Want to know what lawmakers are talking about on Capitol Hill but you can’t figure out how to get any worthwhile information out of the Congressional Record? Now there’s help. The Sunlight Foundation is proud to announce the relaunch of Capitol Words with much expanded capabilities. Capitol Words gives an at-glance view of the inner workings of Congress by distilling each day in session into one, single word.

The new Capitol Words provides a calendar view of the word of the day and charts showing word usage trends going back to the second session of the 106th Congress (January 24, 2000). Views that attribute word usage to lawmakers date back to the beginning of the 110th Congress (January 3, 2007). Words are also able to be match together and compared. See whether “Saddam” or “Osama” is a more commonly used word, or “Health” or “Education.” Other new functions are available and explained on the About page.

In many ways, Capitol Words serves as a zeitgeist-o-meter, as each word, when used over and over again, serves to reveal the pressing issue of the day (or sometimes helps explain the legislative process). For example, the top ten words of the year, aside from those reflecting the legislative process, all reveal what issues Congress found of paramount import to debate. Let’s take a deeper look at these words:

1. Energy (50,140)

While you may not remember now, gas prices were over $4.00 during the summer. Guess what Congress was talking about then? Energy Policy! During the summer months of June to September, “Energy” was the leading word of the day for 14 days. (”Energy” led all words in being the leading word for 16 days during the year.) In all, Congress voted on three bills with the word “Energy” in the title. These bills include the Energy and Tax Extenders Act of 2008, Comprehensive American Energy Security and Consumer Protection Act of 2008, and Energy Markets Emergency Act of 2008. Numerous other bills included important provisions related to energy. Before the total and complete meltdown of the American system of finance, “Energy” was the most debated policy priority of the year.

2. Health (41,001)

Nearly every year, health care is a major issue in Congress. This year, the major bills under consideration included the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act and the Mental Health Parity Act. There was also an attempt to override President Bush’s veto of the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, a top priority of congressional Democrats. Another factor may have been National Public Health Week (April 7-13).

3. Service (37,287)

One way that lawmakers use the Congressional Record is to honor members of their districts by including a letter in the Record with laudatory praise. Nearly all of these letters commend and honor the service of the individual or organization. Some samplings: “With 26 years of active commissioned service , Colonel Flowers has served our country in a variety of diverse assignments;” “John Playter might not be a household name for many, but his service to our country during World War II certainly earns him a leading role in America’s Greatest Generation;” “I rise today to honor and celebrate the anniversary of Michigan Radio for 60 years of service to the state of Michigan and the citizens of Southeast Michigan.” There are thousands of these letters inserted into the Record each year.

4. Public (32,428)

This one doesn’t exactly tell us what lawmakers are discussing but rather where they are discussing it: in the public sphere. See how it works: When our public officials are discussing public bills in the public arena the word “public” will undoubtedly wind up in the public record. Furthermore, public officials can commit public corruption by betraying the public trust. Also, and perhaps most important here, a very common headline in the Congressional Record is: Deletions of Sponsor From Public Bills and Resolutions.

5. Oil (32,198)

Just like with “Energy,” oil was a constant topic of conversation across the country this year. The concerns about high oil prices and high gas prices among citizens are reflected in the words of their elected representatives. Democrats sought to impose restrictions on the oil trading markets as prices per barrel spiked to never before seen highs. Republicans called for further oil exploration under the mantra “Drill here, drill now!” Only “Energy” had more days as the word of the day. Notably, the number one lawmaker saying “Oil,” a total of 1,466 times, was Peak Oil enthusiast Roscoe Bartlett.

6. Report (30,858)

Most all bills come equipped with an accompanying report. More importantly, every bill that dares to pass Congress will eventually be reconciled in a Conference Report. After reconciliation is complete, both chambers of Congress will vote on the Conference Report. And they talk a lot about that Report. Also, bills and resolutions are reported to the floor for a vote.

7. Provide (29,778)

Bills provide for changes to previous legislation, or they provide certain monies or services to departments or groups of citizens. The word provide is necessary in both the writing of bills, which are introduced into the Congressional Record, and the discussion of them. There is simply no way to avoid using this word.

8. Security (29,241)

Social Security, Homeland Security, national security, border security, port security, rail security, security clearance, cyber security, climate security, data security, security blanket. Could there be a better word for a politician? It’s as though Frank Luntz and George Lakoff created a baby with the DNA extracted from a focus group.

9. Country (28,894)

Is it possible to constantly talk about the country, and the passage of laws that affect the country, without using the word “country”? Short answer: No.

10. Percent (28,682)

Every bill, every policy, every speech comes along with a set of statistics and those are represented by percentages. The percent of the tax rate one lawmaker wants to lower is the percent of the tax rate one lawmaker wants to raise. The same goes for the percent of auto emissions, the percent of the poverty rate, the percent of the budget. The language of policy requires the use of the word “percent,” thus its prominence in this list.

