Stuff that’s been old hat for decades in the computing world is fresh and shiny in government. Govtrack.us tracks not only bills, but also voting records and videos of Congress members. And it adds RSS feeds, old hat to most people on the Internet, but radical innovation for legislation! You can now subscribe to every bill, vote, and YouTube video that your Congress critter posts, including many of their floor speeches. Those are especially enlightening, seeing them speak in front of a mostly empty chamber, especially compared with their previous voting and speech records. Govtrack should be useful not only for the public, but for Congress members and their staffers, for example by making it easier for them to read the bill before voting on it.

Maybe using the Internet to shine a little light on Congress can lead to a more open Internet and maybe even a more open society.