The Library of Congress announced at the latest Congressional Data Task Force that the next public forum for Congress.gov will take place on September 24 from 1:00-3:00 PM. This forum is an opportunity for the public and the congressional community to provide feedback about the website.
Previous forums can be accessed on Congress.gov, and additional information will be available at the same link and on the Legislative Branch Innovation Hub.
The Congressional Data Task Force reconvened in a beautiful new location in the Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress on June 11. The meeting demonstrated how far CDTF has grown into a collaborative forum that facilitates legislative branch modernization. Most participating legislative branch support offices used their meeting slot to demo powerful platforms they’ve built for congressional users or preview coming attractions. We in civil society, working on the other side of the congressional firewall, were excited and appreciative that staff gave us a peek at their accomplishments through the demos, some of which were shared publicly for the first time.
AI and parliamentary modernization were front and center at a three-day conference hosted by the Houses of the Oireachtas — the Irish Parliament — and Bússola Tech during the first week of June. Bússola Tech is a global think tank based in Brazil focused on the modernization of parliaments. They work to strengthen peer-to-peer collaboration and knowledge sharing between the parliamentary community and practitioners, and co-host events with parliaments, NGOs, and multi-lateral organizations.
This conference touched on a wide variety of issues common to representative bodies, no matter their structure, relating to data management and the adoption of AI. More than sixty attendees from dozens of parliaments joined, including representatives from the United States. Participants included secretaries general — the senior civil servant in a chamber, roughly equivalent to the Clerk of the House — committee clerks, parliamentary counsels, legislative administrators, parliamentary technologists, and a handful of representatives from NGOs focused on parliamentary modernization.
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This time, we highlight a project launched by Candace Moix and Julie Lin, two alumnae of the TechCongress program, to provide a free, robust digital advocacy platform called MyCapitol.ai. AGI supports leveling the informational playing field when it comes to Congress, so this is a very exciting project not only for under-resourced advocacy groups and nonprofits, but congressional staff, too.
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For this issue of Make Space, we highlight Capitol Labs’ comprehensive congressional hearing database. It’s the work of Jason Lemons, former VP at Prolegis and House staffer. Lemons described the project to me as an experiment in assembling a comprehensive set of data related to hearings under one hood. It builds upon what is available from the Library of Congress via Congress.gov APIs and committee videos to make the record of the hearing much more accessible and allow for analysis in ways that only otherwise exist on expensive subscription platforms.
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Our first featured project is from one of the legends in congressional data and data journalism, Derek Willis of the Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. This spring, he released Congress Press, a spiffy update of his efforts to collect and share congressional members’ press releases he first started at ProPublica.
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The community of people inside and outside Congress who are tinkering with different legislative datasets and code to produce useful tools is growing rapidly. It’s a sign of the success of efforts like the Congressional Data Task Force and Congressional Hackathon and open mindedness of stakeholders across the House and Senate to encourage experimentation. That community is still somewhat decentralized, though, so discovering new projects can be a challenge.
To that end, we’re starting a new semi-regular series to highlight individual projects large and small called Maker Space to build greater awareness of the cool stuff out there.
Continue readingThe Congressional Data Task Force convened March 20, benefiting from a nice venue upgrade inside the Capitol Visitor Center. These quarterly meetings highlight the great collaborative work taking place behind the scenes across legislative branch offices to unlock the enormous amount of information about what Congress is doing and has done in the past. It’s work that levels the playing field for members of Congress, legislative staff, and the public in terms of situational awareness and deeper institutional knowledge, which is why we think it’s so important.
Summaries of previous CDTF meetings can be found on the website using the “Congressional Data Task Force” tag.
Continue readingStarting in February, we began compiling a list of legislative branch technology projects deployed both inside and outside Congress. This is a living document, and contributions are welcome—please add any projects you’re aware of.
On Tuesday, March 24, 2026, I gave a presentation at George Washington University’s Open Source Conference on finding legislative data. The slides from that presentation are below.