Where our information comes from
Every bill, vote, and official in Unum comes from official, public government sources. We don't write or alter the legislative record — we organize it so it's easier to follow.
Legislative data
- Bills, actions, cosponsors, and members of Congress
- Congress.gov API, maintained by the Library of Congress api.congress.gov
- Bill summaries
- Official summaries written by the Congressional Research Service, via the Congress.gov API api.congress.gov
- Member photos and biographies
- Biographical Directory of the United States Congress bioguide.congress.gov
- Officials' education histories
- Wikipedia contributors, under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
- House roll-call votes
- Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives clerk.house.gov
- Senate roll-call votes
- United States Senate senate.gov
- Zip code to congressional district
- U.S. Census Bureau ZIP Code Tabulation Area relationship files census.gov
- Congressional district boundaries
- U.S. Census Bureau TIGERweb tigerweb.geo.census.gov
- Street address to congressional district
- U.S. Census Bureau Geocoder geocoding.geo.census.gov
- Address suggestions
- © Mapbox mapbox.com
- Map images
- © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License openstreetmap.org/copyright
How often it updates
Unum syncs with Congress.gov twice a day, at 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Eastern Time. Roll-call votes appear once the House Clerk or the Senate publishes them. Because we rely on these official sources, very recent actions can take a few hours to show up in the app.
Civics guide
Our built-in civics guide explains foundational, nonpartisan civics topics. Each article links directly to the sources it references, and all images are individually credited in the app.
Official government sources
Nonpartisan educational sources
Independence
Unum is an independent civic education app. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or representing any government entity, member of Congress, the Library of Congress, or the U.S. House or Senate. Unum Initiative is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
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