Law Technology

Easily Track Legislation, Congressmen, and Issues

By Andrew Flusche

Photo by fernando

If you’re interested in federal legislation, I’ve got a website for you: GovTrack.us. I don’t know how I lived without it!

What it does

GovTrack catalogs data on the U.S. Congress and presents it in a variety of useful formats. It’s a lot like Thomas, which is run by the Library of Congress.

But GovTrack does so much more!

Instead of just letting you do a variety of searches, like by subject or looking at voting records, GovTrack actually tracks legislation that is important to you!

Think about it: 535 people are buzzing around the Capitol with an endless array of staffers. Nobody cares about ALL the laws that are being shuffled around. You simply can’t. So GovTrack gives you what you need to know.

How I’m using it

As the staff attorney for American Life League, abortion is obviously an issue I should keep an eye on. Handily, there’s a predefined abortion issue in GovTrack. I setup a free account, and now I’ll be emailed whenever any legislative action happens on that issue.

I’ll also be setting up separate “trackers” for specific bills of interest to us. If a bill is coming up for a hearing or a vote, I’ll know about it. And I won’t even have to visit GovTrack regularly to check on things; it all comes via email.

What are you tracking?

Can you think of any uses for GovTrack? You could setup a tracker for your representatives or even a committee of interest to you. You’ll always know exactly what your elected officials are doing in those marble hallways.

Maybe I’m just a lawyer geek to actually be pumped about this site. Oh well.

Full post as published by Legal Andrew on December 21, 2007 (boomark / email).