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Doc Searls, author and Senior Editor of the blog Linux Journal, interviews Sunlight’s Greg Elin in an article about open source in politics and government. Here are the choice parts from Greg describing Sunlight’s work, the data that backs it up, and the future of it all:

Almost all of our projects and funded projects are open source — though sometimes our code is a bit hacked so it takes a while to release it. Nearly every group I know is completely invested in open source: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Apache… The frameworks are being rapidly adopted: Rails, Django, Symfony…

The work I’m most interested in these days is dynamic-scripting — what I think about as “flow-and-go” data sets instead of what Jeff Jonas coined as “rack-and-stack” data sets. Dynamic scripting is Unix pipes! That is, every application does input and output. We leave the world of databases-make-reports and enter the world of RSS-flows-in and RSS-flows-out.

Two examples of flow. A Sunlight database, LouisDB.com, scrapes the Congressional Daily Record daily, transforming it into XML. Garrett Schure (Sunlight Labs developer) and Josh Ruihley did a word count algorithm on the Congressional Record to come up with Congress’ “Word of the Day” and the microsite http://capitolwords.org — which goes back to 2001 and has an RSS feed, API, and a widget people can put on their site. Louisdb.com makes it easier to search the Congressional Record — and now there’s a script boiling it down into tweetable content that others can use, too. Second example, from MySociety: TheyWorkForYou. It provides profiles of what Members are doing in Parliament by parsing the Parliament’s daily record and votes. Lastly, many sites rely on the work of Josh Tauber’s http://govtrack.us b/c. Josh scrapes all sorts of data on bills in Congress and transforms it into XML. Josh’s data is open and so also is his code. It’s a tremendous contribution.
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Programmers and technologists who grew up with the web and with open source have been entering the political and e-government arena the past several years bringing with them the tools and practices of open source and Web 2.0. They are collaborating with — and sometimes competing with — existing technologists who were often activists who learned spreadsheets and databases and desktop publishing and then the web to communicate their message. So we are seeing a geek-i-fication of everything from campaigns to good government groups to government itself. More open source. More frameworks. More collaborative communication among individual developers. It’s uneven, it’s bumpy, but it is definitely happening. The tipping point has occurred now in politics and government — the question remains only where the tree is going to land.

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Election Day has to be one of my favorite days of the year. There is no other day where you get to stand in line with your neighbors to express your commitment to your country and the freedom of democracy. It’s more electric than any other day (aside from the 2004 Red Sox World Series win), creating a sense of connectivity with the people we call Americans. But after the voting is done and a winner is declared there is still more that can be done by ordinary citizens.

The role of citizenship, especially in the age of the Internet, is constantly expanding to allow ordinary people - regular Joe Six-Packs - to have a voice in the political process. To be able to have that voice, people need access to the political activities that occur in between election days.

I’ve always viewed the Sunlight Foundation as providing a means for more Americans to have a voice when Congress is in session or while the next President plans their transition. The projects that we put out, the data we digitize, and the sites we support are meant to provide more information for every citizen so that they can hold their elected officials’ feet to fire well after election day. And the more information we make available, the more transparency we have in government, the more fire we have to hold under their feet.

So, vote, but don’t just vote. Election Day is the beginning of the political process, its continuation carries until the next election. There are so many resources online that can help you follow whether politicians keep their promises or how legislation that you cared about during the election is faring in Congress afterwords. Our Insanely Useful Web Sites is a great starting point for places to track what’s going on in government and who is trying to influence your elected officials.

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Who are we? What are we doing here? If you ever wanted a great answer to these questions from the Sunlight Foundation, here it is.

During the Personal Democracy Forum Conference in New York earlier this year, Tim O’Brien of O’Reilly Media talked with a number of our staff (Gabriela Schneider, John Wonderlich, Greg Elin, and Josh Ruihley) about what we do and how we do it. It’s a really great interview. You can listen below (run time approx. 27 min.):

O’Reilly Interview with Sunlight Foundation

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I don’t know about you but I never have enough time in the morning to catch up on all the government transparency Web sites that I follow. But our staff has become really big on services like Netvibes which offer a great way to custom-build a Web page around the news and information you like to stay on top of using RSS feeds and widgets.

So the Sunlight communications team (thanks, Lizzie!)  has created just such a customized bird’s eye view of what’s happening with our projects and grantees. Sunlight’s Netvibes Universe is now available as a public collection of the RSS feeds and widgets created by Sunlight and our partners. Head over to Sunlight’s Universe (how epic, right?), to become Sunlight’s friend, to keep up with the latest news from the major players in the sphere of online government information or to cherry pick the feeds you want to follow. You can also find Sunlight’s presence on social networks, like Twitter and Facebook, and grab widgets from the Sunlight government transparency “ecosystem.”

