Kirsten Gullickson

The Problem: Congress is “a 19th-Century institution often using 20th-Century technology to respond to 21st-Century Problems” (according to Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers). The Solution (or at least part of it): Kirsten Gullickson, who is helping bring Congress out of the paper-and-ink era into the digital age. Kirsten serves as co-chair of the Legislative Branch XML Working Group, focusing on XML standards and practices in Congress. This may sound dry, but it’s exactly this work that makes legislative data useful across different institutions, and it is a revolution for legal tech. Kirsten works on and maintains XML initiatives, including a major initiative to create an application to write legislation in XML for the House of Representatives, which is a key ingredient in transparency and legislative monitoring. The House’s modernization of its lawmaking workflow will likely serve as a beacon for other nations and for states, so her quiet work behind the scenes will have an outsized impact around the country, and around the world, for many years to come.