(ISF) FW: OpenCongress launches today

(Dear ISF Colleagues: Open Congress was one of the projects that was
showcased at the January Berkman-Sunlight meeting. This is a resource
that should be of especial interest to nonprofits that are doing
advocacy or policy work. For more about the Berkman-Sunlight meeting,
see <http://blog.deborah.elizabeth.finn.com/blog/_archives/2007/1/16/2655516.html>.
Best regards from Deborah)

-----original message-----
From: David Moore :: Open Congress < davidrussellmoore%40gmail.com">davidrussellmooregmail.com>
Date: Feb 26, 2007 11:36 AM
Subject: OpenCongress launches today - help us spread the word
To: berkman sunlight < berkman-sunlight%40googlegroups.com">berkman-sunlightgooglegroups.com&gt;

We're excited to announce that today we've launched OpenCongress.org
-- bringing together official government information with news
articles, blog posts, campaign contribution data, and social wisdom
from the public.

We hope you'll check out the site, let us know your feedback, and help
us spread the word!

http://www.opencongress.org/

OpenCongress brings together, for the first time in one place, all the
best information about what's really happening in Congress: official
government info from THOMAS, made available by GovTrack.us; news
articles from Google News; blog posts from Technorati and Google Blog
Search; campaign contribution information from OpenSecrets.org; and
more.

OpenCongress is an open-source, non-profit, and non-partisan web
resource. Our mission is to close the information gap between
political insiders and the general public, making Congress more
transparent and encouraging civic engagement. OpenCongress is a joint
project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics
Foundation.

One of the problems we were seeking to address with OpenCongress was
the lack of accessible web resources about the frequently-arcane world
of Congress. Political bloggers were creating a vast and valuable pool
of social wisdom on politics, but the lack of a user-friendly resource
about Congress meant that there wasn't an easy way to connect blog
posts about political issues with the actual substance of bills.

Now, OpenCongress makes it possible to get the big picture when
reading about a bill, Member of Congress, or an issue area. It's a
great tool for bloggers, citizen journalists, issue-based membership
groups, and anyone looking to make sense of the Congressional fray.
Together, we can focus effective public scrutiny on the bills that are
most important, expose corruption, and make the Congressional process
more widely accessible.

For more information about the mission of OpenCongress and our next
steps in site development, please visit ::

http://www.opencongress.org/about

For an overview of some of the ways that individuals and organizations
can use OpenCongress to track the issues they care about, please visit
::

http://www.opencongress.org/howtouse

We just launched this morning and we've been fortunate to have already
been linked on MyDD, TalkingPointsMemo, Instapundit, and more.... we'd
love your help in Digging our just-posted launch announcement ::

http://digg.com/politics/The_REAL_story_about_Congress

We greatly appreciate the feedback & engagement available here in the
Berkman-Sunlight community. Hope you'll let us know what you think
about OpenCongress in the comments below or by e-mailing me, and help
us spread the word about this new web tool!

Thanks,
-David

http://www.opencongress.org/

--
David Moore
Participatory Politics Foundation
www.participatorypolitics.org

drm%40ppolitics.org">drmppolitics.org
mobile: (917) 334-1941

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