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.

Technological innovation in Congress is a core focus for the American Governance Institute because we think it helps level the informational playing field for members, advocates, and the public about what is going on in both chambers. Leadership holds tight control over information related to legislation and floor actions intentionally to manage the rank and file. Policy knowledge that could be gleaned from legislative and executive branch data, meanwhile, is underutilized by all but the best-resourced issue advocates. With changing that status quo in mind, we’re doing our part to help strengthen the congressional innovator community and soon, will contribute some tools of our own.