US Federal legislation is a hot topic for discussion and advocacy on the web.
Yet legislative bills present a significant challenge for both experts and
average citizens to navigate and understand. To explore solutions to this problem,
we have created DocBlocks: a prototype visualization and website that enables
users to explore the content of congressional bills and communicate their
findings to others. Our technique enables us to take any document from a
categorized corpus, classify its sections, and visualize its topic structure.
With the launch of this service, we hope to provide a valuable tool for open
governance and learn from our users at this critical intersection of visualization,
advocacy, social software, and civil society.