BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, July 27 2011

OpenCongress.org's new letter-writing functionality.

Yesterday I noted ways to contact Congress online, as debt-ceiling talks in Washington drag on and interest from constituents is jamming up the Capitol switchboard.

Today, the folks behind one of those ways, OpenCongress*, have announced some improvements to their platform — ones that make it easier to get in touch with elected officials. The new platform deploys tools like a web application that puts information side by side with a letter-writing form and groups that allow people to self-organize by issue area. None of these are new on their own; in fact, they're the kinds of tools that advocacy groups have been using for years. But that's the difference. People who are writing emails to their legislators from advocacy website are often presented with text to crib from — creating an incentive for their email to lean, in language and in opinion, towards the agenda of their host. Other online communities, with the exception of nascent ones like PopVox and Votizen, wrap their organizing functionality in a specific cause and towards a specific purpose. This is the first free, open-source, non-ideological space specifically designed for following, and then organizing around, activity in the U.S. Congress. Put simply, it's kind of a neat idea, and I don't think it's been done this way before.

Where OpenCongress previously allowed users to track legislation and legislators and identify their own officials, it now allows users to write a letter to all three of their members of Congress, send it as an email, and share it with others over social media. In a blog post today, OpenCongress' Donny Shaw outlines a new letter-writing platform that puts legislative and campaign finance data side-by-side with the form where users write out their email.

"Adding these details to your letter tells your members of Congress that you are paying close attention and have done your research. It also makes it clear that this is a unique communication, not a form letter," Shaw writes.

There's more over at OpenCongress.org.

* OpenCongress is a project of the Participatory Politics Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation, where Personal Democracy Forum co-founders Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej are senior technology advisers.

This post has been updated.