I recently blogged about some of the enhancements to Congress.gov in its first six months. Today’s update marks the fourth round of enhancements to Congress.gov since launch. We are continuing the push to retire the beta label on the new system.
As with previous releases, Jeanine updated the About section of Congress.gov to detail what’s new. We’ve been adding to the site so frequently that we added a new Congress.gov Enhancements page where you can browse the updates. What was added today?
Legislative and amendment detail pages:
- All legislative action steps are included on the Actions tab which offers three levels of details – major actions; all actions; all actions including floor amendment actions.
- While viewing all actions, there are several beneficial facets; and improved presentation of action type, actor, and action text.
- A new tab on the amendment detail page will present the articles that appear within the Congressional Record on which the amendment text was published.
- Congressional Record article references from within action text and notes will be linked to a display of the articles on that page (or page range) within the Record.
- Committees on the committee tab are sorted in order of referral.
- Related bill descriptions have been improved, and related bills are sorted by bill type and number.
Enhancements to the Congressional Record pages:
- Congressional Record coverage has expanded to include the 107th Congress (2001) going forward.
- There is a new browse-by-date page which provides links to all issues of the Record by date within a user-friendly expandable/collapsible navigational tool.
- Daily Digest pages can be accessed via the year/page selector.
- The Daily Digest tab includes links to legislative and amendment detail pages and pages in the Congressional Record. (In my opinion all of these new links are a very welcome addition to the Daily Digest on Congress.gov.)
- A URL shortcut is supported for the year/page selector.
General improvements to the site:
- Captions have been added to the legislative process videos.
Stay tuned for what’s next! Development has started on adding Congressional Reports. Is there something missing from THOMAS that you hope to see added to Congress.gov? Let us know by sending us your feedback. Chances are it is already in our queue, and if not, we’ll add it.
Comments (2)
Improvements are well appreciated as to the format is very user friendly, bullet points, columns about the importance of the judiciary, legislative and/or executive operations of day to day business is exquisite, organized and/or very efficient/easy to understand…..MAJOR KODOS Congress.gov ENHANCMENTS!!!
Fairfax, VA
what a great day in history…every thing is so accessable and unlimited…in a click on a screen…what is next? $barcode trade system and equality can only follow…excuse my excitedness. i wont be interested in what i just said..in my thirst for knowledge..thanks though .