We’ve added a few great new search features to GovTrack, as well as other improvements. Check them out:
- Find Similar Bills: There are often multiple bills introduced on a topic and major changes to bills are sometimes introduced as entirely new bills. These related bills can be hard to find, especially if you want to look across legislative sessions. But now you can find a “similar bills” link on every bill page which will let you browse through other bills by how closely the text of the bills are similar. For instance, if you go to S. 657: National Blue Alert Act of 2011 and click the similar bills link you’ll learn that there is also a bill to create a Silver Alert.
- Search by Cosponsor/Committee: The advanced bill search now has fields to filter by cosponsor and committee assignment.
- We added links to OpenSecrets, VoteSmart, and Twitter on pages for Members of Congress so you can find more information about them.
- We analyzed Rep. Paul Ryan‘s legislative record in two posts: Ryan’s Record: By The Numbers and The VP Candidates Agreed on 52 Substantive Bills.
- And we fixed a number of bugs on the site. For instance, sponsors and cosponsors on bills from past years were shown with their current title (i.e. Rep. from District X) but now are shown with the title they had at the time they sponsored the bill. Our sponsorship statistical analyses now show up for historical Members of Congress, such as President Obama and Vice President Biden.
UPDATE – Sept 2, 2012 – Last week GovTrack was honored to be named a Model of Excellence in innovation around content and data by DataContent and the InfoCommerce Group. Thanks guys! They wrote:
[GovTrack] addresses an increasingly important and complex challenge: finding, understanding, and tracking government legislation. GovTrak is a well-executed example of how the combination of data, tools, and analytics can deliver power to those who are seeking the truth.