New From OpenCongress: Wiki, Video, Inline Commenting on Bills and More

March 5, 2009, 4:48 p.m.

Our colleagues behind OpenCongress are unveiling some significant new features to make it easier than ever to keep track of your legislators and the issues you care about. What's being unveiled today will provide great depth to your experience on the site.

Fans of Congresspedia (which has now been merged with OpenCongress) can now collaborate on the new OpenCongressWiki to share knowledge about every senator, representative and major piece of legislation in Congress. What was formerly housed at Congresspedia is now exclusively on OpenCongress, so make sure to reset your bookmarks!

OpenCongress now has video! Get better context for what was said on the House and Senate floor, courtesy of Sunlight grantee Metavid, the open source video archive of the U.S. Congress, and the YouTube hubs for the House and Senate. Think of it this way: Metavid is to C-SPAN as OpenCongress is to THOMAS. Now, for every senator, representative, and major bill in Congress, OpenCongress shows you embedded video footage of relevant floor speeches, official announcements and more.

There is a new new inline bill commenting feature, so now it’s now easier to give precise feedback on legislation in the appropriate sections. For every bill in Congress, you can now make comments and spark discussion on specific blocks of text within a bill. Just scroll over any section of bill text, and the option to leave a comment will appear. After you leave a comment, a marker will show up next to the block of text you commented on so that everyone who reads through the bill knows that they can click through to view your comment.

Get the full scoop on these features and more from OpenCongress.

PDF Day 2

Ellen Miller

June 24, 2008, 11:54 a.m.

PDF on Day Two is great. Great morning presentations by Lessig and Zittrain (two folks whose work I already know) and two excellent ones from folks who are new to me -- Doug Rushkoff and Morley Winograd.

We had a great press briefing yesterday, showing off our Lawmaker Profiler and the work of OpenCongress.org and Metavid. Several good stories resulted (Links coming) Today, Speechology.org, a Sunlight mini-grantee, is launching their site. Founders Dan and Matt created Speechology as a community-based fact checker for campaign season television. They're archiving every debate and campaign TV ad, and inviting the public to cut through the candidates' rhetoric and call them out when they fudge facts. Their aim is to create a viewer's guide for this election year and beyond.

C-SPAN Makes Video More Available

Ellen Miller

Sept. 11, 2007, 2:53 p.m.

It looks like C-SPAN is now publishing a new index of its House and Senate floor proceedings -- The C-SPAN Congressional Chronicle. According to them the video recordings are matched with the text of the Congressional Record as soon as the Record is available. It only includes members who appeared on the floor to deliver or insert their remarks. The text included is what the member submitted. Each appearance has a video link where users can watch and listen to the actual statements. This is great progress!

We asked our grantee, Metavid, to check it out and tell us how far C-SPAN's new index advances the transparency of what happens on the floor and they reported back that this is a big step, providing a slew of additional timed "metadata" (bill data, index to congressional record) that they can use to enrich their archive. The C-SPAN site is using the Congressional Record with archivists manually syncing up the record with the daily proceeding at per speaker granularity.[1] The closed caption based search which Metavid uses allows people to zero in on matching sections of video quicker but the official record is generally more accurate. Using both should greatly enhance the Metavid search functionality and may help illuminate the revision and extension of remarks that lawmakers are always taking about.

News from Sunlight

Ellen Miller

April 12, 2007, 2 p.m.

We are making two annoucements this afternoon: a second round of grants for 2007 (including two grants from our Mini-grant program), and a new member of the Board of Directors -- Craig Newmark. Craig is the founder and customer service representative for Craigslist, and one of the initial members of our Advisory Board. Craig is a visionary, and he has an understanding of power of the Internet technology that is nearly unrivaled. We couldn't be happier to have him assume a more formal role in guiding the Sunlight Foundation.

We are also very excited about the grant making opportunities that have come our way.