A Call for Collaboration

What a durable version requires

This prototype is held together with duct tape and enthusiasm. It works today because one person is paying attention to it. That is not a plan.

A production system needs sustained hosting, ongoing data ingestion as new prospectuses are filed, a proper database with version control for annotations, and multi-user review workflows so lawyers can contribute without stepping on each other’s work. That is infrastructure work, not a weekend project. MDI and Georgetown have the institutional capacity to build and maintain it. I do not.

The credibility question

This is the hard part, and no amount of engineering solves it alone.

Automated clause extraction for policy-relevant research needs an agreed methodology. What does “correct” mean when a clause is ambiguous? How do we handle edge cases where reasonable lawyers disagree? How do we report confidence so that users know what to trust and what to question?

These are not technical questions. They are questions for legal scholars, technologists, and practitioners working together. Exactly the people in this room.

What I bring

Open source code, MIT licensed, no strings attached. Domain expertise from seven years on the buy side analyzing sovereign debt. A working prototype. Time and energy. Grant funding from NatureFinance for SovTech. And a willingness to do the grunt work that makes infrastructure projects actually happen.

What I am asking for

Not money. Not endorsement. Three specific things:

  1. Feedback on this prototype. What is wrong? What is missing? What is misleading? The hardest bugs to find are the ones where the system looks right but is not.

  2. Participation in defining the validation methodology. This community can answer questions about credibility that I cannot answer alone.

  3. Help recruiting legal experts for clause review. PDIP’s network of law professors, students, and practitioners is the most valuable asset in this space. Each expert review makes the whole system better.

A closing note

I believe #PublicDebtIsPublic is one of the most important initiatives in sovereign debt transparency. PDIP’s annotations are the foundation that makes everything in this prototype possible. I want to help it succeed.

I am building this regardless. But it is better with you.

Teal Emery | Get in touch