hillstaff.xpd

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	<Title>GovTrack.us for Capitol Hill Staff</Title>
	
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		<h1 class="PageTitle">GovTrack.us for Capitol Hill Staff</h1>

		<p>We're here for you too! Although GovTrack considers itself
		a part of the open-government community, our goals of making
		comprehensive legislative tracking easy and of educating
		the public mean even staff for Members of Congress are
		a part of GovTrack's community. We hope we can work together.</p>
		
		<h3>Just some background...</h3>
		
		<p>GovTrack is a lot like THOMAS or LIS. Except, it's better.</p>
		
		<p>Lately the site is visited by some
		20,000 people each day. It was launched in 2004, is totally
		non-partisan, and is independently run with no source of ongoing
		external funding. GovTrack is ad-supported but is otherwise non-commercial.
		(<a href="about.xpd">More about the site</a>.)</p>
		
		<h3>Why you might find it useful</h3>
		
		<p>There are a few things on GovTrack you might find useful
		as a Hill staffer.</p>
		
		<p>We have interactive <b><a href="/congress/findyourreps.xpd">congressional
		district maps</a></b>. You can zoom in to individual streets to see precise district boundaries.</p>
		
		<p>Our <b>bill text view</b> is pretty good. For this you'll have to search
		for a bill, such as <a href="/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1">H.R. 1</a>.
		The coolest thing is you can compare versions of bill text as it goes
		through the legislative process. Comparisons can be made between any
		two versions of the bill posted by GPO: changes between the versions are highlighted.
		The bill text page also turns references to the U.S. Code into
		links to the text of the U.S.C., and you can make direct permanent links to
		particular paragraphs in the text.</p>
		
		<p>One of the reasons the site was created was to make <b>RSS feeds
		for everything going on in Congress</b>. There are feeds for each
		Member of Congress (<a href="/congress/findyourreps.xpd">find the Member</a>
		to get to the feed), for each bill (<a href="/congress/legislation.xpd">find a bill</a>),
		and for various <a href="/users/feeds.xpd">other activities in Congress</a>.
		You use a feed by subscribing to it with a feed reader, such
		as <a href="http://www.google.com/reader">Google Reader</a>.
		You can also have the events that come up in the feeds sent
		to you each night or weekly.</p>
		
		<h3>For web developers</h3>
		
		<p>If you run the website of a Member of Congress, you might be
		interested in the bill status or events <a href="/embed">widgets</a>.
		You can also embed congressional district maps on your website:
		see the bottom of the <a href="/embed">widgets</a> page for more.</p>
		
		<h3>In the future</h3>
		
		<p>We'd like to help you get your message out. You might want
		to check out the Q&amp;A feature on the pages for the bills
		your Member has sponsored to see what kinds of questions
		the GovTrack community has about the legislation. (Maybe you
		can answer some of the questions too!) We're also considering
		how we might be able to help you get your message out by
		tieing bills to your position statements on them.</p>
		
		<p>If you have any thoughts or suggestions, don't hesitate
		to contact GovTrack by email.</p>
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