The Sunlight Foundation, the non-profit built for “opening America’s government” has created an app to show off its Congressional data, as well as its API (our Sunlight Labs API profile). You can’t get this app on the web, though, as it’s available exclusively for the Android phone platform.
Sunlight developer Eric Mill describes the new app:
“It’s called ‘Congress’, and it’s a pocket Congressional directory. It takes full advantage of the Sunlight Labs API to show you up-to-date info about members of Congress, and to pull in updates from members’ Twitter and YouTube accounts.”
Perhaps its most useful feature is finding the representative in your current location. Using the phone’s GPS, it compares your latitude and longitude with the often complicated congressional districts.
The app also embraces Twitter as a now-standard communications platform. Using your own account, you can reply to congressional tweets from within the app.
Sunlight is clear this is just a beta version. It expects feedback and feature requests. An enterprising developer could even use it as an excuse to learn Android programming. The code is open source.
Hat tip: Dietrich Ayala
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