Now that we've seen the final Rules package that the House will pass later today, we can talk about what's changing with a little more certainty.

Late this summer, we released a detailed set of recommendations for Rules changes, and we're delighted by how many of those changes will be incorporated into the House Rules.

Final Bill Availability: As Lisa noted yesterday, the public will have a much better chance of being able to read bills before they're considered on the floor. While House Rules are waivable, and this one is by no means ironclad, we have probably, finally, moved beyond the dispiriting spectacle of voting on bills which haven't been posted online first.

Sunlight has long been the leading force behind the ReadtheBill movement.

New Committee Responsibility for Electronic Publication: The new Rules give the Committee on House Administration (CHA) responsibility for setting standards for how documents are made available online. This dovetails nicely with the new bill publishing that will now be happening, and it's heartening that someone will be specifically responsible for how information is posted online. Today's Rules have a number of first steps, and CHA will have its work cut out for it in working through online publication for the House.

This closely echoes chapter 12 of our 2007 Open House Project report.

Committee Hearing Notice: Sunlight has long called for structured, online advanced notice of committee hearings. The new rules require a week's notice before hearings, and three days notice before meetings. This notice is required to be "publicly available in electronic form."

Markup Text: Committees are now required to post copies of legislation to be "publicly available in electronic form" at least 24 hours before markups.

Committee Votes Online: Maybe this perennial fight can now end -- the new Rules require committees to post all recorded votes online. This was in the 2007 Open House Project report, and in our recent Rules package.

Committee Amendments Online: Amendments adopted in committee must now be posted online within 24 hours.

New Disclosure for Testimony: Anyone testifying in the House will now not only submit disclosures to the House, but those will be posted online as well. This provision was in our Rules package.

Committee Rules: Committees must now post their committee rules online, another Sunlight recommendation.

Committee Coverage: The House Rules now require committees to broadcast their proceedings, with the caveat that is the phrase "to the maximum extent practicable." The wording implies both live and archived access to proceedings.

Votes in the Rules Committee: The Rules Committee will no longer enjoy an exemption to the requirement that they put their recorded votes into committee reports. (Another Sunlight recommendation.)

Electronic Devices on the Floor: Electronic devices are now allowed on the House floor, as long as they don't impair decorum.

Press Treatment: Provisions that singled out specific media organizations or types of media organziations for access to official proceedings have been broadened. (Another Sunlight recommendation.)

Oversight Plans: The House started posting committees' oversight plans more reliably during the 111th Congress, after our urging, and the 112th House Rules broaden committees' required activity reports, and also increase their frequency.

Interim Online Posting: Until the House Admin Committee determines a central location, bills will be posted online on the Rules Committee site, or on majority committee sites.

Office of Congressional Ethics: The Office of Congressional Ethics will continue to function in the 112th Congress, as Daniel recently noted, and Sunlight pushed for.

Exercise Facilities: Lobbyists (or former Members married to lobbyists) are now further restricted from the House exercise facilities.

Via Boehner's twitter feed, it looks like OCE will survive the transition to the 112th Congress. Here's the CNN story.

CNN is also reporting that a draft of the House Rules for the 112th Congress will be posted tomorrow.

We'll be following the draft closely, since Sunlight released a comprehensive Rules reform package.

To watch for, in addition to the very welcome OCE update: whether a 72 Hour ReadtheBill rule is included, and what kind of new information is required from committees.

Everyone's writing about politicians these days -- especially these days -- so Sunlight's developed a tool to help enliven that article, blog post or comment. Our thinking was that when you write about a member of Congress, you should be able to insert contextual information about who funds their campaigns, who gets their earmarks and the like, into a blog post or news article as easily as you can embed a YouTube video. We designed our Politiwidgets to do just that.

We have ten free Politiwidgets that can help you display lawmakers' top campaign contributors, earmarks they have requested, their voting record on any current bill, where their fundraisers are, etc. They are all based on data from groups like the Center for Responsive Politics so you know they're factually correct and contain the very latest information. They’re completely customizable too so you can selected the size and color or each widget. Plus, you never have to refresh the data. We do that for you on the ‘backend’ of your widget daily. If you’re writing about any member of Congress, instead of just putting up the same-old picture of a Representative or Senator, you can use a Politiwidget to give your readers an interactive way to learn more about them, and perhaps do some of their own investigative work.

When the Sunlight Labs created these Politiwidgets, we were challenged by our funder, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, to ensure that 50 websites used them by Election Day (November 2, 2010). Today we have 106 sites that have implemented Politwidgets into their reporting routine!

Sites have used Politiwidgets as a way to easily show information about incumbents in their area such as the Afro-American Newspaper, a news provider in the Baltimore/DC region, on its Afro’s Election 2010 page. WNYMedia used three of our geo-location Politiwidgets on the right rail of their site to show anyone looking at their site their members of Congress' earmarks, contributions and contact information.

In a nutshell, no matter how the widgets have been used, we have doubled our goal of placements for this election cycle. But we feel that we aren't quite done! Sunlight wants our Politiwidgets to become the part of every political blogger’s and reporter’s routine. So go and get more. Really try to work them into your sites in the last few days before the election.

And after this election is completed, we'll be preparing the Politiwidgets for the 112th Congress. We'd love to know what other information you’d like to see. We promise it will be as timely and as accurate as possible.