Transparency in government is key for a healthy representative democracy.
GovTrack.us is a nexus of information about the United States Congress. Bringing together information on the status of federal legislation, voting records, and other congressional data from official sources, and turning it into an understandable and trackable free information resource for everyday citizens, GovTrack aims to narrow the divide between the public and our government. This site serves as both a research tool as well as a customizable Congress-tracker, by providing email updates and RSS/Atom feeds for all aspects of Congress.
An independent, non-partisan, non-commercial website founded in September 2004, GovTrack.us was a 2006 Webby Award nominee and has been mentioned in both The New York Times and The Washington Post. GovTrack was inspired by other websites, such as Project Vote Smart and OpenSecrets, and even the commercial CapWiz, and when it was founded, GovTrack was unique in what it provided for free directly to the politically interested, civic-minded average Joe. Since then, other websites have followed in GovTrack’s footsteps, notably OpenCongress and The Washington Post’s vote database.
GovTrack indexes all bills in the Congress and all roll call votes. You can search bills by name, number, and subject, and can track bills and votes by RSS feeds. The full text of legislation shows the changes made to the bill through the legislative process and includes links directly to relevant parts of the United States Code.
Legislative events, like the introduction of a bill or the vote on a bill, are automatically categorized into thousands of subject areas, such as “nuclear energy” and “medicine,” so that users can subscribe to follow just the events that interest them. These events are sent to users on a daily or weekly basis by email, or through daily-updated RSS/Atom feeds. To get started, understand how to use “Trackers” or search bills by subject.
You can also use GovTrack to track your senators and representative. Start by finding your representatives with our Google Maps mash-up.
GovTrack believes information about the government should be free and open. In that spirit, all of the raw data that GovTrack collects and organizes is made available for others to reuse to create other projects; that is, to make the same information as useful and accessible as possible.
The Sunlight Foundation was founded in January 2006 with the goal of using the revolutionary power of the Internet and new information technology to enable citizens to learn more about what Congress and their elected representatives are doing, and thus help reduce corruption, ensure greater transparency and accountability by government, and foster public trust in the vital institutions of democracy. We are unique in that technology and the power of the Internet are at the core of every one of our efforts.
Transparency International, the global civil society organisation leading the fight against corruption, brings people together in a powerful worldwide coalition to end the devastating impact of corruption on men, women and children around the world. TI’s mission is to create change towards a world free of corruption.
GovernmentDocs.org was created to advance the values of open and accountable government. This site gives the public an unprecedented level of access to government documents by allowing users to browse, search, and review hundreds of thousands of pages acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other public disclosure, or “sunshine,†laws.
With the GovernmentDocs.org system, citizen reviewers can engage in the government accountability process like never before. Registered users can review and comment on documents, adding their insights and expertise to the work of the national nonprofit organizations which are partnering on this project. This new information then becomes instantly searchable. The text of each document is searchable, as well, thanks to a powerful Optical Character Recognition (OCR) functionality.
GovernmentDocs.org adds a powerful layer to government transparency and accountability by indexing documents in a user-friendly manner that is remarkably easy to share. Every page of every document has its own unique url, allowing you and other users to link to that page on blogs, send emails about the documents to friends, and expose the information to a wider audience. Become a citizen reviewer today.
2005 OMB Earmark Data cleaned by Sunlight Labs, with visualizations produced via Many Eyes.
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit organization dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on issues of public concern. The Center is non-partisan and non-advocacy. We are committed to transparent and comprehensive reporting both in the United States and around the world.
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