BillMap is a tool we developed along with Ari Hershowitz of GovTrack to track legislative ideas, or memes, over time. BillMap identifies legislation in the same congress with similar content, and also identifies similar legislation considered in prior Congresses in one place so it is easy for lawmakers, Hill staff, and other stakeholders to better understand its history and make informed decisions on the legislation.
We’re pressuring Congress to develop a similar program so the institution can learn from its own history and patterns. As usual, the code we used is open source.