Here is a must have for every lawyer and paralegal in your office. The Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit organization for using technology to increase transparency in the U.S. Government, published this list of “insanely useful web sites” [via LXRR] add value to the torrents of government data making it more useful, accessible, or intelligible. These sites gravitate toward the legislative arena, but include:

• a better way to search Thomas and monitor legislation through GovTrack.us;
• DOJ Documents Search (www.trainingdb.com);
• find contractor misconduct;
• searchable database of federal spending and contracting (fedspending.org); and
• search public Congressional Research Service (CRS) documents (www.opencrs.com)

These sites provide extra value through adding newsfeeds (RSS feeds) for updates not just on news, but search queries. So every time new information arrives matching a query you created—even if it was six months ago—you are alerted through a newsfeed. Others like LOUIS search multiple sources, like the Federal Register, GAO Reports, and Presidential documents. Some synthesize data from multiple sources like MapLight.org does for campaign contributions and voting records. GovTrack, which serves as the foundation for many of these sites, allows people to create their own “monitors” for bills, votes, members of Congress, and even subject areas.