The New York Times announced today the release of version 3 of its "Congress API."

• Introducing Version 3 of the Congress API, By DEREK WILLIS, New York Times Open Blog (February 23, 2010).

The Times gets raw data directly from the U.S. House and Senate Web sites and Thomas, the Library of Congress public web site with legislative information. It parses and stores the data on its own servers and provides an API (Applications Programming Interface) to the data so that programmers can query the data, get results, and easily provide the data to users in interesting and unique ways.

This is an excellent example of treating government information as "data" rather than as "documents." Rather than having a PDF file that lists all members of Congress (a document-centric way to deal with information), a database of all members of Congress with an API front-end to the database (which treats information as data) allows developers to build software that allows users to get a list for a state or district. When combined with other information such as voting records, bill-sponsorship, party affiliation, and so forth, users can get the information they need assembled in response to a specific information request. To the user the end result looks like a "document" but the document is built dynamically from the data.

Developers at the NY Times and elsewhere are using this to create interesting web sites and applications. See, for example, Your Government - The Oregonian, and Congress Speaks, and the Times' own Represent, which combines Federal and State information to allow users to find elected representatives in New York City.

THOMAS, the legislative information service hosted by the Library of Congress, has announced new long-needed features and enhancements.

• What's New in THOMAS

These include:

• Bookmarking. Yes, it is now easy to save a permanent link to a page in THOMAS.
• Easy sharing. The same toolbar that gives you a permanent URL, has links for sharing a page using popular sites such as Delicious, Facebook, and Twitter.
• New RSS feed: Bills Presented to the President.
• Top Five Bills. "The five most-searched-for bills from the past week will be listed in the center box on the right side of the homepage." They are listed by bill number, but hovering over them gives you a name.

See the link above for the complete list of features.

(Wow. Bookmarking. What a concept for 2010!)

Congressional Printing: Background and Issues for Congress, by R. Eric Petersen,
Congressional Research Service, R40897 (November 5, 2009).

This report, which will be updated as events warrant, provides an overview and analysis of issues related to the processing and distribution of congressional information by the Government Printing Office. Subsequent sections address several issues, including funding congressional printing, printing authorizations, current printing practices, and options for Congress. Finally, the report provides congressional printing appropriations, production, and distribution data in a number of tables.

As promised, here is my report on the first-ever U.S. Congress Camp. The event was an unconference held in Washington, DC on September 12-13, 2009. Participants were from the civic hacking community, advocacy software companies, advocacy groups, gov 2.0 crowd, academia (public policy), and social media start-ups, with a sprinkling from congressional offices, and one or more from big tech and and other walks of life.

The announced focus of Congress Camp was citizen-Congress communications, although topics related to congressional content in general came up. (See more on the communications topic from the recent CRS report on use of Twitter by Congress.)

You can read and hear about Congress Camp on the web. See:

• CongressCamp site and blog
• Congress Camp Provides Dynamic Dialogue... posting on NextGenWeb, September 17
• Congress Camp: Where the Hill Meets Web 2.0 September 16 posting on INfluence, the blog of Forum One Communications
• Government 2.0 Radio September 20 episode, featuring interviews with Congress Camp participants (one hour; starts with general Gov 2.0 news)

Congressional staffers participating in Congress Camp were interested in moving forward but provided much-needed reality checks for the tech crowd: congressional offices have outdated hardware and software; they are already swamped with email that is not from their district or can't be authenticated; they get email that their constituents didn't even know they sent (automatically generated when they clicked on something unrelated but tempting); in some districts most or many constituents do not even have ready access to the Internet; etc. In spite of these obstacles, some congressional offices are already applying a 2.0 approach. For examples, see the case studies section of this Embracing Gov 2.0 post on the Cangress Camp blog.

Some camp participants seemed to be much more familiar with tech than Congress, or with the political side rather than the governing side. No doubt they learned much in two days of dialogue. Gov 2.0er Noel Dickover summed it up in a tweet: "My overall thought on #CongCamp is that we are still at the awareness and sensemaking stage at #opengov".

Social Networking and Constituent Communication: Member Use of Twitter During a Two-Week Period in the 111th Congress, by Matthew Eric Glassman, Jacob R. Straus, and Colleen J. Shogan, Congressional Research Service 7-5700, R40823 (September 21, 2009). [posted on politico.com]

See also:

• For GOP, revenge is tweet, by KENNETH P. VOGEL Politico (9/23/09)
• Tweet All About It: New Stats On Hill Usage, By Andrew Noyes, Congress Daily "Tech Daily Dose" (Sept. 23, 2009).

