Thursday, 10 February 2011

Congressional Quarterly to publish new information service

CQ has announced that it is launching a new subscription service called First Street, an information source for  lobbyists, law firms, associations and other groups working to affect federal government policy. First Street is "a revolutionary database built for researching political relationships and building coalitions." It contains the information in CQ's directories for Congressional staff  and lobbyists, combined with news and information about legislation.  The New York Times describes it as "a Facebook for lobbyists."
The Sunlight Labs blog ( part of the Sunlight Foundation, which has the goal of digitizing government data and making tools and websites to make it easily accessible) points out that much of the information provided by this service is freely available, though subscribers are paying for aggregation and some analysis of the info. 

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