GovTrack.us is a perfect choice to be our first review as an Insanely Useful Website. GovTrack is one of the original web 2.0 type sources for government information: both an excellent example of a new model of political information distribution, and a compelling story of Web-programming genius expressed as an ambitious civic undertaking.

Josh Tauberer, Govtrack's creator and proprietor, has gone far beyond building a simple tool to help track congressional proceedings; Josh's creation has become a fundamental fixture in terms of both government information and structured data, a result of his extensive knowledge of both advanced linguistics, and computer programming. Josh's willingness to volunteer his expertise also led to him helping to form and author the recommendations of the Open House Project, a separate Sunlight project.

Here's Josh Tauberer briefly telling the story of Govtrack: (click below to play)

http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/files/mp3/govtrack.mp3

GovTrack's user oriented design and creative combinations of different data sources have garnered praise from notable sources, including Peggy Garvin, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and also help make GovTrack useful for a variety of different users.

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