Knowledge Mosaic Turns on the Data Firehose

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I want to report enhancements to the Knowledge Mosaic research platform that broaden dramatically our coverage of the federal regulatory landscape. As you know, last May 17 we released KM3, a new version of Knowledge Mosaic that introduced the concept of “abundant search”. The premise of abundant search is that important legislation and regulation will typically not limit its impact to a single regulatory body. It will spill over across regulatory domains and affect multiple constituencies and jurisdictions.

Photo by Mike McGrath. Some rights reserved.

To address this spill-over, and to adequately visualize the full scope of federal regulatory activity, one really needs a way to map the entire federal regulatory landscape. At Knowledge Mosaic, we have are taking on this challenge. Bit by bit and piece by piece, as befits a mosaic, we are harvesting and organizing critical data sets from major departments and agencies in every important regulatory arena.

Topical and practice areas we now cover on our LRAM page include: Securities & Financial; Energy & Environment; Communications & Technology; Food, Health & Medicine; Labor & Employment; and Homeland Security. We also cover major congressional oversight bodies and include the canonical statutory and regulatory publications.

Several days ago, we released over 100 new data sets, and our coverage now includes more than 400 data sets from 35 departments, bureaus, and agencies, encompassing more than 1.3 million documents. We expect to add new data sets every 2-3 months, with the goal of covering several thousand of the most important federal regulatory and congressional information categories by the end of 2013, with document totals in excess of 10 million. 

The scope and ambition of this effort, especially for a small technology company like Knowledge Mosaic, is mind-boggling. Truly, it provides evidence of how the technology ecosystem now makes room for small companies to take on exciting and visionary data harvesting and data mapping challenges that previously only very large companies could contemplate. For those among our customers who are mindful of the advantages of working with small, independent, agile (and less expensive) companies, this is terrific news.

We definitely realize that, by itself, this firehose of information we intend to unleash upon you will risk only drowning you in undifferentiated documents and data. For this reason, we are working hard to create useful metadata anchored to facets for more flexible and targeted searching. We are developing taxonomies to assist you in finding exactly the category of information you need. We are developing sophisticated relevance algorithms to boost the most meaningful and current information. We are using natural language processing technologies to extract sections of documents and other data elements that that give you enormously more powerful search options. Finally, we are developing analytic, reporting, and visual display services that will add layers of meaning on top of the raw data and documents that we harvest from every part of the federal government.

The news is good. While Knowledge Mosaic began as a company (and product) focused pretty exclusively on securities disclosure and regulation, we are committed to extending the platform so it can benefit and serve every attorney at your firm. We will keep you posted on our progress. We will unveil KM4 – our next major release – in January 2012.

Below, I list the agencies and bureaus associated with each topic and practice area. Check them out and let us know if you have any questions. Please note that each agency provides data browsing capabilities if you click on the link for each agency name. Happy Hunting!

Sincerely,

Peter Schwartz, President

Knowledge Mosaic Inc.

Knowledge Mosaic – Laws, Rules, and Agency Materials Agencies and Bureaus

Antitrust & Competition

• Department of Justice (DOJ – Antitrust)
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC – Antitrust)

Securities & Financial

• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
• Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)
• Department of Justice (DOJ – Antitrust & Finanical Crimes)
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
• Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC – Energy Trading)
• Federal Reserve Board (FRB)
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC – Antitrust & Consumer Financial)
• National Credit Union Administration (NCUA)
• Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB)
• Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
• Self-Regulatory Organizations: Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)
• Department of the Treasury: Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN), Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)

Energy & Environment

• Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)
• Department of the Interior (DOI):  Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation & Enforcement (BOEMRE), Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS), Bureau of Reclamation (BR),Office of Surface Mining Reclamation & Enforcement (OSM)

• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
• Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
• U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Communications & Technology

• Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
• U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO)

Food, Heath & Medicine

• U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
• U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO)
• Food & Drug Administration (FDA)
• U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Labor & Employment

• Department of Labor (DOL)
• National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
• Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
• Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

Homeland Security

• Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

Congressional Oversight

• Congressional Budget Office (CBO)
• Government Accountability Office (GAO)

Codifications

Laws

• US Code
• Securities Laws
• CFTC Laws
• Public Laws
• Bills & Legislation

Rules

• CFR
• SEC Regulations
• SRO Rules
• PCAOB Rules & Standards

Federal Register

Rulebooks (selected US Code and CFR titles, plus SRO rules, in PDF format)