Sunlight Foundation

WASHINGTON, DC – The Sunlight Foundation today launched a new search engine called LOUIS – the Library Of Unified Information Sources – to improve public access to federal documents through an all-inclusive, catalogued and cross-referenced collection of official documents from the executive and legislative branches of government.

"Investigative reporters, bloggers, and concerned citizens are challenged to find federal documents across the varied official legislative and executive branch Web sites," said Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation. "Taking its name and inspiration from Justice Louis Brandeis, Sunlight created LOUIS to give citizens a one-stop, Google-like ability to search across disparate information sources in order to examine the workings of the federal government."

LOUIS makes it easy to search from a collection of over 300,000 documents from seven sets of federal documents dating back to 2001: the Congressional Record, congressional bills and resolutions, congressional reports, congressional hearings, GAO reports, presidential documents and the Federal Register. LOUIS, which updates its document depository daily, even allows users to set up a "standing query" as an RSS feed, to get alerts every time Congress or the executive branch takes action that references the subject of the initial query.

LOUIS differs from official government Web sites like THOMAS in that all of its data is available in a standardized, structured format. Likewise, Sunlight also made available the LOUIS API – Web access methods that any computer programmer can use to build their own application using the database and the computer code that powers LOUIS.

Founded in January, 2006, the mission of the Sunlight Foundation is to strengthen the relationship between lawmakers and their constituents. Sunlight puts information and tools in citizens' hands so they can learn more about what Congress and their elected representatives are doing. Its ultimate goal is full transparency by Congress, its Members and staff will help reduce corruption, ensure greater accountability, and foster public trust in this vital institution of democracy.

Since its founding, the Sunlight Foundation has issued nearly $2 million to groups to digitize existing information about Congress and those that use Internet technology to further Sunlight's goals. Additionally, the Sunlight Foundation has fostered its own projects such as Congresspedia, OpenCongress.org and Congress' Family Business.
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