Opening Congress
Though Sunshine week is over, the drive for a more open government lives on. Luckily, the crime-fighting duo of the Sunlight Foundation and Participatory Politics Foundation has given the public a sparkling new window into the murky depths of Capitol Hill. OpenCongress.org has recently moved out of beta testing, and is ready for prime time.
Join me in a quick tour through the site:
For this first screenshot, we can see the front page of OpenCongress.org. Pretty smooth and classy. Nice Web 2.0 feel.
Next, let’s utilize the search bar. Maybe look up a congressman. Let’s try “Kuhl”.
Nice, we have a sort of Google-news type listing of bits of news mentioning “Kuhl” recently. Also the site figured out that we might be thinking of Rep. John Kuhl. Very good.
I’d also like to point out that scrolling down gives you a listing of blog posts talking about “Kuhl”. And what’s that I see? Idiotic anti-Massa letter in the Elmira Star-Gazette. Where have I seen that before? 
Next, let’s explore Representative Kuhl’s page on OpenCongress. It starts off with some handy links to his full voting profile and contact information. Next, we see his picture and basic information, ending with recently sponsored legislation (complete with links).
Going down the page a bit more, one finds the basic information one would expect from the site: recent voting history, and news and blog feed of pieces mentioning Mr. Kuhl. We also, however, are treated to a “voting trends analysis”, which tells us which Republican and Democratic Representatives Mr. Kuhl votes most often with and against.
Finally, the page ends with a summation of Mr. Kuhl’s campaign fund-raising. Where did it come from? Which general industry gave the most? (Ideology/Single-Issue). The information, like most everything on the website, comes from a public source; in this case, OpenSecrets.org.
Well that concludes the quick tour.
OpenCongress can do more than give you information about Congress(wo)men and Senators. You can explore the status and backers of bills, the dynamics of committees, find bills pertaining to an area of interest, (such as technology, or education) or see which industries fund which congressmen. It’s all quite ingenious, and rather underutilized at the moment.
If you ever feel the need to call your congressman (or woman, yes.) and support a general idea, such as “more funding for education”, try looking up the education topic and searching through recent bills on that topic. My Gov/Pol teacher assures me the more specific, the better.
I want you to scrutinize your legislature. Open Government requires utilizing eyeballs.
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Great post.
Actually since you introduced me to this site a week or so ago, I’ve started using their RSS feed for a couple Congressmen… I really recommend RSS for anyone wanting to stay up to date on info.
Rad post.
Yes, thanks for bringing this to our attention. I see that Kuhl voted Aye on HR 1401, so I have to give the man credit for something (which is a first for me).
I have added my three Congresspersons to my RSS Feeds. I hope I don’t get overwhelmed in minutiae.