Ultimate “What’s Happening in Congress” Aggregator
Talk about an ideal web 2.0 mashup for our clients and the constituents they serve: OpenCongress. From their About page:
OpenCongress brings together official government information with news and blog coverage to give you the real story behind what’s happening in Congress.
The site aggregates bill information, senators and representatives, vote tracking history, and what’s happening in the news and blogosphere. In essence, it aggregates all the info made available from government sources and pairs that up wiht relevant news and blogs. They aggregate using GovTrack.us, Google News, Google Blog Search, and Technorati. Very nice site, rich in functionality, easy UI and organization to get the information that interests you and all related information easily. Plus, you can customize and save off your searches, or pull an RSS feed based on your own defined criteria.
As a civic-minded constituent and voter, OpenCongress is an invaluable resource. Looking to the needs of the non-profit organizations we serve: imagine crafting an RSS feed for a particular issue or legislator, and importing that into a webpage. All an org needs to do is write their own position on the issue, link this to a campaign (e.g. take action, write a letter, or donate now), and then populate the rest of the page via RSS import with good content that’s already been aggregated from OpenCongress. Why do extra work when other great applications do it for you?