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Sunlight’s Bill Allison was on Anderson Cooper 360° on CNN last night discussing the Bridge to Nowhere and the votes cast for the Bridge by Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Watch the video:

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Today, we are launching a new Web site, Party Time, a project to track parties thrown at the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions as well as fund raising activities by all lawmakers running for Congress that happen all year round in Washington, D.C. and beyond.

The count of parties and events we’ve heard about scheduled for the Democratic and Republican National Conventions is now above 400-and counting. As we noted the other week, here, these convention parties are often sponsored by corporate interests such as Citi, Eli Lilly and Qwest, as well as powerhouse lobbying firms such as Patton Boggs. They continue despite new ethics reforms intended to rein in excesses of special interest bashes for members of Congress. Many of these party hosts are also sponsors of the conventions’ host committees, major donors to federal candidates and party committees and are also big spenders on federal lobbying.

So, for example:

AT&T is hosting more than a dozen parties at both conventions, most of them parties for different state delegations. The company is also underwriting both the Democratic and GOP Convention committees, and happens to be the #2 top donor to federal and candidates and parties since 1989, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. AT&T has spent more than $3 million on federal campaign contributions and lobbying combined in 2008 alone, 60% of which is directed to the GOP. It has also spent another $3.2 million on federal lobbying.

Qwest’s CEO, Ed Mueller, is hosting an event at the Denver Art Museum on Monday, August 25. The company is also giving the Democratic and GOP Convention host committees a total of some $12 million in direct and in-kind contributions. Qwest has given $682,000 to federal candidates and parties so far this election cycle, and spent $1.7 million on lobbying.

A long list of financial service powerhouses are sponsoring a “financial literacy brunch” at the Democratic National Convention, including Allstate, AEGON, Bank of America, Capitol One, Charles Schwab, Edward Jones, Fidelity, Genworth, MasterCard, Mutual of Omaha, Nationwide, Principal Financial Group, State Farm, NASDAQ, US Bank, Visa, Wachovia and Wells Fargo. These companies are major campaign contributors and lobbying forces in Washington.

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Bush. Energy. Oil. Caribbean? These were the most frequently uttered words in Congress last week, brought to you courtesy of Sunlight’s latest Web site, Capitol Words. Now, you can have an at-a-glance view into the daily proceedings of the United States Congress through the simplest lens available — a single word.

For every day that Congress is in session, Capitol Words displays the most frequently used word in the Congressional Record, dating back to the second session of the 106th Congress (January 20, 2000). (The Congressional Record, published daily, is a complete account of the floor proceedings of the House and Senate.)

We created Capitol Words to make it easy to know what issues Congress is addressing on a daily basis. Whether the congressional word of the day matches up to an issue, an action or the name of a member of Congress, Capitol Words provides a snapshot of the main topic addressed by Congress for any given day. By looking at the site’s calendar view, it’s obvious that ‘energy’ has been a hot topic in Congress this month.

Capitol Words is powered by LOUIS which scraped the Congressional Record on GPO Access. Our Labs also created an API so you can incorporate the word of the day in your applications.

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Earlier today, Lawrence Lessig spoke about Change Congress at the Free Press’ fourth annual National Conference for Media Reform, being held this year in Minneapolis. As always, Larry gave a killer speech. You can watch an earlier speech he gave at the National Press Club in March when he launched Change Congress here. Which reminds me…

Not to be missed: In the current edition of The Nation, Christopher Hayes, the magazine’s Washington editor, profiles Larry and Change Congress. It’s an extensive profile and a good read. (And I say this not only because he quotes me!) You don’t have to take my word for it, Cory Doctorow called the profile "fantastic." Hayes writes "playing David to various Goliaths (armed with a laptop as slingshot) is the defining narrative of Lessig’s career." If you’re a Lessig fan, it’s a must read.  If you’re unfamiliar with this bona fide and burgeoning cult hero, check it out…And join the revolution!

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I’m at my second of the mega conferences that are put on by the folks at Free Press - the National Conference on Media Reform. It’s an amazing gathering (this year in tornado beset Minneapolis) of experts, average citizens and advocates. It’s actually hard to pick which panel to attend — I’ve never seen so few people hanging out in the halls, which is certainly a tribute to the program itself. This year there are for more panels and experts on what’s happening online - sessions on social networking, citizen journalism, legislation 2.0. You can watch many of the sessions live.

Micah Sifry, our senior strategic consultant, is using his new Nokia phone/video tool to upload conversations we are having with some of the people here directly to Qik.com

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