LegiStalker: Getting People Engaged with Congress

There's a lot of people out there wanting to keep up with Congress.

Many people just want to know what their representatives are doing in Congress, how they're voting, and who they're interacting with. Unfortunately, that's pretty hard to find, especially from several different angles.

We at Forum One felt that exposing this information was a pretty good idea, so we ran with it. The final result is the site LegiStalker.

From the low level, it's a pretty simple concept. We pull in all the information we can find about every Congressperson, clean it up, and store it in an ever-growing database. So far, we've managed to harness YouTube, Twitter, latest voting data, and several hundred different news sources. With so many different news sources, there's a pretty good spectrum of differing perspectives -- ranging from CNN and the New York Times to Fox News.

This is a lot of good information, but a lot of information nonetheless. If users are presented with just the latest items retrieved, it would get pretty overwhelming for the user. With that in mind, we came up with a 5-tiered system for filtering the data to meet any user's needs.

1. U.S. Level - a high-level view with the latest feeds from any congress member.
2. State Level - When the user clicks on a state, it first displays all representatives in that state. All the tabs now display feeds relating only to congress members in that state.
3. Zip Code Level - When the user enters their zip code in the box, all their Congress representatives will first appear. This will include the two senators, as well as one or more representatives. All the tabs now display feeds relating only to those people listed.
4. Detail Level - At this level, the congressperson's contact information is displayed. In addition to News, YouTube, and Twitter, that person's most spoken Congress words are displayed in the new "Capitol Words" tab, and there is also a history of that person's latest votes. All the other tabs are filtered to that single person in question.
5. Watch List Level - When users are viewing a congressperson's detail page, they have the option to add that person to their "Watch List". When they do, that person is displayed in the "My Watch List" area at the top right corner of the site. An unlimited number of people can be added to someone's watch list. This allows users to filter content based only on representatives that they want to keep track of.

Adding this much fine-tuning was quite some work, but we feel that it's worth it. Visitors can now keep track of who they want to keep track of, thus making more informed decisions.

Although the Apps for America contest is over, we'll definitely keep adding more features to pry open the doors between congresspeople and their constituents.