Data Sources
Although we gather some information by hand, GovTrack pulls much of the information you see from a variety of other sources. We also make available the information we collect in a normalized XML format for other projects to reuse. For more information on that, see the Developer Documentation.
Some information comes from these official government sources:
- The Library of Congress and the Congressional Research Service via THOMAS.gov for the status legislation, subject terms of bills, bill summaries, and upcoming House committee meetings (from the Daily Digest). We have been actively campaigning Congress and the Library of Congress to publish this information in a structured data format. Until then, we “screen-scrape” their web pages, extracting the information in a semi-reliable automated way.
- The House of Representatives and the Senate for information on Members of Congress, committee membership, voting records, upcoming bills, and upcoming committee meetings.
- The House Majority Leader’s docs.house.gov website for legislation scheduled for the week ahead and upcoming House committee meetings.
- The Government Printing Office for the text of legislation and photos of members of congress from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.
- The Congressional Biographical Directory for biographical and historical information on members of Congress.
- The Census Bureau for geographic data on congressional districts.
Other federal information comes from:
- Congressional Committees, Historical Standing Committees data set by Garrison Nelson and Charles Stewart for biographical and historical information on Members of Congress, including congressional district assignments.
- Rosenthal, Howard L., and Keith T. Poole. United States Congressional Roll Call Voting Records, 1789-1990. Pittsburgh, PA: Keith T. Poole, Carnegie Mellon University, Graduate School of Industrial Administration, 1991. (1st-100th Congresses)
- Martis’s “The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress”, via Keith Poole’s roll call votes data set, for political party affiliation for Members of Congress from 1789 through about year 2000.
- The Sunlight Labs Real Time Congress API for live House activity on our Live Video page.
- The House Republican Conference for some photos of Members of Congress and their legislative summaries.
State legislative information comes from:
- LegiNation, Inc. and LegiScan, Inc.
- Some data is additionally from Open States.