Organizers and activists who are tracking an issue – say, nuclear regulation - can spend countless hours sifting through data from a vast range of federal sources: the Peace Corps, the National Institute of Health, and hundreds of other disparate tidbits in order to understand the full picture. It can feel a bit like going to the bookstore and having to peruse all the titles before finding what you want.

Finally, someone has hit on a time-saving solution that organizes key federal data while also shining a bright spotlight on what’s really happening in government: OpenRegulations.org. It’s the only place on the Net that offers individual RSS feeds for each federal agency (there are more than 150 agencies cataloged). Feeds range from the Administration of Children and Families to the United Institute for Peace, offering reports, lists of statistics, meeting notes, and every other bit of regulatory data you can imagine, right at your fingertips.

Jerry Brito, a senior research fellow with the regulatory studies program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University is the creator of this project. He came up with the idea after he subscribed to theRSS-feed of Regulations.gov, the “federal government’s official regulatory clearinghouse,” and got flooded with thousands of updates on every piece of regulation posted about on the site. Frustrated by the information overload, Brito, a self-described neat-freak (see Unclutterer), formed OpenRegulations.org as analternative to Regulations.gov.

By doing the sorting via RSS feed for users, Brito’s site makes it possible for activists and organizers to spend less time researching and more time on advocacy efforts, all while gaining a clearer picture of what the government is up to.

Brito sees the development of OpenRegulations as a step toward future opportunities for interesting mash-ups. He points to MAPLight, an award-winning database that tracks campaign contributions and political action, as an example of what can be done when websites parse, tag, and catalog otherwise cluttered bits of information.

With this newly organized, inside information about how our government behaves, organizers will soon have a clearer picture of a politician’s relationship with funding, policy, and legislation right at their fingertips. With the advancement of Brito’s project, pajama and traditionalist activists alike will have another tool with which they can understand and respond to government waste, clumsiness, and irresponsibility.

-Filed in People, Tools