One unemployment bill before the U.S. Congress has generated more than 17,000 comments, thanks to one of many sites using technology to increase transparency, accountability, and participation in government.
OpenCongress aims to make everyone a political insider. It gives readers access to more detail and depth of information than traditional news stories. The free, open source, nonpartisan site does so by combining traditional news stories, summaries of bills, sponsors, status, roll calls on the latest issues put up for votes, and an area for user comments.
The site is a project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation. David Moore, executive director of PPF, spoke about the site at the Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York on Monday.
He said there is "a disconnect" between traditional reporting on political issues and the substance, with few stories pointing to or linking to the text of the bills they cover. Congress' own digital library system for bills, Thomas, provides the full text of the bills, but the language is arcane and inaccessible to some.
OpenCongress provides simpler language, context, and analysis by including blogs, news stories, and message boards. It uses Google News, Google Blog Search, and Technorati to scour the Web for political news. The site also ranks issues in terms of popularity and gives readers an idea of which bills are most contentious.
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