The U.S. Congress produces thousands of bills every year -- so it’s difficult to figure out which are significant, and which aren’t so much. Some data is available on official government websites, but usually without real-world context for determining which bills affect the things you care about. Non-profit organizations and issue-based groups could use more helpful ways to follow their interests in Congress.

OpenCongress.org is a free and open-source public resource that combines official government data with news and blog coverage about Congress. Recently, we launched a set of new features for tracking and sharing the best info about bills, issues, and Members. But this is just the start of how social data on “My OpenCongress” can bring you closer to what’s really happening in Congress.

New data mashups on “My OpenCongress” will allow users to customize the stream of info they receive about their tracked items. In other words, it can be a lot easier to separate the signal from the noise on Capitol Hill-- to figure out what bills and votes are important or meaningful to you. Users will have access to a wider variety of content, more streams of helpfully-curated data about their interests, and more social wisdom from around the web.

Here’s an example of how these mashups would work: a user reads about a bill of interest, and adds it to her “My OpenCongress” profile as a tracked item. On her page of Tracked Bills (view sample), she would then be able to choose from a few simple options for how much info to display for that bill: every news article and blog post that mentions it, or just those rated highly from different data sources, or blends of the various options.

Adding this social data would enhance the value of peer-to-peer communication throughout the site and make "My OpenCongress" a more useful public resource (register or login). These mashups can serve as tools for greater government transparency, combating the influence of corruption, and opening up our democratic process.