This week we had a technical glitch that caused every bill to show up with no cosponsors. This should now be corrected.
As you may know, GovTrack derives its information from THOMAS, the website of the Library of Congress. Unfortunately, the Library of Congress does not publish legislative information in a way that makes it possible to accurately reuse the information on independent websites like GovTrack. I’ve spoken with them a number of times about it over the past 5 years, I’ve gotten legislation passed about it, but until they embrace the value of legislative data for the public this is the best anyone can do.
So what happens is that small changes to THOMAS can break our data import until we notice and fix it. That’s what happened this week.
Everything should be back to normal now. Thanks for your patience.
3 comments so far...
Can you please add a feature allowing you to sort results by the number of cosponsors? I always though it’d be interesting. Of course, you’d need to make that a percentage, or there’ll be a bias towards House bills.
I am relatively new to this site, but from what I can see you guys are doing a great job. I don’t think that the “THOMAS” site doesn’t see the value in public information, but rather they don’t want the public to see the information. For so long the Congress has been able to operate with its constituents being in the dark, but since the internet is so quick and widely used they are all running for cover. I am glad for services like yours that give transparency to Congress, so I can see for myself what is really going on. I think if more voters knew what was really happening this country would straighten out in short order. Keep up the good work!
George, that’s definitely not true. I know people that work at the Library of Congress (where THOMAS comes from) and they work hard to disseminate accurate information about Congress as best they can. To the extent they’re not doing more, it’s a matter of prioritizing the budget against other things the Library does, and fulfilling the mission Congress has given to them.
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