http://www.govtrack.us/blog The GovTrack blog includes site news and occasional analysis of U.S. legislation. Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:39:01 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en GovTrack has taken the plunge to Twitter. I'll be tweeting from time to time as @govtrack. Also, I've put up recommended hashtags  on the pages for bills so we can more easily track the chatter on legislation happening in the twitterverse. (It's in the blue box on the right side.) You ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/06/29/our-first-tweet-and-a-preview-of-our-latest-experiment/ National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee June 24, 2009 Witnesses: Lt. Gen. Wallace “Chip” Gregson (USMC, Retired), Assistant Secretary of Defense, Asian and Pacific Security Affairs Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan *All statements, unless otherwise noted, come from Holbrooke Overall comments Committee members emphasized that tax payer dollars must be well-spent. Holbrooke ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/06/26/house-committee-on-oversight-and-government-reform-%e2%80%9cafghanistan-and-pakistan-oversight-of-a-new-interagency-strategy%e2%80%9d/ 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 ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/06/13/two-facebook-apps-based-on-govtrack/ 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. Our first experiment with group writing resulted in this letter opposing H.R. ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/05/22/delivering-the-hr-45-group-letter/ 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 ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/05/11/upgrading-senate-technology-and-other-recent-press/ 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 ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/05/06/filibustedus-check-out-who-is-stalling-senate-action/ 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 ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/05/02/collaborative-letter-update/ 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. Subject Terms: At the start of the year the Congressional Research Service, an ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/04/06/site-updates/ 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 ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/03/16/mixedink-experiment-a-collaborative-letter-to-congress-on-hr-45/ 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 ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/03/04/how-govtrack-can-be-useful-for-capitol-hill-staff/