Get Involved!

For Citizens: Contribute to Discussion and Analysis

Legislation is complicated, but that's all the more reason to put on your thinking cap and dive into the text of bills. Especially if you are an expert in a field, you can help others go beyond the cursory coverage of legislation in the traditional media. Contribute to civic discussion by:

• Contributing to the Legislative Analysis Community Blog, which shows up on the front page of the site. See these instructions for getting involved.
• Participating in the Community Question & Answer feature of GovTrack. Look for questions about legislation that you can answer (maybe by doing some original research) and post answers to help other visitors learn about legislation they are interested in.

If you have thoughts about how GovTrack can better promote civic discourse, please join the site mail list and post your thoughts.

For Hackers: Develop Civic Technology

GovTrack is an open source project run by a small number of volunteers (more about the site), and is one of many open source projects aimed at civics and open government.

First and foremost, get connected with the developer and civic-tech-policy communities.

• Join the GovTrack mail list. If you have any ideas or make a new feature, please post a message to let others know.
• If you're on Facebook, join the group oGosh: Open Government Open Source Hacking
• You might also be interested in the discussion lists mentioned on the oGosh wiki.

We would love to have you involved in the development of GovTrack.

• Take a look at proposed project ideas for improving this site.
• Check out the source code of this website and hack an improvement.
• Email me, Josh, using the address at the bottom of the page, if you want to talk more about getting involved. I'm happy to give you pointers.

If you're interested in starting your own civic project or contributing to another project:

• Check out the source data and APIs made available by this website.
• Take a look at the list of U.S. open source civics projects ranging from federal legislative projects to judicial and elections projects.
• You may also want to create a GovTrack-type site for the politics in your own state. More information on that here.