The New York Times’ Congress API opens, first step toward government transparency in US
This week marked the opening by the New york Times of the Congress API (application programming interface) to the public for the first time ever. Is this the first step toward a truly transparent government? The hope is that this will begin to put the power of information back into the hands of the people through technology. The fact that a major news outlet had to be the one to take the reigns and not Congress itself is a pretty big statement on its own.
Of course, at the moment there are vast numbers of people who still can’t get online at all. Whether they can’t afford a computer, or the lessons on how to use one, or can’t afford the broadband access so necessary to take advantage of everything from news sites to job board pages these days, these citizens will be forced to keep relying on traditional news sources to become informed unless President-elect Obama’s plan to make broadband access a national right and other initiatives take hold.
Of course, the fact that traditional media is at least waning, if not dying, with major magazines and news outlets folding left and right (or following the footsteps of the Christian Science Monitor and others to become online only) leaves many looking at a future with no or limited news. This is a great step by the New York Times to stay relevant and vibrant and offer an invaluable service. For those who do have access to broadband, computer equipment and the rising tide of reliable news online, as well as for the New York Times itself, the release of Congress API has an immediate impact.
How will the New York Times be using its Congress API? They will be culling data from the House, the Senate and perhaps the Congressional Record as well. This will allow people to get the information they need on how each member of Congress is voting, their attendance record, committee involvements, chairmanships and much more. This information is invaluable in knowing how your representative is representing you, or if they are in the pockets of lobbyists and large corporations instead. It should make it easier to know who to reelect, who to call to make your voice be heard and more.
From the New York Times write up announcing the Congress API:
The initial release exposes four types of data: a list of members for a given Congress and chamber, details of a specific roll-call vote, biographical and role information about a specific member of Congress, and a member’s most recent positions on roll-call votes.
If you are a developer, you can build on the New York Times Congress API and utilize it on your own site to keep your own site visitors informed. Just go to the developer site at the New York Times for technical details working with the Congress API. I’ll be interested in hearing from developers on how they have made their site integrate the Congress API, so be sure and come back to let us know in the comments. (Hat tip to Technosailor for alerting us to the Congress API release)
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January 12th, 2009
The information is all easily found currently on either the Politicians own page or the respective legislative body. Here’s an example:
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/officials/congress/?district=23&azip=33351&state=FL&bzip=4930
By entering my address I get all the information, including all my State representatives. I’ve been using this site for 18 months.
Need something a bit more flexible?
http://www.opencongress.org/tools
Open Congress is pretty flexible- you can even design custom widgets for your desktop and they seem to be a good match for your feeling that Congress is an adversary for constituents.
The fact that you have a public forum as a “citizen journalist” and automatically decided the No Credibility NYT was responsible for striking the first blow to make information readily available when a simple web search would have yielded dozens of sources that have all of this info + much more for years is a statement of it’s own.
Information availability isn’t the issue, responsible journalism being dead is.
January 12th, 2009
Those are nice tools for the already tech-savvy, just as the NYT Congress API is providing a great way for developers to make tools for the less tech savvy to use.
January 12th, 2009
How is typing in your address “tech savvy”? It lists your state and national reps, roll call and how they voted on the last bills. You can one click and send email to them. You can click and go to their websites.
It will send you weekly newsletters if you want listing weekly votes and attendance. You can easily find out how they voted on a particular bill.
Look, I can even get my local officials:
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/officials/locality/?entity_id=5974&state=FL
It’s really hard to see what the NYT api will do except to reinvent the wheel, my first link is already doing it, no tech savvy needed if you can read and click.