Sweet! You Can Track Your Senator Via RSS

By Andrew Meyer on December 12, 2007

This past year I really fell in love with RSS feeds. I love bringing everything that interests me on the Internet onto one page. It has really streamlined my life and made the time I spend on the Internet so much more efficient.

Now I can track every move Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer (my California Senators) make in the Senate. I can track every bill they introduce and every bill they vote on, including their "Ayes" and "Nays".

I'm sure you are wondering how the Federal Government in all its fat, slow and bloated glory has come to embrace such new and lithe technology.

Well, they didn't. An open source, nonprofit project called OpenCongress is behind the Senators' RSS feeds.

OpenCongress is a joint project between the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation. Their mission is to make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement.

Whoa! Now that's idealistic.

They aren't just talking the talk with their mission aim, they are also walking the walk.

When you go to the OpenCongress site or to the OpenCongress blog, you are quickly amazed at how fresh and engaging they have made representation and legislation.

Who thought that a bill named H.R.3648 - Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 could be presented in such an engaging way???

I actually woke up this morning and quickly flipped through the bills my Senators had introduced and voted on in the past 24 hours. Amazing.

OpenCongress doesn't just have info on how your Senators are voting. They also have info on your House Representatives, legislative committees, & industries. They even have a whole section devoted to bills.

They have made everything in the bill section highly searchable and deeply informative. You can even view "Hot Bills" for the year.

Two other really cool things on OpenCongress:

1. Punch Clock Campaign - The Sunlight Foundation has been getting current Senators to sync their entire schedules with a super useful Google map mashup, complete with RSS feeds.

You can see who they have been meeting with, where the groups they have been meeting with are from, and, generally, who they have been talking to when they are not meeting with committees or voting full sessions of the House or Senate.

Read more about the Punch Clock Campaign on the OpenCongress blog here.

2. OpenCongress Facebook App - It allows you to share bills that matter to you with your friends. You can voice if you are for or against the bills and you can also comment on them. Plus, the Facebook app has links back to its OpenCongress page for more info.

Read more about the Facebook App on the OpenCongress blog here.

Get Senator Dianne Feinstein's RSS feed here and get Senator Barbara Boxer's RSS feed here.

Update: I just added California Representative Howard Berman's OpenCongress.org RSS feed to my reader thanks to a post titled "Congressman Hollywood: It's time to revisit the DMCA" I read over at Ars Technica.

In summary, he feels the DMCA needs reforming, in particular "safe harbor" provisions and the "effectiveness of takedown notices."

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