CFParticipation: Announcing the Library of Congress Congressional Data Challenge

In a post at the Library of Congress Signal Blog, Kate Zwaard (LOC) announced the Congressional Data Challenge, “a competition asking participants to leverage legislative data sets on congress.gov and other platforms to develop digital projects that analyze, interpret or share congressional data in user-friendly ways.”

One project will be chosen to receive a $5,000 prize, and there is an additional $1,000 prize for the best high school project. The LOC staff suggests the following project outcomes for potential participants:

• A visualization of the legislative process using legislative data;
• Tools that could be embedded on congressional and public websites;
• A legislative matching service to identify members of Congress with similar legislative interests;
• Tools to improve accessibility of legislative data;
• A web-based display connecting Library digital collection items with related legislative activities.

The post includes Fourteenth Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden’s hopes that the challenge will encourage citizens to engage with the various sources of data made available by the LOC:

We are asking citizen coders to explore ways to analyze, interpret or share this information in user-friendly ways. I hope this challenge will spark an interest in the legislative process and also a spirit of information sharing by the tech-savvy and digital humanities pioneers who answer the call. I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Entries are due April 2, 2018. For more information, visit the project page at challenge.gov.