Zeno Swijtink
12-28-2008, 08:13 PM
GovTrack.us (https://www.GovTrack.us) is very much in part of the spirit of WaccoBB.net, a community project to improve political participation on a national level.
***
GovTrack announces major updates (https://www.govtrack.us/blog/2008/12/20/site-updates-in-september-december-2008/)
For immediate release! :-) Dec 21, 2008
Hyperlinked version: Site Updates in September, December 2008 : GovTrack.us (https://www.govtrack.us/blog/2008/12/20/site-updates-in-september-december-2008/)
This fall GovTrack.us, the Congress-tracking website, entered its fifth year. When I first rolled out the site in 2004, after around three years of on-and-off development, I didn't know if anyone was going to want to use it. I thought the "selling point" was merely email updates, but I had no idea that the project would turn into something a bit bigger. Today the site is viewed by around 20,000 people a day and sends out 1,000 email updates a night when Congress is in session, but it is also a data provider to neat sites like MAPLight.org and Follow The Oil Money which track the correlations of campaign contributions and votes and themiddleclass.org, an advocacy organization. Recently I have been lucky to have been joined by others in the task of improving GovTrack, as the site moves further in the direction of being a community project.
As we head into the new session of Congress starting in 2009, we have a bunch of new site updates to share:
Bill Text ---------
The bill text view has been completely overhauled by Kevin Henry, thanks to a grant from the Sunlight Foundation. Bill text pages now have hyperlinks from tables of contents to the sections later on, collapsible sections for large bills, highlighted and side-by-side view modes for viewing changes to the bill over time, the ability to compare any version to any other version of a bill, showing only sections with changes, permanent links to a particular paragraph within the bill, pop-up bubbles to show a bill in the context of the U.S. Code it modifies, and the ability to embed a particular paragraph of a bill on your website with a widget.
Community Question and Answer -----------------------------
You can now find on bill pages a box to enter questions about the bill, and to see what questions other GovTrack users have posted. Then you can answer them. It's a community effort to research legislation and help others get the facts. Take a look at the list of recent questions and answers and see if you can answer any (possibly by putting your research hat on). It's a civic good deed. Since the feature was added at the end of June, 1,200 question and 1,000 answers have been posted. Since December, you can now subscribe to a feed for the discussion just for individual bills.
Compare Voting Records ----------------------
Following on the heals of OpenCongress, you can now make a comparison of the voting records of two members of Congress, from the roll call votes page. You can also more easily get the voting record of a single member of Congress now. Since the summer, votes pages have included some cute pie charts, and, also, the time of day when the vote happened, in case you're doing some deep research.
Bill Search -----------
The advanced bill search page now lets you search by sponsor or cosponsor.
Maps ----
The Members of Congress Google maps mash-up now has a link to let you add the congressional district color overlay to your own Google Maps.
Members of Congress -------------------
The pages for Members of Congress now link out to Metavid for videos of floor speeches and list some financial statistics (top contribution and net worth $$$) from the Center for Responsive Politics (this is semi-working). Pages for representatives now also show a little map for their congressional district and a listing of the counties and towns in the district (since earlier this year).
You can now look up your congressional district and Members of Congress by a ZIP or ZIP+4 postal code. (Thanks to public.resource.org for the data! This was added earlier in the year.)
I have written a page on Tips for Commnicating With Congress. Should you write your rep? What should you include? Take a look. (This was added earlier in the year.)
Bills -----
Bills pages now show related pages based on what GovTrack users have selected as trackers (hat tip to OpenCongress who did it first). This will help you find legislation that has superseded the bill you are looking at, for instance. (This was added earlier in the year.)
The pages for bills now have a new section for committee assignments, and have new popup help bubbles for some explanation to what parts of the page mean.
Appearance & Widgets --------------------
The appearance is all new! Thanks to Dan Gabriele, the site now looks pretty professional, I would say. We rolled out initial changes in August and pushed a second update in December.
The feed and bill status widgets that you can embed on your webpage (which by the way we had first) can now be customized easier. As mentioned above, there is a new widget you can use to embed a single paragraph of a bill into your webpage/blog.
For Developers ---------------
The congressional district look-up API now supports lat/long, addresses, ZIP codes, and ZIP+4 codes and now reports the current representative for a district. You may not know about the three other APIs either: see the source data page. (Some of this was added earlier in the year.)
Looking to help in the development of GovTrack or get involved in civics? See the Help Us link at the top of GovTrack.
----
Thanks for everyone's continued interest in the site.
GovTrack.us is a non-commercial and non-partisan website run by me and isn't affiliated with any other group. The site gathers the status of U.S. federal legislation and related information from official sources using automated processes and synthesizes something new out of it.