The New York Times has a nifty interface that programmers can use to access information about Congress, the Congress API. Recently, they have added improvements including bill cosponsorships, a new members response, and member voting record comparisons. Read about it here:

• Congress Returns, As Does an Improved Congress API, By Derek Willis, New York Times Open Blog, (September 2, 2009).

Also see: NY Times Announces the Congress API.

Peggy Garvin has an excellent overview of new tools and sources for following Congress.

• The Government Domain: Tracking Congress 2.0, by Peggy Garvin, LLRX (August 31, 2009).

Hackers Target House.gov Sites. By Brian Krebs, Washington Post (August 6, 2009).

Hackers broke into more than a dozen Web sites for members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the past week, replacing portions of their home pages with digital graffiti, according House officials.

The sites hit were hosted by a private vendor, GovTrends, which provides Web hosting for about 100 House sites.

Peggy Garvin has a new article that covers the basics of searching for Congressional information in GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys). Thanks Peggy!

The Government Domain - Congressional Documents on FDsys: the Basics, by Peggy Garvin, LLRX (July 27, 2009).

Legistalker - The latest online activity of Congress Members.

Legistalker makes it easy for you to stay on top of what your elected officials say and how they vote.

Legistalker was created by Forum One Communications as an entry for the Apps for America competition. The ever-growing database is updated every 20 seconds, and relies on data from Twitter, YouTube, Capitol Words, literally hundreds of different news sources, and others.

The Clerk of the House has a fascinating web site devoted to the history of Florence Prag Kahn. "In 1925, Florence Prag Kahn succeeded her late husband Julius in a San Francisco-based U.S. House seat. Most early congressional widows served as temporary placeholders until party leaders chose long-term, male successors. But Kahn was no ordinary political widow. With an insider’s knowledge of House operations and a gift for turning a phrase, she set herself to 'attending to business' -- expanding the Bay Area’s infrastructure and military installations during her 12-year career, while blazing a trail for women seeking political office."

• Florence Kahn: Congressional Widow to Trailblazing Lawmaker, Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives, (May 07, 2009).

There is a video, plus full text, a bibliography, and additional resource list.

Your Government Needs You: Re-design Congress Online, by Phil Glockner, ReadWriteWeb, March 20, 2009.

This is an open call for your thoughts and suggestions on the legislative databases that should be made accessible, as well as how that data could be used to drive innovative approaches on policy and 'shape the future of the nation'. There are a number of ways you can participate in this open call: you can submit ideas via this surveymonkey link, use the #honda2.0 and #opengov hashtags in your tweets, and, of course, leave a comment on the original article.

Josh Tauberer has set up a new site, HackingCongress.org, meant to be "the intersection of civics & technology." Josh invites you to create an account so you can participate and edit any content on the site. "It's basically a new wiki," he says.

HackingCongress is a new hub for projects at the intersection of civics & technology, fostering civic engagement and education, advancing government transparency, and supporting communication with government. ("Hacking" has a dual meaning in the computer world and in this case it is positive slang for creative programming.) The focus of this site is on projects related to the U.S. Congress and state-level legislatures.

The goal is to be a hub, or at least a links page, for the developer community surrounding the intersection of civics and technology especially (but not exclusively) as it relates to the U.S. Congress.

Create an account and start editing pages. Make sure your project is listed with a description you like, and add any other relevant projects, data sources, and APIs to the appropriate pages.

There is already a lot there: Then beginnings of a list of the databases and APIs that are available for government transparency data; Links to ongoing projects broken down by type; An aggregator of of blogs in the open government tech community, planet.hackingcongress.org.

...and more!

An article in National Journal's Tech Daily Dose says that Congress receives 1 million e-mails per day and that the volume is constantly increasing.

Josh Tauberer at GovTrack.us, our hero and a prince, has created an easy way to follow new videos posted at Congress's YouTube sites. (See Congress on YouTube).

• Tracking YouTube Videos which aggregates all videos posted by Members to YouTube. The RSS is here.
• Pages for Members at GovTrack.us now highlight their latest YouTube video at the top of the page.
• Feeds/Trackers at GovTrack.us for Members (which you can subscribe to directly, include with your other trackers, or get email updates for) now include their latest video postings.

Read more: Track your representative’s YouTube videos, Josh Tauberer, Jan. 13, 2009.