This is a feature request regarding congress.gov and its API. The request is twofold:
When related legislation is identified, Congress.gov should indicate and the API should return the first section in the current bill that is substantively related to another bill.
The Congress.gov related legislation tab should be organized, or at least sortable, by the section in the current bill that Congress.gov has determined is related to another bill.
Legislation displayed on congress.gov includes a tab for related legislation. For example, the recent NDAA (H.R. 2670, 118th Congress) indicates that 180 related bills were found. It is not clear the principle by which related bills are listed.
When referring to bills that are substantively related, it would be useful to indicate the initial section of the current bill that lines up to the related bill. For example:
The "Combating Global Corruption Act of 2023" (HR 457) is indicated by Congress.gov as a related bill.
Looking at the bill text, we can see that the related bill text appears in the NDAA starting in Section 5401 (in TITLE LIV--FOREIGN AFFAIRS MATTERS -- Subtitle A--Combating Global Corruption).
It would be useful to have a finding aid to let us know where the related text lives. This could be accomplished by having another column that lists section 5401.
In addition, there are often multiple related bills for a section of a particular bill. For example:
There are actually two related bills identified entitled "Combating Global Corruption Act of 2023" -- HR 457 and S 53. The text of those two bill are similar and they both relate to the same section of the NDAA, Section 5401.
However, those two bills are not listed one after the other -- i.e., next to each other -- in the "related legislation" tab on congress.gov. When multiple related bills are connected to the same section of the underlying text, it would be useful to surface this knowledge.
This could be accomplished by automatically displaying the related sections based upon the section where they are initially incorporated in the bill and/or by displaying the section number and allowing users to sort in ascending and descending order of the sections.
This is a feature request regarding congress.gov and its API. The request is twofold:
When related legislation is identified, Congress.gov should indicate and the API should return the first section in the current bill that is substantively related to another bill.
The Congress.gov related legislation tab should be organized, or at least sortable, by the section in the current bill that Congress.gov has determined is related to another bill.
Legislation displayed on congress.gov includes a tab for related legislation. For example, the recent NDAA (H.R. 2670, 118th Congress) indicates that 180 related bills were found. It is not clear the principle by which related bills are listed.
When referring to bills that are substantively related, it would be useful to indicate the initial section of the current bill that lines up to the related bill. For example:
The "Combating Global Corruption Act of 2023" (HR 457) is indicated by Congress.gov as a related bill.
Looking at the bill text, we can see that the related bill text appears in the NDAA starting in Section 5401 (in TITLE LIV--FOREIGN AFFAIRS MATTERS -- Subtitle A--Combating Global Corruption).
It would be useful to have a finding aid to let us know where the related text lives. This could be accomplished by having another column that lists section 5401.
In addition, there are often multiple related bills for a section of a particular bill. For example:
There are actually two related bills identified entitled "Combating Global Corruption Act of 2023" -- HR 457 and S 53. The text of those two bill are similar and they both relate to the same section of the NDAA, Section 5401.
However, those two bills are not listed one after the other -- i.e., next to each other -- in the "related legislation" tab on congress.gov. When multiple related bills are connected to the same section of the underlying text, it would be useful to surface this knowledge.
This could be accomplished by automatically displaying the related sections based upon the section where they are initially incorporated in the bill and/or by displaying the section number and allowing users to sort in ascending and descending order of the sections.