OpenCongress.org is a new site that Web 2.0's the US government, bringing much-needed transparency and accountability to the closed book that is the US Congress. It is the first project of the new Pariticpatory Politics Foundation (founded by the same young geniuses who gave us the Participatory Culture Foundation and its stunning Democracy Internet TV player). Co-creator David Moore describes it thus:
"One of the problems we were aiming to address is that there is a lack of comprehensive, usable web resources for people and groups writing about bills and issues in Congress. The Library of Congress website, Thomas, doesn't do nearly enough to make Congressional information accessible -- meaning that political bloggers didn't have anywhere helpful to link when discussing Congress, that there wasn't a way for their readers to get the "big picture" behind an issue. The lack of public knowledge about what's really happening in Congress breeds apathy about political change in general."
OpenCongress.org helps close the information gap between political insiders and the public by bringing together official government information from Thomas (by way of GovTrack.us), news articles from Google News, blog posts from Technorati, campaign contribution data from OpenSecrets.org, and more -- to give you the real story behind what's happening in Congress.
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