Press Clippings

Here are articles on GovTrack in the press, mentions of GovTrack in articles about government transparency, academic articles using GovTrack data, and other reviews and related press releases.

2013
4/24/2013 US News and World Report: Four-Term Congressman Introduces Constitutional Amendment for Term Limits, by Elizabeth Flock.
4/8/2013 The Atlantic Wire: Who Will Win on Senate Background Checks: The NRA or the Middle?, by Philip Bump.
3/30/2013 The Times of Israel: For GOP rising star, Israel and US are ‘in it together’, by Haviv Rettig Gur.
3/22/2013 The Washington Post’s The Fix: The Senate as Facebook, by Chris Cillizza.
3/18/2013 Yahoo! News: What does the Senate have in common with single-celled organisms? This diagram., by Chris Wilson.
3/7/2013 The Atlantic: How Groups Like the NRA Captured Congress—and How to Take It Back, by Lorelei Kelly.
2/27/2013 Forbes: House Republicans Take First Stab At Killing Off The Tax Code, by Tony Nitti.
1/10/2013 O’Reilly Radar Tumblr: Open data of U.S. House legislation now available in bulk format, by Alex Howard.
1/10/2013 techPresident: House Republicans Release More Data Catnip for Developers, by Nick Judd.
2012
12/6/2012 O’Reilly Radar: The United States (Code) is on Github, by Alex Howard.
10/23/2012 Daily Tekk: Vote Smarter: 28 Resources for Election 2012.
10/8/2012 Forbes: Tech To Keep You Up On Politics, by Samantha Smith.
9/19/2012 techPresident: What Congress.gov Means for a Congressional API, by Nick Judd and Miranda Neubauer.
9/5/2012 Watchdog.org: OR: Congressional delegates show strong voting records despite distance, by Shelby Sebens.
8/29/2012 InfoCommerce Group: Models Of Excellence: Innovation Around Content and Data.
8/29/2012 JewishJournal: Berman versus Sherman, by the numbers, by Bill Boyarsky.
8/23/2012 MissouriWatchdog.org: MO: Akin missed 85 percent of House votes this quarter, by Johnny Kampis.
8/23/2012 Bloomberg: Ryan’s Bipartisanship Record Shows More Civility Than Compromise, by Elizabeth Dwoskin.
8/21/2012 The Washington Post: Dennis Cardoza leaves Calif. constituents in the lurch, by WaPo Editorial Board.
8/19/2012 Powell, Eleanor Neff. 2012. Dollars to Votes: The Infuence of Fundraising in Congress.
8/13/2012 The Washington Post: Paul Ryan, Republican vice presidential candidate, has a complicated record with little compromise, by David A. Fahrenthold.
7/30/2012 PolitiFact Florida: Connie Mack says Bill Nelson missed 56 percent of his votes -- in 1990.
7/13/2012 techPresident: The Case for Political Software as a Commodity, Not a Weapon, by Sarah Lai Stirland.
7/6/2012 The Washington Examiner: Examiner publishes complete list of tariff break requests, by Jennifer Peebles.
6/24/2012 The Washington Post: Lawmakers trade in stocks they can impact.
6/12/2012 Government Technology: Low-Tech Phone Service Connects Citizens to Congressional Info, by Sarah Rich.
(Call on Congress and Scout both use GovTrack’s database of federal legislation.)
6/8/2012 The Washington Post: Congressional data may soon be easier to use online, by David A. Fahrenthold.
6/1/2012 techPresident: For Transparency Advocates, the Honeymoon with House Republicans May Be Over, by Nick Judd.
June 2012 Communications of the ACM: Data Mining Meets City Hall, by Leah Hoffmann.
5/30/2012 techPresident: Transparency Advocates Frustrated With House Appropriators' Plan To Make A Plan , by Sarah Lai Stirland.
4/10/2012 Federal Computer Week: Transparency groups say THOMAS legislative website is outdated, by Alice Lipowicz.
3/29/2012 KSFX/KOLR News (Springfield, MO): (Local News Broadcast)
3/22/2012 WYFF4 News (Greenville, SC): Are Politicians Really Trying To Create Jobs?
3/15/2012 The Atlantic: An Election 2012 Surprise: California May Matter Most, by Conor Friedersdorf.
2/29/2012 Fort Wayne Journal Gazette: Lugar, Donnelly similar in voting, by Brian Francisco.
1/17/2012 Chicago Tribune: Rush, Gutierrez rank high in missed votes, by Katherine Skiba.
2011
6/2011 Gerrish and Blei. 2011. Predicting Legislative Roll Calls from Text. Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Machine Learning, Bellevue, WA, USA, 2011.
6/13/2011 NewsMax: Weinergate Distracts Media From Real Issues, by Judith Miller.
2010
12/27/2010 ReadWriteWeb: Data Hacker Pageranks Members of the US Congress, by Marshall Kirkpatrick.
5/23/2010 Open Society Institute: Open Data Study.
