Stop building “who’s my rep?” /“what does this bill do?” tools. They already exist!
There are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of legitimate tools to help people find their elected officials and better understand legislation; just search around a bit and you’ll find ones that have been battle-tested! We do not need more of these.
If you’re interested in these problems, figure out how to make the tools that already exist easier to find for people who want to use them.
Other problems that need solving way more than the ones in the title:
* Helping people find and/or create local ballot guides so they know how to vote in local elections. State and Federal are easy but knowing how to vote for local/regional seats (school board, judges, ballot measures) is hard.
* Helping nonprofits/advocacy groups find donations and connect with supporters.
* Helping local candidates get their campaigns off the ground and win their primaries. Supporter money mostly arrives too close to a primary to be useful and most younger people can’t afford to bootstrap a candidacy to win a primary.
* Helping people find resources for food, aide, permitting, etc. from their local government.
* Helping people keep track of, and fight back against, permits for extractive industry that harms the local environment. Local boards need to see opposition to deny permits but if no one is watching and rallying locals, the permits get approved.
* Digitizing local records and making them available at scale.
* Streamlining permitting for clean energy and pushing local governments toward incentives on them.
* Local mini-disaster relief — connecting neighbors en masse when the power or water goes out for days after a storm, etc.