U.S. Legislators Contact Info Alexa Skill

Name: U.S. Legislators Info

Invocation Name: Alexa, my legislator

Why?

This work is a result of a demo I attended. It inspired me to create my own Alexa Skill. I decided to take the current U.S. Congress and create a contact info skill.

Data used to create this skill.

Current serving Members of Congress

https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislators
File: legislators-current
Download: CSV

AWS Services used

• API Gateway

• AWS Lambda Node.js 6.10

• DynamoDB

• S3 bucket for legislator images

Overview

Interacting with Skill

Alexa legislators contact info

Alexa: Will read "Welcome" asking "Which legislator are you wanting to contact?"

Consumer: "Mitch McConnell" or "Kirsten Gillibrand" etc...

Consumer: Get Bioguide for "Mitch McConnell" or "Kirsten Gillibrand" etc...

Alexa: will read content from Bioguide

"Mitch McConnell" http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=M000355

"Kirsten Gillibrand" http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=G000555

Interacting with Web API

• /legislators - get all list of all the legislators
• /legislators/{legislatorId} - get this legislator

Useful Links

• GovTravk.us (https://www.govtrack.us)

• OpenSecrets.org (https://www.opensecrets.org/)

• @unitedstates (https://github.com/unitedstates)

• Amazon Developer Portal - (https://developer.amazon.com/alexa)

• AWS Lambda - (https://aws.amazon.com/console/)

• Serverless - (https://serverless.com/)

• AWS CLI - (https://aws.amazon.com/cli/)

• Opearlo Alexa Skill Analytics - (https://analytics.opearlo.com/)

• 11-opearlo-analytics - https://github.com/MerryOscar/voice-devs-lessons/tree/master/11-opearlo-analytics