I’ve been using Sunlight Labs’ “Congress” app for the Android phone for a couple of months now and still enjoy the amount of information I am able to get from it. The idea is simple, but extremely useful if you want to track what your federal representative or Senator is doing back in D.C.

QR Code for Congress

With this one app, you can track the following information on any member of the U.S. Congress:

  • Read the latest bills, laws, and see what bills were recently voted on.
  • Find members of Congress by using your phone’s location, a zipcode, a last name, or a state.
  • Read tweets and watch videos from members’ Twitter and YouTube accounts.
  • Reply to a member of Congress on Twitter from within the app, using your own account.
  • Read the latest news about them, using the Yahoo News API.
I took the liberty of taking some screenshots on my local congressman, John Culberson, of Texas. I quickly learned that Rep. Culberson needs to update his Twitter status, as he hasn’t updated it in over four months now (come on John… you got 13,000+ followers!!  Keep ’em updated!!)  Although, to be fair, Rep. Culberson does a pretty good job of keeping his Facebook activity updated. Perhaps the Congress App could add that little feature in the future?
Here are some screenshots of the free Android Phone app, Congress. I think it does a great job of tracking information on members of Congress and think it is definitely worth a look.  
Basic Info on Representative Culberson
Latest Bills by Rep. Culberson
Twitter Information
Latest Voting Information