Resource Center :
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Citizen Engagement :
Citizen Engagement
This section lists internet resources to help you get involved in the legislative process.
In addition to these resources, visit our Action Center to take action on the latest campaigns, see previous campaigns, and read recent messages from OpenTheGovernment.org.
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- CongressLine, by GalleryWatch.com: What are Congressional Authorization and Appropriation?
- Congressional Committees Project: A group of bloggers at Daily Kos started a project called Committee Transparency to organize citizens to become Congressional watchdogs. The project aims to have at least one citizen monitor every committee in Congress, then produce recommendations to make committees more transparent.
- Congresspedia: Congresspedia is the "citizen's encyclopedia on Congress" that anyone can edit.
- Death and Taxes: A Visual Guide to Where Your Federal Tax Dollars Go: "Death and Taxes" is a representational poster of the federal discretionary budget; the amount of money that is spent at the discretion of your elected representatives in Congress.
- GovSpeak:
A Guide to Government Acronyms & Abbreviations: Confused by all those government acronyms? Start here!
- GovTrack: GovTrack brings together information on the status of federal legislation, voting records, and campaign contributions. You can search the site and sign up for email updates and RSS feeds. [What is an RSS feed?]
- Mashups, Blogs, Wikis Go Federal: Creative Uses of Government and Public Data [from Searcher, the Magazine for Database Professionals]
- OpenCongress: OpenCongress brings together official government information with news and blog coverage. OpenCongress enables you to stay on top of the latest news in Congress by subscribing to RSS feeds based on member of Congress, issue area, most viewed bills, and more!
- Open Government Agenda: "As the Democrats and Republicans are drafting their Open Government Agendas, the people should be, too." That's the idea behind an experiment by the Sunlight Foundation to involve citizens in drafting a legislative agenda for open government. You can learn more about the project and contribute your ideas to the agenda.
- The Open House Project: The Sunlight Foundation is leading the way to help the U.S. House of Representatives innovate and expand its internet-based efforts to engage greater numbers of American citizens in the political process. The project will issue recommendations on how the House can, via the internet, become increasingly transparent to citizens. The Open House Project is a temporary working group designed to make recommendations to Congress on easy ways to begin the process. You can sign up for their listserve here.
- Project Vote Smart: Project Vote Smart is an online library with information on over 10,000 candidates for public office, covering races from the presidential to state legislatures. Candidate profiles include information on background, issue positions, voting records, campaign finances, and performance evaluations (based on ratings from political interests groups across the spectrum). Specific voter registration for each state is available, as well as an online database of candidate public speeches, issue statements, and position papers, searchable by individual candidate or by issue. Users can also track the status of legislation in Congress, state-level political news, and ballot measures.
[See more voting resources here [NP Action] and here [League of Women Voters]]
- TheWeekInCongress.com: This website presents nonpartisan summaries of legislation and provides contact information for members of Congress. [Updated on Thursday, Friday or Saturday when the House and Senate completes floor business for the week.]
- Unfluence: Mapping political contribution networks: Unfluence is a web program that generates interactive network maps of state level political contribution data.
