The Commonwealth of Virginia is the first state in the nation to offer free online bill tracking following the introduction of the service for the 2001 Virginia General Assembly legislative session. The system allows users to select up to 20 bills of interest and provides automatic tracking information that includes bill names, numbers, sponsors, summaries, and status updates.

The service, which launched on Dec. 14, is being provided by a collaboration of the General Assembly's Division of Legislative Automated Systems (DLAS) and the Virginia Information Providers Network (VIPNet), a subsidiary of e-government firm NIC.

"People all over the state, no matter where they live, can get involved in government without having access to paid lobbyists or other costly services," said Frosty Landon, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, a government watchdog organization.

The 20-bill lookup feature enhances the Commonwealth's My Virginia personalized homepage service, which allows users to tailor the government information and services they wish to see when accessing http://www.vipnet. The site provides a broad range of links for state and local government, education, news, traffic, and general information Web pages.

"The nation and the world now looks to Virginia for technology leadership," Governor Jim Gilmore said during his State of Commonwealth address on Jan. 10. "We created the first Secretary of Technology, passed the first and still most comprehensive Internet policy, and launched the first interactive state portal, My Virginia, which serves as the gateway for citizens to access electronic government. Our work stands as a model for governing in the Internet age."

DLAS is an agency of the Virginia General Assembly and is responsible for providing an electronic legislative information system. The Legislative Information System is freely available at http://leg1.state.va.us and as a selection on the General Assembly's home page at http://legis.state.va.us.

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