting, in any legislature around the country. >> that is remarkable. >> there is this trend of predictability, the nate silvers of the world pretty numbers together. you think this is the way things are going? with the numbers 94% of the time tell the truth, in the future? thet is interesting where political and legal scene is today. i compare it to financial services in the 1950's and 1960's, where deals were made to handshake in person. people used to price things without math, just mind-boggling in today's age. you had your players come---bloomberg, ross perot, all these guys come in and say -- what if we used statistics? what if we used a baseline of predictability in markets? obviously, when they first came in, these guys were viewed as crazy.

that for granted, in terms of being able to look at financial models and predictability in our markets, to a certain extent. and i think what is frustrating in the political and legal system today is it seems so arbitrary. it seems arbitrary what gets on the docket. that who yourrary judges determines the outcome of that case. be able to get the analytics -- i am a litigator. why can't i go see how a judge is ruled in the last 30 years? if i am looking at a piece of legislation, why can't i see how a legislator has voted in the last 15 sessions, or looked at this type of legislation in the last 10 years? i think that establishes some level of predictability, some sort of a baseline in terms of how we look at governments, and how we look at the relationship between government and its systems. it is very similar to the tourist industry.

the way we dashed to the financial services industry. we go through this with statistics powering these things. >> let us say we work for boeing. because of the military issues going on around the world today, we want to see if there is going to be an increase in military spending. i know this is a macro, kind of a macro look at this. how would somebody use your yes, i see the congress increasing military spending and the president signing it? analytics get a lot more granular than just seeing whether or not the thing passes. we can break down on a legislator by legislator basis how likely they are to vote for a certain bill. perspective,al there is a lot of opportunities for attorneys, lobbyists, whatever, to be able to say, let me look at this bill. a sans the cosponsors, here are the people most likely to vote for it and the people least likely to vote for it.

you can start looking at developing a strategy in terms of trying to get at the information you need. our i will say is that analytics do not provide all the answers. it is not a crystal ball where you can ask any question. but that being said, there is a lot of power in being able to combine some of the analytics we provide with broad industry intelligence, or a human intelligence on the ground, and being able to combine those two things should be able to get to the answers you would like to get to. but one of the big challenges for us as we look at expansion is, we are sort of bumping up against, obviously, some political issues in the last democratic countries -- the less democratic countries that are less likely to publish their laws. in that case, we will have to step back and assess where we are. fruit --of the loaf in

is annging fruit, it opportunity to look at how things are changing. >> can you incorporate the human factor? will john boehner put this on the calendar? will harry reid allow this to be voted on the floor? >> yes, our second algorithm we came out with was a pre-floor algorithm that was capable of forecasting, with similar levels of accuracy, whether something would get to the floor. that is based off of matching issues with leadership, matching committee sponsorships, matching how likely something is to go to this committee as opposed to this committee, and looking at those types of analytics, we were able to get those answers. >> i feel that is what lobbyists do in a lot of ways. things.ch and track have you had any pushback, people saying you have spent on mynds of dollars lobbyists and fiscalnote has that?

>> in terms of the dissemination of information by itself, i found it so frustrating, going back to when i started the company, that you needed a human to get you information in the first place, right? inis like going to a library these days and asking for a certain book, or asking them to search for a certain book. there are certain things that are taken -- they are happening, right? and we should be able to know they are happening. or attorneys or lobbyists, or compliance professionals, to be sitting and tracking things in today's age does not make sense. the way i look at it is, we provide them the service which allows them to create some level of monetary value for their time -- opening their time for strategy, meeting with people, assembling coalitions, doing whatever they need to do to get their outcome. that is our big vision.

>> i know you spent a lot of time with the obama campaign in 2008. have you done much work on political predictions and potentially who would win this race versus that race? talks on the electoral side, i think there is a lot of people that are there. nate silver has the biggest thing there. we are not so much on the electoral side. futureook at opportunities internationally, particularly in parliamentary structures -- elementary structures are very interesting from an electoral perspective, because the elections decide the policy agenda. we are monitoring more heavily in those places. >> on fiscalnote, you predicted -- not predicted. you look at potential candidates for president in 2020, in 2028. of did you come up with some those names? some of those names are local officials at this point.

>> it is really interesting, because on the back and -- back indicator of the most influential legislators in their states. is, we the things we do have to rank legislators in order of how likely they are to push a bill forward or whatnot, and the influence they have on being a cosponsor. you can look across the country and see, ok, out of all the bills they sponsored, who are the most effective legislators? hopefully, we can look at some of these people in the future to lead our country in the right direction. account for the variables that come into play in your algorithms? i mean, barack obama literally came from nowhere, made a speech in 2004, and suddenly is the democratic candidate for president and president. >> coming back to the electoral side, it is not something we do. one of the things i find interesting is, regardless of who goes into political office,

the predictability is still there. mostly because of the data out there on the individual person, that also because americans for the most part are very down the line in terms of certain issues. a d for an replace in a certain state, when they vote for the leadership, they feel the pressure when it comes to these major issues. let's say you are a republican in massachusetts. the types of issues and the positions you take look very different from a republican down in texas or in alabama. i think being able to judge where they all along the line -- fall along the line is interesting from a policies and predictability standpoint. you can start to see where certain issues might end up. >> big data is kind of a sexy phrase and still, my understanding, relatively new.

we are still not getting our hands around it. you think you are cutting edge or early in the wave of these companies making do with big data and putting that into information? or do you think the economy nosedive to work these ideas and models? >> i think we are at the beginning stage of big data. the prolific nation -- proliferation of sensors and data sets -- in our industry, open data, getting access to industry level data. let's say for example health care insurance enrollment plans, compared to different frameworks in different states. in binding those things together, you start to see the effectiveness of policy in a real-time manner. in policy, in energy, financial services, social networking, we are in the beginning stages of being able to leverage these large data sets for more effective governance, for more effective decision making.

