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.