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I've written previously about some new systems that would have to be widely used to better encourage people to take action online. One such system is a bill tracker that is better than Thomas.

There's a site that is making major strides in improving upon Thomas, and it's called GovTrack.us. Go check it out.

You can:

• Look up any congresscritter, bill, or subcommittee
  
• Subscribe to any of the above
  
• Be notified by email of any changes from a bill or a vote
  
• Have your blog posts syndicated on bill's page
  
• Syndicate feeds from the site on your own weblog
  

I currently have monitors set up for both S.256 and H.R. 685.

Its main flaw is that the data isn't live, because it depends on Thomas data, which is usually out of date by about two days. So for true breaking news, it isn't useful. But for data tracking of legislation, it works great. It also has a development group. Its data set is even downloadable.

Project Vote Smart also has congress-tracking data, but it's more about actual candidates than legislation.

For those wanting to get more involved in the actual development of governmental data exchange systems, there is an online working group called OGDEX that has launched recently.