DC Detectives

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  DC Detectives Logo

Inspiration

This idea started to grow in our minds right after our team was formed. We shot out ideas ranging from Aircraft Crash Trackers to Toilet Paper Calculators, but the thought of making an objective collection of the recent happenings in politics stuck with us. The idea stood out to us because it was a project that was simple in nature, easily scalable to reach other branches of the Government, and most important to us, relevant. Modern media seems to be filled to the brim with biases and accusations. We wanted to cut through the falsehood, making a service that takes what comes from the capital and brings it directly to the people in a concise way.

What it does

DC Detectives is a website that tracks what happens in Washington. Our primary goal is to provide the truth and only the truth. Our website takes information directly from the governments' official websites and arranges it in a way that is easy to visualize and find, aggregating it so that people have first-hand access to important government documents.

How we built it

We used the federal register API to gather data and present it in a clear and concise fact-based website. We used node.js along with HTML and CSS to create the website, and used Heroku to host our website. We (of course) used GitHub to work together virtually, with each member contributing to the concept, code, and presentation.

Challenges we ran into

None of us have participated in a hackathon before, so this was a new experience for us all. Though we were inexperienced, we were able to work together and our veteran coders offered great guidance and support. Many of us ran into issues simply setting up the GitHub pushes and pulls, but even the novices of the group were able to contribute in a meaningful way.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our collaboration was an accomplishment in itself. The website's ability to incorporate data from multiple sources, and then generate summaries based on that data, is an accomplishment we are proud of. One of our members is even just particularly proud of figuring out how to use GitHub to push commits.

What we learned

The less experienced members of the team were able to get a good understanding of what it means to code as a group and use tools like GitHub to collaborate. Of course, all of us learned new bits of code and improved our understanding of node.js and CSS.

What's next for DC Detectives

DC Detectives still has much room to improve! There are still more opportunities to expand on the site; we haven't even covered topics like court cases for the Judicial branch. The site has countless possibilities for upgrades and improvements in the quest for the truth.

Built With

• css
• federalregister.gov
• github
• heroku
• html
• node.js