[BWStearns]

Maybe try to organize some tech-minded staffers on the hill? Get them to put bills onto a github repo when they are made public, maybe even XMLizing it to make it more exposed to machine analysis. It'd be a huge step in congressional transparency, especially now that bills are going into the high hundreds and thousands of pages (not a dig at the healthcare bill in particular, just a trend).

[tbatterii]

Well it looks like the sunlight foundation has done some nice work in this area, but as far as I can tell these are all bills that have made it to vote. http://www.opencongress.org/bill/all

Whereas, I would like to see the drafts and how they progress behind closed doors with all the lobbying influence.

[BWStearns]

I think its quite understandable that they have the deliberations in private. Imagine if your customers saw every minute of your office's day. What irks me is that although bills are available, they are available in such a way that it is a fulltime job to even look for things of interest. With better machine-searchable formats, you could set up alerts for potentially interesting sub-components of legislation that is up for debate.

Edit: I don't endorse some skeevy lobbying activities, but that isn't the only influence, and there are some legitimately difficult choices that our reps make (when they're working right... so I guess rarely) that they believe are in the best interest of the country and their constituents. Many of these decisions would be made even more difficult and actually discourage much of what thoughtful and earnest decision making does exist.

[jacques_chester]

Amendments should be moved in the open by individual members.

Australian Parliaments do it, so clearly it's not a great impediment to lawmaking.