Open Government

Chapter 18. Case Study: GovTrack.us

Joshua Tauberer

More than 10,000 bills are on the table for discussion in the U.S. Congress at any given time. The most important bills can be 500 pages long or longer, and they can be rewritten several times on their way to becoming law. And with its 200 committees and subcommittees, Congress is overwhelming to anyone who is watching. The sheer volume of information coming out of Congress is itself a threat to government transparency. How can a representative be accountable if his legislative actions are too numerous to track? How can one take a stand on a bill if it is impossible to find? How can one know the law when it takes days to read a single bill?

Technology is a key player in government transparency. It’s our own defense against the threat of government information overload. Looking for a bill? Do a search. Following a bill? Get a computer to track its changes.

Innovating the public’s engagement with Congress has been the motivation behind GovTrack.us, the free Congress-tracking website that I built and have been running since 2004 (mostly in my spare time). GovTrack gathers the status of legislation, voting records, and other congressional information from official government websites and then applies the latest technology to make the information more accessible and powerful. Today the site reaches around 1 million people each month—visitors to GovTrack directly as well as visitors to other sites that reuse the open legislative database ...