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<div id="maincontent" class="container"> <div id="content"> <h1>About the Data on GovTrack.us</h1> <p>GovTrack gets its information from a variety of sources, including official government data as well as community data repositories. We also do our own original research. Here is the data we have, the sources we use, and suggestions for how you can get it too.</p> <p>In 2005, we were the first to make U.S. federal legislative information comprehensively available in an open, structured data format for researchers, journalists, other public interest projects, and anyone to freely reuse for any purpose. Our data was the basis for dozens of other open government projects, including major projects of the Sunlight Foundation and investigative stories at major news publications, and continued until 2017, when the U.S. Congress began publishing open, structured data itself. You can <a href="https://medium.com/@joshuatauberer/govtrack-now-actually-uses-open-government-data-5fc16f377e86#.iflkyrvgs">read about our 15-year campaign</a> to open up Congress’s data.</p> <table class="table coverage_table"> <tr><th colspan="2" style="padding: 1em 0 .5em 0">Current Information<br>(118<sup>th</sup> Congress)</th></tr> <tr> <td><span class="nowrap">Members of Congress</span></td> <td><p>Biographical information and committee assignments for current and former Members of Congress are from the <a href="https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislators">congress-legislators project</a>, a community repository we originally developed and help maintain.</p> <p>Photos are sourced from various locations, including the <a href="http://memberguide.gpo.gov">GPO Guide to House and Senate Members</a>, and credited on individual legislator pages.</p> <p>To get the data it’s best to use the <a href="https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislators">congress-legislators project</a>, but you can also get raw Member data in XML from the <a href="http://clerk.house.gov/xml/lists/MemberData.xml">House</a> and <a href="http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.xml">Senate</a>.</p> <p>Also see <a href="https://medium.com/civic-tech-thoughts-from-joshdata/how-to-build-an-app-to-call-write-congress-f79771addc2b">How To Build an App to Call/Write Congress</a> and <a href="https://medium.com/@govtrack/creating-congressional-district-maps-with-mapbox-4888e4b79cf">Creating congressional district maps with Mapbox</a> which explain how to find someone’s congressional district and how to use that to help them contact their representative or senator.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0;">We also compile the only comprehensive database of <a href="/misconduct">congressional misconduct</a>, which you can <a href="https://github.com/govtrack/misconduct">download from GitHub</a>, as well as a <a href="https://github.com/govtrack/pronunciation/">pronunciation guide</a> for the names of members of Congress.</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td>Bill Status</td> <td><p>The status of pending legislation is retreived daily from the <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS">U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) GovInfo.gov Bill Status XML Bulk Data</a>. Legislative activity typically appears there the next business day. We use the open source <a href="https://github.com/unitedstates/congress">congress project</a> to automate and simplify retrieving the data.</p>  </tr> <tr> <td>Bill Summaries</td> <td>We display several sorts of bill summaries, including many that we write ourselves. Other summaries are from the Library of Congress’s Congressional Research Service (the same summaries on <a href="https://www.congress.gov/">Congress.gov</a>; we get them the same way we get bill status, see above).</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Votes</td> <td><p>Roll call votes are retrieved from the <a href="http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/a_three_sections_with_teasers/votes.htm">Senate</a> and <a href="http://clerk.house.gov/legislative/legvotes.aspx">House</a> websites in XML format. We update our vote data roughly hourly. We use the open source <a href="https://github.com/unitedstates/congress">congress project</a> to automate and simplify retrieving the data.</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td>Bill Text</td> <td>The text of legislation is retrieved from <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/bills">GPO’s GovInfo.gov</a> in PDF, XML, and plain text formats. We update bill text daily, but text only becomes available typically at a minimum of 1-3 legislative days after major action on the bill and sometimes the delay is much later. We use the open source <a href="https://github.com/unitedstates/congress">congress project</a> to automate and simplify retrieving the data, <a href="https://github.com/govtrack/congressxml">congressxml</a> to render the XML as HTML, and <a href="https://github.com/govtrack/linkify-citations/tree/xpath-rewrite">linkify-citations</a> to hyperlink legal citations in bill text.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>What’s Coming Up</td> <td>Our list of bills coming up is from the <a href="http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/d_three_sections_with_teasers/calendars.htm">Senate</a> website and <a href="http://docs.house.gov">Docs.House.Gov</a>. Upcoming committee meetings are from the <a href="http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/committees/b_three_sections_with_teasers/committee_hearings.htm">Senate</a> website and <a href="http://docs.house.gov">Docs.House.Gov</a>. Updated daily. All offer XML data.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>District Maps</td> <td>Congressional district boundaries on the maps are from state redistricting data as collected by the <a href="https://thearp.org/">American Redistricting Project</a> and the map widget is courtesy of <a href="https://www.mapbox.com/">Mapbox</a> (see <a href="https://medium.com/@govtrack/creating-congressional-district-maps-with-mapbox-4888e4b79cf">how we do it</a>).