2009
12/2/2009 The American: Opening a Can of Worms: Government and Climate Change Data, by James V. Delong. (It refers to my monograph Open Data Is Civic Capital.)
10/19/2009 Columbia Journalism Review: The Reconstruction of American Journalism (CJR), by Leonard Downie, Jr., The Washington Post and Arizona State University, and Michael Schudson, Columbia University.
9/28/2009 LA Times: These crusaders bring transparency to government, by Michael Hiltzik
9/9/2009 Orlando Sentinel: Alan Grayson: Is he one of Congress' top "leaders"?. Debate on the leader-follower score.
8/26/2009 Government Computer News: Apps for America 2 finalists announced, by Joab Jackson.
6/1/2009 Government Computer News: Ready for reuse? by Joab Jackson.
5/11/2009 Columbia Journalism Review: Senate goes XML, by Clint Hendler
5/6/2009 Politico: Senate picks up the slack on data, by Victoria McGrane. (Again, no mention of GovTrack, but I count this as a bit of a personal victory.)
5/4/2009 O'Reilly Broadcast: Visualizing the U.S. Senate Social Graph, 1991 - 2009 [Part 1], by Andrew Odewahn.
5/1/2009 Politico: Group wants Senate to get 'techy', by Victoria McGrane. (It doesn't mention GovTrack, but I was involved behind the scenes.)
5/9/2009 Examiner.com: Online democracy, by Alexandra de Scheel
4/30/2009 Government Computer News: Remixing government data by Joab Jackson.
4/27/2009 Politico: Online voting records user unfriendly, by Victoria McGrane
3/5/2009 Mother Jones: Congressional Data Mining: Coming Soon?, by Jonathan Stein
3/3/2009 TechNewsWorld: How to Use the Web to Track Government Goings-On, by Erika Morphy.
2/28/2009 Newsweek: The People's Data: Government should make data openly available and then let outside talent reimagine how it can be used online, by Christopher Werth.
1/10/2009 Miller-McCune: Deep Throat Meets Data Mining: In the nick of time, the digital revolution comes to democracy's rescue. And, perhaps, journalism's, by John Mecklin.
1/2009 The Atlantic: iGov: How geeks are opening up government on the Web, by Douglas McGray.
2009 Kinnaird, Rouzati, and Sun. Connect 2 congress. In IEEE Information Visualization Poster Extended Abstracts, Atlantic City, 2009.
2008
7/24/2008 linux.com: GovTrack opens up information on US legislature, by Tina Gasperson.
7/21/2008 IT Conversations: Jon Udell's Interviews with Innovators
7/16/2008 Princeton Alumni Weekly: Data Crusader: Josh Tauberer '04 is someone a policy wonk could love, by Brett Tomlinson.
7/3/2008 SemanticWeb.com: The Semantic Web and The Democratic Tradition, by Jennifer Zaino
7/3/2008 ZDNet: Seven Tech ways to make America better this July 4, by Mitch Ratcliffe
6/30/2008 TIME: The Citizen Watchdogs of Web 2.0, by Jeremy Caplan
6/3/2008 Ars Technica: Study: .gov web sites should focus on RSS, XML—not redesigns, by Timothy B. Lee
6/2008 Robinson, David, Yu, Harlan, Zeller, William P and Felten, Edward W, "Government Data and the Invisible Hand" (2008). Yale Journal of Law & Technology, Vol. 11, 2008
1/23/2008 National Journal/GovExec: Lawmakers favor outside access to legislative data, by Aliya Sternstein.
2007
8/9/2007 Sunlight Foundation: Insanely Useful Websites (by John Wonderlich and Paul Blumenthal, with an audio-intro by GovTrack's Josh Tauberer)
3/2007 Searcher: Mashups, Blogs, Wikis Go Federal (subscribers only), by Laura Gordon-Murnane.
2/13/2007 The American (online): Legislators Should Live in a Glass House (by GovTrack's creator Josh Tauberer)
2/9/2007 Sunlight Foundation Announces Open House Project
2006
7/2006 Thomas, Pang, and Lee. 2006. Get out the vote: determining support or opposition from congressional floor-debate transcripts. Proceedings of the 2006 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing.
5/9/2006 Webby Award 2006 Nominee - Politics
5/6/2006 Voice of America: Our World: Web Site of the Week
4/3/2006 The Daily Pennsylvanian: Grad student's site helps track new laws, by Katie Vasserman.
3/1/2006 The Washington Post: Think Your Lawmakers Don't Read Bills? Do It Yourself, by Zachary A. Goldfarb.
2005
2/21/2005 Accounting Today: "Government Resources"
3/3/2005 The Daily Princetonian: Tauberer '04 takes Govtrack to Capitol Hill, by Kavita Saini.
2/8/2005 BusinessWeek Online: All Your Info in One Place, by Olga Kharif.
1/27/2005 The New York Times: How Did They Vote? Updates by E-Mail of Congressional Ayes and Nays, by Daniel Terdiman.
1/13/2005 The Guardian (London): "Life: online: Blog Watch: Bill of progress"