Enabling efficiency, collaboration and transparency
About Xcential Legislative Technologies
We transform the drafting, amending, publishing and codification of legislation, regulations and other critical government documents from antiquated 19th and 20th century technology – pencils, paper, word processors and PDFs – into the machine-processable, cloud-ready and digitally efficient platform required by today’s government counsel and citizens.
Our products enable greater efficiency, collaboration and transparency in the creation of content at the core of government.
Xcential Legislative Technologies has helped solve legislative and regulatory drafting challenges around the world since 2002. That’s when Xcential’s co-founders, Grant Vergottini and Bradlee Chang, began work on modernizing the California Legislature’s drafting system.
Starting in 2004, every legislative proposal moving through the California legislature has been drafted, amended and, if approved, published and codified on systems and software designed by Xcential.
Today – while continuing to support and help the California Legislative Counsel Bureau stay at the forefront of legislative technology, creating ever greater transparency for citizens and better work processes for drafters, representatives and staff – Xcential is bringing its consulting expertise and LegisPro product line to projects at the U.K. and Scottish Parliaments, the U.S. House, the U.S. Government Publishing Office and elsewhere around the world.
We believe in the promulgation of the international XML standard for legislative and regulatory documents, Akoma Ntoso (also known as LegalDocML, and its related U.S. standard, USLM). Vergottini, who drives the company’s technical vision, has been an active participant in the creation of Akoma Ntoso and led our work on the creation of USLM for the U.S. House.
With headquarters in Encinitas, Calif., our team of experts in XML, JavaScript and related development tools is spread around the globe, from Palo Alto to Montreal, Washington D.C. to Bonn. We have partnerships with the top-level providers of both government workflow tools – Azeus Ltd. – and government and legal information products – LexisNexis AU.
Xcential Leadership
Grant Vergottini
Co-founder & CEO
Grant is a leading authority on applications of XML data to legislation, regulations and government documents. Prior to founding Xcential, Grant was the director of applications at Chrystal Software, a provider of XML-based content management systems and other web-based applications. He is a member of the LegalDocML technical design committee of OASIS – the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, an industry consortium – which focuses on creating XML standards and best practices among the world’s legislative institutions. He regularly serves as an instructor at the University of Bologna’s LEX School in Ravenna, Italy, providing training in Akoma Ntoso and XML standards for the lawmaking process.
Bradlee Chang
Co-founder & COO
With more than 25 years of experience in the software industry, Brad leads our legislative system modernization projects with the U.S. House, the GPO, California and other governments around the world. Prior to co-founding Xcential, he worked with Xerox’s Advanced Systems Group, developing new capabilities for next-generation office systems. He led the spin-off of Chrystal Software and its XML content management technology – a step which later led to Xcential’s founding. He leads our teams of experts in data analysis and legislative systems design, development and support.
Mark W.C. Stodder
President
Mark is a leader and builder of specialized information businesses, with more than 30 years of experience in the publishing and information services sector. He is the former EVP-Business Information of Dolan Media Company where he led the company’s $90 million multi-local publishing operations, spanning 21 markets with digital and specialized B2B and legislative information products. A former reporter and editor, he has long been involved in efforts to expand government transparency and access to government information. A former chairman of the Student Press Law Center and director of the National Newspaper Association, Mark is an active supporter of student journalism and First Amendment education programs.
Ari Hershowitz
Director of Open Government
Ari works closely with our legislative and regulatory customers on the development and implementation of transformative amending, conversion and document comparison software. He is also an entrepreneur, founding Tabulaw, a web-based legal research and writing platform. Ari earlier worked to protect wildlife and habitats from Chile to Mexico as director of the BioGems project for Latin America at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Ari has a law degree from Georgetown, a masters in Computation and Neural Systems from Caltech, and a bachelors in Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry from Yale College.