-- - Josh Tauberer - GovTrack.us
Joshua Tauberer (https://razor.occams.info)
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
***
GovTrack announces major updates (https://www.govtrack.us/blog/2008/12/20/site-updates-in-september-december-2008/)
For immediate release! :-) Dec 21, 2008
Hyperlinked version: Site Updates in September, December 2008 : GovTrack.us (https://www.govtrack.us/blog/2008/12/20/site-updates-in-september-december-2008/)
This fall GovTrack.us, the Congress-tracking website, entered its fifth year. When I first rolled out the site in 2004, after around three years of on-and-off development, I didn't know if anyone was going to want to use it. I thought the "selling point" was merely email updates, but I had no idea that the project would turn into something a bit bigger. Today the site is viewed by around 20,000 people a day and sends out 1,000 email updates a night when Congress is in session, but it is also a data provider to neat sites like MAPLight.org and Follow The Oil Money which track the correlations of campaign contributions and votes and themiddleclass.org, an advocacy organization. Recently I have been lucky to have been joined by others in the task of improving GovTrack, as the site moves further in the direction of being a community project.
As we head into the new session of Congress starting in 2009, we have a bunch of new site updates to share:
Bill Text ---------
The bill text view has been completely overhauled by Kevin Henry, thanks to a grant from the Sunlight Foundation. Bill text pages now have hyperlinks from tables of contents to the sections later on, collapsible sections for large bills, highlighted and side-by-side view modes for viewing changes to the bill over time, the ability to compare any version to any other version of a bill, showing only sections with changes, permanent links to a particular paragraph within the bill, pop-up bubbles to show a bill in the context of the U.S. Code it modifies, and the ability to embed a particular paragraph of a bill on your website with a widget.
Community Question and Answer -----------------------------
You can now find on bill pages a box to enter questions about the bill, and to see what questions other GovTrack users have posted. Then you can answer them. It's a community effort to research legislation and help others get the facts. Take a look at the list of recent questions and answers and see if you can answer any (possibly by putting your research hat on). It's a civic good deed. Since the feature was added at the end of June, 1,200 question and 1,000 answers have been posted. Since December, you can now subscribe to a feed for the discussion just for individual bills.
Compare Voting Records ----------------------
Following on the heals of OpenCongress, you can now make a comparison of the voting records of two members of Congress, from the roll call votes page. You can also more easily get the voting record of a single member of Congress now. Since the summer, votes pages have included some cute pie charts, and, also, the time of day when the vote happened, in case you're doing some deep research.
Bill Search -----------
The advanced bill search page now lets you search by sponsor or cosponsor.
Maps ----
The Members of Congress Google maps mash-up now has a link to let you add the congressional district color overlay to your own Google Maps.
Members of Congress -------------------
The pages for Members of Congress now link out to Metavid for videos of floor speeches and list some financial statistics (top contribution and net worth $$$) from the Center for Responsive Politics (this is semi-working). Pages for representatives now also show a little map for their congressional district and a listing of the counties and towns in the district (since earlier this year).
You can now look up your congressional district and Members of Congress by a ZIP or ZIP+4 postal code. (Thanks to public.resource.org for the data! This was added earlier in the year.)
I have written a page on Tips for Commnicating With Congress. Should you write your rep? What should you include? Take a look. (This was added earlier in the year.)
Bills -----
Bills pages now show related pages based on what GovTrack users have selected as trackers (hat tip to OpenCongress who did it first). This will help you find legislation that has superseded the bill you are looking at, for instance. (This was added earlier in the year.)
The pages for bills now have a new section for committee assignments, and have new popup help bubbles for some explanation to what parts of the page mean.
Appearance & Widgets --------------------
The appearance is all new! Thanks to Dan Gabriele, the site now looks pretty professional, I would say. We rolled out initial changes in August and pushed a second update in December.
The feed and bill status widgets that you can embed on your webpage (which by the way we had first) can now be customized easier. As mentioned above, there is a new widget you can use to embed a single paragraph of a bill into your webpage/blog.
For Developers ---------------
The congressional district look-up API now supports lat/long, addresses, ZIP codes, and ZIP+4 codes and now reports the current representative for a district. You may not know about the three other APIs either: see the source data page. (Some of this was added earlier in the year.)
Looking to help in the development of GovTrack or get involved in civics? See the Help Us link at the top of GovTrack.
----
Thanks for everyone's continued interest in the site.
GovTrack.us is a non-commercial and non-partisan website run by me and isn't affiliated with any other group. The site gathers the status of U.S. federal legislation and related information from official sources using automated processes and synthesizes something new out of it.
-- - Josh Tauberer - GovTrack.us
Joshua Tauberer (https://razor.occams.info)
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)