Why Congress Needs a Version Control System

I've seen some really great posts coming out of O'Reilly Radar the last few days, and this one by Tim O'Reilly discusses an interesting idea. In Why Congress Needs a Version Control System:

These are really thought-provoking suggestions. I was particularly struck by Karl's suggestion of a version control system for Congress. They say you don't want to see either laws or sausages being made, but I think they are wrong. Imagine how much more transparency and accountability our government would have if it were possible to see what changes were made by whom, who inserted extraneous riders into various bills, and generally to track the influence of various interests by the new visibility into their actual control over the knobs and levers of government!

I'd never thought of this before, but it's an idea that makes so much sense. I can think of at least two different ways that a version control system would be interesting. First, by looking at diffs (i.e. the changes from one version to the next) a congressperson would be better able to know exactly how a given bill has changed before she votes on it. This would essentially end the idea that someone could slip in a last minute amendment to a bill. With a system like this the congressperson could look at only the changes to the last version of the bill she read, just before she is going to vote on it. This would allow her to see things like an new clause, or important one word changes that could change the tenor of the entire bill. This system would make it much easier for our representatives to be well-informed when they vote. Second, this system would be incredibly useful for us. I would love to see any piece of legislation published in a versioned form. That way, I could go through each revision of the bill myself to see how it changed and evolved. A version controlled law would show you every change from the initial text, and it would put a name next to those changes. It's the ultimate ability to fact-check your representative.