In March and April we ran an experiment to see if citizens could come together to write a “group letter” to Congress. Yesterday I took a trip down to Capitol Hill to deliver the letter to Members of Congress. Read it all..

Recently the Senate decided to update its website so that it shares roll call vote data with other websites, like GovTrack, in a more technologically friendly way. I’ve been pushing this for the past couple of years, along with others, and it’s great news to finally see this change. Read on for more and other recent press coverage. Read it all..

A new site, Filibusted.us, sheds some new light into the filibustering process in the Senate. Actually it’s not filibustering so much as group action to obstruct progress. Filibusted.us was the well-deserved winner of Sunlight Foundation’s Apps for America contest and draws data from GovTrack.us to show which Members of Congress are obstructing progress. I’m going to take this opportunity to talk about the state of the filibuster and cloture vote, below the fold. [Update: Fixed link.] Read it all..

Our experiment in creating a group letter to Congress opposing HR 45, a gun control bill, is nearing its final stage, and I’ve been very impressed with the process. (I announced the experiment in March.) Plus we’re starting up two more letters. Read on for how to sign on to the letter, and for more. Read it all..

Here are a few changes that happened on GovTrack recently: Social Action links, subject terms update, Leader-Follower scores for representatives, searching by sponsorship in archival data, more maps widgets, and a new Developers section. Read on for more. Read it all..

Last week GovTrack launched an experiment using MixedInk, the collaborative writing tool, to see how members of the GovTrack community could come together to write a joint letter to congressmen. A large problem facing Congress is their inability to keep up with constituent communication, as the rise of electronic communications to Congress has far outpaced the increases in their office budgets. One of the many ways to address this problem is to have constituents come together on a single letter, an aggregated communication. Petitions were the aggregated letter of the past. In the future, we will see the letter actually being written collaboratively, and this is what GovTrack’s first-of-its-kind experiment is about. Read it all..

This past weekend was very busy for me. I gave two presentations on the Hill about how GovTrack can be useful for staffers for Members of Congress. Some notes are posted here. After that I gave presentations to a diverse group during a conference on how semantic web technology can be used for civic data and on open government data standards and expectations

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Congress is fiercely debating the latest economic recovery legislation, H.R. 1: and at 700 pages (that’s like $1 billion per page!) you should be coming straight to GovTrack for the most advanced tools to read the bill. Here’s a comparison of the House version and the latest Senate version.

Also check out the site ReadTheStimulus.org for more ways to read the bill. Read it all..

You may have seen the new YouTube channels for the House and Senate and the kind of dorky video intro from our congressional leaders, which Sunlight’s Paul Blumenthal reported on. Basically, Congress has entered the 21st century (finally) by starting to communicate with their constituents using video, which is fantastic news.

You can follow these videos on GovTrack!

1) There is a new feed dedicated to these videos, aggregating all videos posted by Members to YouTube. You can find it on the feeds page.

2) Pages for Members now highlight their latest YouTube video at the top of the page: example .

3) Feeds/Trackers for Members (which you can subscribe to directly, include with your other trackers, or get email updates for) now include their latest video postings: example.

As GovTrack continues its fifth year and we head into the new session of Congress starting in 2009, we have a bunch of new site updates to share. Read it all..