Legislative data is only the beginning to understanding what Congress does and how it works. That’s why earlier this month GovTrack.us launched GovTrack Insider, a blog on Medium covering Congress’s daily activities. Each post on GovTrack Insider summarizes recent major legislative activity that would be hard to find just by looking at the official record. Recent […]
Continue reading... June 17, 2015
It’s Time for Congress to Publish CRS Reports
This morning the New York Times editorialized in favor of public access to Congressional Research Service reports. Given the extreme partisanship and gridlock in Congress, it’s more crucial than ever to have an informed electorate. Putting these reports in the public domain is an important step toward that goal. Over the years our coalition has submitted testimony […]
Continue reading... June 12, 2015
Senate Preview of the Next Day’s Floor Schedule and Activity Wrap-up
While leadership for Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives send email floor alerts for the upcoming day’s legislative activities (and House Dems have a neat new mobile app), the Senate does not. Senate Democrats and Republicans publish on the web a daily summary of the prior day’s activities and what they expect will […]
Continue reading... June 12, 2015
Meet “Whip Watch”
Yesterday congressional Democrats released “Whip Watch,” an app that provides the public (and congressional staffers) a real-time mobile view into the Democrats’ whip operation. Most notably, it includes a live floor feed showing upcoming votes, with links to bills and amendments, and an extensive list of job announcements for House Democratic offices. Also included are the […]
Continue reading... June 11, 2015
Legislink Goes Back in Time (and Bicameral)
The free roll call vote comparison tool Legislink has gone bicameral and back in time. It now is possible to compare roll call votes in the House and Senate going back to 1990. Previously, the site only worked for the House and only went back to 2003. Developer Joe Carmel extended the vote data by […]
Continue reading... June 10, 2015
Legisletters: A Hub for Congressional Correspondence
This week GovLab beta launched a new tool, Legisletters, which automatically gathers congressional correspondence with agencies and publishes it in a searchable, user-friendly interface. The project is the brainchild of Travis Moore and Andrew Miller, with some advice from me, and was magnificently developed by John Krauss at GovLab.
Continue reading... June 3, 2015
Events announcement: Learn Akoma Ntoso
Here is information about three upcoming events concerning Akoma Ntoso and Legal XML for Semantic Web techniques.
Continue reading... May 28, 2015
Congress and HTTPS
Earlier this week our friends at the Sunlight Foundation released a report that concluded “only 15 percent of congressional websites are HTTPS ready.” The use of HTTPS reduces the risk of interception or modification of user interactions with government online services. Coincidentally, building a congressional HTTPS dashboard is on our congressional tools wish list, and I was […]
Continue reading... May 21, 2015
Learning from #Hack4Congress
The Tuesday, May 12 #Hack4Congress awards ceremony at the House of Representatives’ majestic Judiciary Committee hearing room was the culmination of a 6 month long effort to engage technologically savvy members of the public with making Congress more open and efficient. The three winners of congressional data hackathons in Cambridge, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. […]
Continue reading... May 19, 2015
Emerging Standards of Parliamentary Accountability Panel Discussion
by Júlia Keserű The 3rd International Open Government Data Conference in Ottawa is part of a full week of open data events. Alongside the pre-conference events, the National Democratic Institute, the Sunlight Foundation, and the Latin American Network on Legislative Transparency, as core partners in OpeningParliament.org, a community of civic organizations dedicated to opening up parliamentary data, will […]
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