GovTrack.us

The GovTrack Blog

Archive for the ‘Site News’ category.

Posts about new GovTrack features, media coverage, and other site developments.

June 13, 2009

Two Facebook Apps Based on GovTrack

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: Check It Out, Site News
Josh is the guy behind GovTrack.us. Besides running GovTrack, he is a software developer and a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. More posts by Josh Tauberer.

Bring your participation in government to Facebook with two new Facebook apps, RepresentedBy and Laws I Like. These apps, written by some other civic hackers, are based (in part) on congressional data shared by GovTrack.

RepresentedBy, by Will Turnage, lets you post to your profile a box with who represents you in Congress, shows the latest bills and news related to them. You can also challenge your friends to see if they know their Members of Congress, and it has an interesting metric of how digitally-transparent your Members of Congress are.  The app was an honorable mention in Sunlight’s Apps for America Contest (1).

Laws I Like, by Chris Poliquin, lets you search for bills, vote on them, and then post your votes to your profile to tell your friends what they should get their Members of Congress to support or oppose. You can also see what bills your friends have voted on.

These are listed now on the revised Tools page on GovTrack.

OpenCongress also has a Facebook app which is similar to the above two (and OpenCongress is also based on GovTrack data).

May 22, 2009

Delivering the H.R. 45 “Group Letter”

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: Site News
Josh is the guy behind GovTrack.us. Besides running GovTrack, he is a software developer and a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. More posts by Josh Tauberer.

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..

May 11, 2009

Upgrading Senate technology and other recent press

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: Site News
Josh is the guy behind GovTrack.us. Besides running GovTrack, he is a software developer and a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. More posts by Josh Tauberer.

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..

May 2, 2009

Collaborative Letter Update

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: Site News
Josh is the guy behind GovTrack.us. Besides running GovTrack, he is a software developer and a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. More posts by Josh Tauberer.

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..

April 6, 2009

Site Updates

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: Site News
Josh is the guy behind GovTrack.us. Besides running GovTrack, he is a software developer and a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. More posts by Josh Tauberer.

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..

March 16, 2009

MixedInk experiment: A collaborative letter to Congress on H.R. 45

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: Site News
Josh is the guy behind GovTrack.us. Besides running GovTrack, he is a software developer and a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. More posts by Josh Tauberer.

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..

March 4, 2009

How GovTrack can be useful for Capitol Hill staff

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: Site News
Josh is the guy behind GovTrack.us. Besides running GovTrack, he is a software developer and a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. More posts by Josh Tauberer.

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.

January 13, 2009

Track your representative’s YouTube videos

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: Site News
Josh is the guy behind GovTrack.us. Besides running GovTrack, he is a software developer and a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. More posts by Josh Tauberer.

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.

December 20, 2008

Site Updates in September, December 2008

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: Site News
Josh is the guy behind GovTrack.us. Besides running GovTrack, he is a software developer and a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. More posts by Josh Tauberer.

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..

November 11, 2008

Seeing the other person’s side

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: Site News
Josh is the guy behind GovTrack.us. Besides running GovTrack, he is a software developer and a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. More posts by Josh Tauberer.

Sometimes I get really frustrated with politics, which has become so much about denying, oppressing, and outspending the other viewpoint rather than debate and consensus. GovTrack received this question through the bill Q&A system:

Why does anyone think our government has the right to allow women to murder their children?  What can be done to ensure this bill never passes?

and it just makes me want to shut the site down and move on with life. Read it all..