About GovPulse

To the average US citizen it can often seem that their government works in leaps and bounds, with new legislation or debates on legislation leaping to the fore. Yet every day the thousands of employees of the U.S Government go to work for the people of the country. Each day agencies release hundreds of proposed rules and regulations, meeting notices, final rules, and changes to existing rules in the form of the Federal Register. However in their current format they are difficult to find and to process in meaningful ways.

GovPulse was built to address this problem and open the doors of government to the people they work for. By making such documents as the Federal Register searchable, more accessible and easier to digest, GovPulse seeks to encourage every citizen to become more involved in the workings of their government and make their voice heard on the things that matter to them, from the smallest to the largest issues.

The Federal Register was created to inform citizens of their rights and obligations, document the actions of Federal agencies, and to provide a forum for public participation in the democratic process. Additionally it provides access to a wide range of Federal benefits and opportunities for funding

We like to think of the Federal Register as the pulse of government. It is our goal to see the hard work of the men and women that make up our government more robustly presented and thus encourage the people of the US to more fully participate.

Federal Register

The Federal Register was created in 1935 under the Federal Register Act and was further enlarged and amended by the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946.

Federal Register serves as the main source for the U.S. federal government agencies to propose new rules and regulations, announce final rules and changes to existing rules, and notify the public of meetings and adjudicatory proceedings.

The Federal Register updated daily by 6 a.m. and is published Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays, and consists of four types of entries.

• Presidential Documents, including Executive orders and proclamations
• Rules and Regulations, including policy statements and interpretations of rules
• Proposed Rules, including petitions for rulemaking and other advance proposals
• Notices, including scheduled hearings and meetings open to the public, grant applications, and administrative orders

We recommend reading About the Federal Register for a brief overview of the structure and value of the Federal Register.

Serious technology

When we embarked on the creation of this site in our spare time we knew that the open source software community would be essential to us realizing our dream. We are deeply indebted to all those who toil everyday to create incredible software and freely share it with the world. We are proud to have toiled along side them and thankful for their efforts to enable us to build a new app and tools we can release back into the community. It is our hope that this app continues to celebrate that spirit and gives back to that community, to the people of the US, and the world.

• The source code is available on Github at http://github.com/criticaljuncture/govpulse.
• Code bugs can be filed at Lighthouse, via http://govpulse.lighthouseapp.com/projects/35087-govpulseus/overview.
• Problems, suggestions, etc can also be filed at Tender, via http://govpulse.tenderapp.com/discussions.

Federal Register data is gathered from http://data.gov/details/101

List of technologies used (get ready, it's a long one!)

• Ruby
• Ruby on Rails
• Thinking sphinx
• Searchlogic
• Chronic
• Later Dude
• Annotate Models
• Compass, Blueprint, Sass & Haml
• Cloudmade APIs
• Geokit & geokit-rails
• Maxmind ip database

Special thanks goes to:

• Mark James for the Silk icon set
• Anson Parker for A Better Tag Cloud

We are not robots

We are three developers that have a passion for building web applications that make a difference in the lives of people. By day we work to further our educational system. By night, well we do other stuff. Like this app.