US Federal and State Executive and Committee Data Now in Cicero
For the past few months, the Cicero team has been adding to our growing list of legislative data in the United States. If you’re a current Cicero customer, you may have already noticed more data being returned in the API and in District Match. We have officially completed a few expansions, and we’re excited to announce that you can now access expanded executive data and all committee data at the federal and state levels in the US! What’s more, this new data is FREE!
Federal and state executive data
For over a decade, we’ve kept the most up-to-date data on legislative districts and elected officials at every level of government. That includes everyone from the President and members of Congress to governors and state legislators to mayors and city council members. Over the years users have told us that information on some appointed officials would be valuable to have, in addition to more coverage of the executive branch. We heard you!
We’ve expanded our executive data to encompass 24 federal positions (including the President’s Cabinet) and about 700 state positions, which include:
- Lt. Governor
- Attorney General
- Secretary of State
- Treasurer
- Controller
- Auditor
- Superintendent of Schools
- Insurance Commissioner
- Agriculture Commissioner
- Natural Resources Commissioner
- Labor Commissioner
- Public Service Commissioner
Executives in District Match
Where can you find this data? If you’re using District Match, look for the national_exec and state_exec CSVs in your results folder.
When you open up either of those files, you’ll no longer just see President and Vice President or Governor, but an extended list of administrators:
Executives in the API
If you’re using the API, you’ll now see this information in calls you make using the “official” resource. If you want to just pull in this information, you can use the following syntax in your call:
“&district_type=NATIONAL_EXEC&district_type=STATE_EXEC”
With all of this added information, the length of your response can extend by several officials and may go past the default max of 50. In that case, you can either paginate using the “offset” parameter:
“…&offset=51” “…&offset=101”
Or you can increase the max:
“…&max=100” “…&max=200”
Note that you cannot increase the max past 200. If the number of officials is greater than that, you’ll need to paginate results.
Federal and state committee data
Anybody who does legislative advocacy in the US knows that the real work happens in committees. Every legislator is assigned to at least one committee every session to research and consider bills that fall under their issue-specific jurisdiction. Therefore committees are often the first and most critical points of contact for advocates.
For the first time in our history, Cicero now has committee data! This data is an attribute of officials. You’ll find an official’s committee assignments in the API listed after photo/bio and before party:
This data is available now as described above and by spring 2021, it will be accessible in even more ways. Stay tuned for a committees API endpoint, committee data in District Match, and subcommittees.
The best part about these expansions is that all of this new data is FREE! For both API and District Match customers, this data will not cost any additional credits or money; you can simply continue to use the tools as you have been and see the additional data appear in your results. If you’re not yet a Cicero user, now is a great time to try things out! You can sign up for a free API trial or a District Match account and access our expanded coverage today.
Are there other types of data or features you’d like to see in Cicero? Let us know!
