The current API supports a broad set of civic data questions. These topics are good candidates for future chapters:
| Topic | API endpoints | Why it is useful |
|---|---|---|
| Legislative productivity index | /congresses?include_stats=true, /documents, /people | Normalizes bill output by chamber size, congress duration, and member count. |
| Senate vs House agenda comparison | /documents?type=HB, /documents?type=SB | Shows which policy areas originate in each chamber. |
| Local bill geography proxy | /documents?scope=Local, title search | Identifies place-focused bills and local legislative concentration. |
| Authorship networks | /documents, /documents/{id}/authors | Builds co-authorship graphs and detects legislative blocs. |
| Policy topic trendlines | /search/documents, /documents | Tracks education, health, labor, justice, environment, and infrastructure bills across congresses. |
| Legislative calendar rhythm | /documents?date_from=...&date_to=... | Measures filing bursts by month, quarter, and congress lifecycle stage. |
| Tenure and output | /people/{id}?include_congresses=true, /people/{id}/documents | Studies whether longer tenure correlates with more authored bills or broader policy coverage. |
| Committee density and bill volume | /congresses?include_stats=true | Tests whether congresses with more committees also file more bills. |
| Missing metadata audit | /stats, /documents | Quantifies bills without dates, subjects, abstracts, authors, or download links. |
| Search quality benchmark | /search/documents, /search/people | Creates examples that validate whether API search returns relevant civic records. |
API Improvements That Would Unlock Deeper Analysis¶
Add implemented
/committeeslist/detail/member endpoints.Include author chamber and party/coalition metadata when available.
Add bill status, stage, committee referral, and final outcome fields.
Add canonical geographic identifiers for local bills.
Expose graph-native co-author and person-to-congress summary endpoints.