Informed American for Windows Phone 8, helping you keep up with Congress

Informed American is a Windows Phone 8 app designed to keep you informed about Congressional activities ranging from bill sponsorship, voting, and financial activities of various Senators and Representatives.  Need to see where a bill is at in Congress?  Informed American will display the recent activity on the legislation and let you pull the full text of the bill up on your Windows Phone.

Many States in the U.S. will be holding mid-term Elections this year and Informed American is a Windows Phone 8 app that may help you make a more informed decision in the voting booth.

The main pages of Informed American include:

• Members Page: By default this page will list the House and Senate leaders but if you press the “+” button at the bottom of the page, you can opt to display your State’s Congressional Delegation.
• Bills: This page will display the most recently introduced bills under consideration by Congress.  The “+” button will give you the options to display bills by category (Senate Bills, House Bills, Joint Resolutions, etc.)
• Committee: Here you can pull up the various Congressional Committee activities.  From the Committee Page the “+” button will let you filter the committees by Senate, House or Joint memberships.
• Snapshot: This is a summary page of all Congressional activity.
• Date Page: Lists hourly activity for the last session date.

In addition to the “+” button Informed American has a back, remove, and re-order button running along the bottom of the main screens.  Up under the three-dot menu on the main page you will find a search button to search for specific members of Congress or bills and a link the app’s About screen.

In tapping on a member’s thumbnail, Informed American will take you to a series of pages highlighting that member’s activities and information.  This information includes financial statements of the politicians, contact information, voting information, and more.

Bill information includes information on the sponsor, current status, action history and the ability to read the full bill.

Informed American presents you with a lot of information on Congressional activities and those who were elected to office.  The only drawback is that the user interface needs a little fine-tuning. 

You lack the ability to change the default pages in that every time you launch Informed American, the membership leaders greet you.  It would be nice to be able to launch the app to your local delegation membership.  It would also be nice to pin individual bills or members to your Start Screen to make following them easier.

All totaled, Informed American will give you some insight into what Congress and its members are up to.  Informed American is a free app that is available for Windows Phone 8.

You can pick up your copy of Informed American here in the Windows Phone Store.