</td> </tr> <tr><th colspan="2" style="padding: 1em 0 .5em 0">2015-2022<br>(114<sup>th</sup>-117<sup>th</sup> Congresses)</th></tr> <tr> <td>Bill Status</td> <td>From <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS">GPO’s GovInfo.gov</a> via the <a href="https://github.com/unitedstates/congress">congress</a> project (see above).</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Votes</td> <td>From the <a href="http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/a_three_sections_with_teasers/votes.htm">Senate</a> and <a href="http://clerk.house.gov/legislative/legvotes.aspx">House</a> websites (see above).</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Bill Text</td> <td>From <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/bills">GPO’s GovInfo.gov</a> (see above).</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Bill Summaries</td> <td>See above. Additionally, some summaries were from the <a href="http://www.gop.gov/">House Republican Conference</a>.</td> </tr> <tr><th colspan="2" style="padding: 1em 0 .5em 0">1989-2014<br>(101<sup>st</sup>-113<sup>th</sup> Congresses)</th></tr> <tr> <td>Bill Status</td> <td>Historical bill status information was obtained from the old THOMAS.gov website prior to its shutdown in 2016. This information is no longer available anywhere in a structured data format, but contact us if you are interested in using our historical bill status data.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Votes</td> <td>From the <a href="http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/a_three_sections_with_teasers/votes.htm">Senate</a> and <a href="http://clerk.house.gov/legislative/legvotes.aspx">House</a> websites (see above). (Except House votes in 1989 (101<sup>st</sup> Congress, 1st Session), which are from the Rosenthal & Poole data, see below.)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Bill Text</td> <td>Bill text from about 2012 forward is from <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/bills">GPO’s GovInfo.gov</a> (see above). For bills from 1989 through about 2012, we display archived HTML text retreived from THOMAS.gov prior to THOMAS.gov’s shutdown in 2016 — although PDFs of bills exist for this time period from GovInfo.gov, the rich text data that we display is no longer available anywhere but you can contact us if you are interested in using ours. (We also display <a href="http://www.cato.org/resources/data">Cato Institute Deepbills</a> for the 113th Congress.)</td> </tr> <tr><th colspan="2" style="padding: 1em 0 .5em 0">1973-1988<br>(93<sup>rd</sup>-100<sup>th</sup> Congresses)</th></tr> <tr> <td>Bill Status</td> <td>From THOMAS.gov (see above).</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Bill Text</td> <td>We only display bill text in this time period for bills that had been enacted into law and concurrent resolutions agreed to. We get that text from the Statutes at Large on <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=STATUTE">GPO.gov/FDSys</a> (volumes 87-106; plain text and PDFs).</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Votes</nobr></small></td> <td>Roll call votes in this time period were retrieved from From Rosenthal & Poole’s <a href="http://voteview.com/dwnl.htm">United States Congressional Roll Call Voting Records, 1789-1990</a>, Carnegie Mellon University.</td> </tr> <tr><th colspan="2" style="padding: 1em 0 .5em 0">1951-1972<br>(82<sup>nd</sup>-92<sup>nd</sup> Congresses)</th></tr> <tr> <td>Bills</td> <td>In this time period we only have a record of bills, joint resolutions, and concurrent resolutions from the Statutes at Large on <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=STATUTE">GPO.gov/FDSys</a> (volumes 65-86). Only enacted bills and joint resolutions and concurrent resolutions agreed to are published in the Statutes at Large. See above.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Votes</nobr></small></td> <td>From Rosenthal & Poole’s <a href="http://voteview.com/dwnl.htm">United States Congressional Roll Call Voting Records, 1789-1990</a> (see above).</td> </tr> <tr><th colspan="2" style="padding: 1em 0 .5em 0">1799-1873<br>(6<sup>th</sup>-42<sup>nd</sup> Congresses)</th></tr> <tr> <td>Bills</td> <td>Our data on bills in the early days of the country are from the Library of Congress’s <a href="http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html">American Memory Century of Lawmaking</a> collection via the <a href="https://github.com/unitedstates/am_mem_law">am_mem_law</a> project.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Votes</nobr></small></td> <td>From Rosenthal & Poole’s <a href="http://voteview.com/dwnl.htm">United States Congressional Roll Call Voting Records, 1789-1990</a> (see above).</td> </tr> </table> </div> </div>  </div>  <footer id="footer"> <div class="container"> <div class="row"> <nav class="col-6 col-md-2"> <ul> <li><a href="/">Home</a></li> <li><a href="/about">About GovTrack</a></li> <li><a href="/about-our-data">About the Data</a></li> <li><a href="/contact">Contact Us</a></li> <li><a href="/legal">Privacy & Legal</a></li> </ul> </nav> <nav class="col-6 col-md-2"> <ul> <li><a href="/posts/news"><i class="fas fa-list fa-fw"></i>Site News</a></li> <li><a rel="me" href="https://mastodon.social/@GovTrack"><i class="fab fa-mastodon fa-fw"></i>Mastodon</a></li> <li><a href="https://bsky.app/profile/govtrack.us"><i class="fab fa-bluesky fa-fw"></i>Bluesky</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.patreon.com/govtrack"><i class="fas fa-dollar-sign fa-fw"></i><span>Patreon</span></a></li> <li><a href="https://github.com/govtrack"><i class="fab fa-github fa-fw"></i><span>GitHub</span></a></li> </ul> </nav> <section class="col-12 col-md-8"> <p>GovTrack helps everyone learn about and track the activities of the United States Congress. 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