OpenCongress Tools
OpenCongress Facebook Application
With the OpenCongress Facebook app, you can put bills that interest you on your Facebook profile. It's an easy way to tell your friends which pieces of legislation you are following. You can also add a comment about why you think the bill is important.
"Congress, I'm Watching" Widget
Use this page to create a widget for your website that displays info about bills you support, oppose, or both. Let Congress know where you stand! It's an easy way to keep your community up-to-date on the bills that are important to you. Grab one today and help us build effective public oversight of Congress. For an example of how it looks, please see our sample.
Congress Trends Widget
You can easily display information from OpenCongress on your website. With this free widget, your visitors can follow the latest trends in Congress: the most-viewed bills, Senators and Representatives most written-about on blogs, the top search terms on OpenCongress, and much more. For an example of how it looks, please see our sample.
Bill Status Widget
Use this page to make a free widget for your website or blog that displays the status of any bill in Congress, as well as info about its sponsors, links to the bill itself, and the bill's news and blog coverage. It's an easy way for you and your community to stay updated on important bills and track any bill's status in the Congressional pipeline. For an example of how it looks, please see our sample.
Issue Area Widget
Use this page to make a free widget for your webpage or blog that displays information about an issue area you care about. Select from over 4,000 different issue areas here on OpenCongress, and choose to display either the most recent bills or the most-viewed bills in that issue area. For an example of how it looks, please see our sample.
OpenCongress Data Partners
GovTrack
Official bill information on OpenCongress is provided by GovTrack, an independent, non-partisan, non-commercial website founded in September 2004. GovTrack brings together information on the status of federal legislation, voting records, and other congressional data from official sources.
OpenSecrets
Campaign contribution information on OpenCongress is provided by OpenSecrets, the website of the Center for Responsive Politics. The CRP is a non-partisan, non-profit research group based in Washington, D.C. that tracks money in politics, and its effect on elections and public policy.
Technorati
Blog coverage on OpenCongress is provided in part by Technorati, which searches and organizes blogs and other forms of independent, user-generated content. Additional news and blog coverage on OpenCongress is provided by Google News and Google Blog Search.
Other Resources for Government Transparency
OpenMass.org
OpenMass.org is an independent public resource website created by Jim Caralis. Modeled on OpenCongress, OpenMass uses our open-source website code in presenting data from the website of the Massachusetts state legislature alongside news and blog coverage. We're very excited by OpenMass, which is also in beta, and also a non-profit project, though not affiliated with OpenCongress. We hope to see the OpenCongress model extend to state, local, and other levels, and we'll be working with Jim Caralis to document more of his process in creating OpenMass.
MAPLight.org
MAPLight.org brings together campaign contributions and how legislators vote, providing an unprecedented window into the connections between money and politics. Now, individuals and reporters can quickly determine how closely a vote in Congress correlates with special-interest contributions. OpenCongress is proud to work alongside sites like MAPLight in creating tools for further government transparency and civic engagement.
Sunlight Labs
Sunlight Labs is a Sunlight Foundation pilot project to prototype tech ideas to improve government transparency and political influence disclosure. A current major focus is working with the such partners developing APIs � Application Program Interfaces � which allows one program to talk to another and share data.