>> what do you think that looks like in 10 years, 15 years, 20 years? will everything be predictable? >> i think there will still be a huge amount of unpredictability. i think in this case one of the biggest analogies i go to is the weather. weather predictability is notorious. there is a lot of jokes about whether the weatherman got it right. the reality is, we depend on the weather predictions to be able to plan our weekends or plan our outfit. is a diminishing marginal return on the amount of predictability that is out there, they're still has to be some level of predictability or us to operate in our day-to-day lives. >> who are your competitors? >> you have reuters, bloomberg, major players that are out there. think what we sort of view our competition as is sort of the ,ld guard of media, nbc, cnn

that really cannot expand their coverage past washington, because they do not have the resource capacity to do so. "theusly, you go back to "politico," or c-span. it is hard to extend coverage to annapolis. when media coverage is based on how many reporters you have on the ground, there is only so much ground you can cover. that is where technology is able to unlock future possibilities in media and information dissemination for our society. ask have you found it difficult to break into the market? you have obviously done tremendous growth in the past year or two. have you gotten pushed, felt strain at all? are a lot of industries around the world -- accounting, hr, payroll, database management. one of the last places for innovation is in the legal and

compliance space. if you look at the average fortune 500 now, maybe you are running quick walks -- books. you are running some kind of software. most compliance professionals are still working off of old works, paper and pencil. i think this is a very exciting time for us. we are attacking a very big industry that has not seen much innovation in the last couple of decades. >> do you see expansion into the legal and financial world to make some of the same algorithms work in those fields? places, butin those in industries broader than that -- energy and financial services, trying to understand if this fracking bill passes in pennsylvania, how does that impact oil and gas manufacturing , or the pricing of specific goods and service? the other day, we were looking at trade data, being able to look at, what is the likelihood

these will be held up that port? if that happens, what is the cost the company will incur based on that? the able to look at those types of things, pushing more into the day-to-day operations of businesses, is where we continue to expand. >> you got some vc money from -- cuban andd jerry yang, among others. >> silicon valley is a small place. i fired off an e-mail. they shot back and said, we are very interested. mark cuban was our first investor. a large venture capital firm. jerry yang jumped in. first round capital jumped him. heavywere big names and hitters who helped build out our company.

>> to think we are in a venture capital bubble, a tech bubble? >> that is hard to say. i do think that things have gotten a little out of hand. probably less so in the enterprise state, because we are building actual businesses with revenue and customers. maybe in the consumer space -- we joke all the time in our company, when we see a new photo sharing app for social network. it is funny to watch. they get funded, which is really funny. i do think there will probably be a market correction in the next couple of months. it is an exciting time if you are a company that is doing well, a cousin at that point you are able to take advantage of great talents that might be currently working on a photo sharing app. our access to capital gets better because we are building an actual business with customers and traction and everything. do you kind of employees

look for? what qualifications? >> we are a tech company first, and so we do look for people that are comfortable with technology. obviously, not everyone is an engineer. the majority of our staff is engineering, but we look for people very comfortable with that. more personality based though, we look for people that are very relentless in terms of the mission, in terms of the opportunity, going after a very big societal problem and market problem people have. for us as a small team to be able to go after a huge market, $1 trillion legal industry, is daunting. ableou need people to be to take on that task. >> have you been confident signing people thus far? >> we have our pick in terms of the people we bring on, but there is a great amount of talent here in washington, i think, that we are taking

advantage of. does thel hill, government understand technology and some of the issues you face as a corporation? >> when you look at sort of the i think from as, conceptual standpoint, people do understand they need to be more transparent. i think it is harder for people to understand the implications of opening up data sets and transparency. it is not just about the transparency. you are opening of entire industries by opening these data sets. noaa opening up their weather information opens up entire industries in crop insurance and insurance around agriculture, everything like that. the department of transportation opening up information about traffic informs the way we think about gps technology, about google maps, all these different things. these are giant industries getting unlocked by very simply

putting a spreadsheet online on a regular basis. and i think it is harder for people to wrap their heads around the innovation that happens like that, but i think over time we will see, as a new crop of leaders come to government -- hopefully, we will see a lot of that happening. >> tim hwang is founder and ceo of fiscalnote. this commode.com, his website. fiscalnote.com, his website. >> thank you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> on the next "washington journal," christian science monitor reporter francine kiefer and reporter aaron zitner impact ofe financial

the president's immigration proposal. the iranianst on nuclear program negotiations, which have a deadline this monday. as always, we will take your calls and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. "washington journal," live at 7:00 a.m. eastern. -- an update on ebola. he recently spoke at the national press club about u.s. response efforts. this is one hour. >> good afternoon. i and an adjunct professor