As Congress returns for their July session, the Sunlight Foundation is excited to announce our free Congress app for iOS devices that allows anyone to get the latest from Washington. Download it here. Now it is easy to learn more about your member of Congress, contact them directly and see their activities right from your phone. Follow the latest legislation, floor activity and even get a breakdown of votes with just a swipe and tap. The new Congress app for iOS has many more features in development and complements the immensely popular version for Android.

When you launch the app, you’ll go right to a feed of the latest activity. Tap on a piece of legislation and you can see the summary information, sponsorship details, movement through committees, votes and links to the full text. Easily swipe to the left to access the menu of other features. Under the legislators tab, you can quickly browse the list of members sorted by state, chamber or even tap the location icon to see who represents your current spot or wherever you drop a pin. There is no shame in endlessly dropping new pins to discover the interesting shapes of congressional districts.

The Congress app has detailed and update-to-date information for every member of Congress. Quickly see their picture, get directions to their DC office address, find links to their website and social media, see a map of their district and a button to call them directly. You can also see the bills they sponsored and their vote record. Star any legislator or bill to quickly access them through the “Following” section. From there you can easily see the latest activity on the bills you follow and if you’re looking at a vote breakdown, the legislators you follow will appear at the top.

In future releases we will have push notifications for actions related to what you’re following as well as a new section for committee listings, calendars, floor updates and much more. Stay tuned for the latest updates by following the Congress app Twitter account here. Like all of Sunlight’s work, the Congress app is open source with the code available on GitHub. The app uses data from official sources through the Sunlight Congress API and the beautiful maps are powered by MapBox. Please email us with any feedback.

Sunlight offers a number of apps for iOS and Android devices, such as the award-winning Sitegeist, the localized Open States and the innovative Ad Hawk.