Capitol Words Gives Glimpse of What Congress is Discussing

Sunlight Foundation Also Unveils New Features and Redesign of its Web site

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 18, 2008

Contact: Gabriela Schneider 202-742-1520 ext 236

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, the Sunlight Foundation launched a new site, “Capitol Words” to provide 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.

Whether the word 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, dating back to the second session of the 106th Congress (January 20, 2000). The site also includes an API that provides several methods of accessing detailed information from the Capitol Words database.

“Sunlight created Capitol Words to make it easy to know what issues Congress is addressing on a daily basis,” said Ellen Miller, executive director and co-founder of the Sunlight Foundation. “Capitol Words is another example of how Sunlight creates useful tools to make congressional information more user-friendly. 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 the latest release from Sunlight Foundation, which just unveiled new features and a redesign of its Web site. Visitors to SunlightFoundation.com can now view profiles about each member of Congress, including their top contributors (and where those donors are from), financial assets, earmarks they sponsored and federal contracts in their district. There is also a section that aggregates blog posts from Sunlight’s major grantees.

The Sunlight Foundation supports, develops and deploys new Internet technologies to make information about Congress and the federal government more accessible to the American people. Through its projects and grant-making, Sunlight serves as a catalyst to create greater political transparency and to foster more openness and accountability in government. Visit SunlightFoundation.com to learn more about Sunlight’s projects, including PublicMarkup.org, EarmarkWatch.org and OpenCongress.org.

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