For all those outside the Beltway who want to unleash their inner policy wonk and talk with others about the nitty gritty of legislative policy, we have the site for you.

OpenCongress.org, a project by the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation, revamped its site last week, adding a new set of social networking and other tools to make it easier to track a bill, find others who share views on legislation, and contact lawmakers about an issue.

"You never hear somebody at a bar talking about clause 56 in H.R. 3200," said project manager David Moore. So OpenCongress "enables peer-to-peer communication about the best information on bills in Congress."

The site now has an e-mail form, so you can send an email to contact lawmakers about legislation, a tracking tool so you can compare how you would vote on a piece of legislation with how your representative has voted and a personalized list of legislation you may support or oppose.

"There was a real opportunity to bring together this confusing government data with helpful data and what people were saying about it," said Moore. The site aims to "make all the information about Congress more accessible to people who aren't necessarily Congress-buffs."

OpenCongress.org first launched in 2007 with a comprehensive list of legislation, links to news stories, the bill's text and space to leave comments and vote in support or opposition of the bill. But it's the social networking tools that were added that are enabling regular people to connect with Congress, Moore said, and it has seen an uptick in traffic as a result.

The site also connects people with others who share, or oppose, their views on issues being debated in Congress. Registered users can create profiles, friend other users and share which bills they support or oppose.

More than 50,000 people have registered for accounts on OpenCongress, and 1,000 have registered this week after the site was updated with the new features. OpenCongress receives more than 600,000 visits per month.

Groups are also using the site to organize and educate members, and they can use OpenCongress' tools on their own sites.

For example, Free Press, a media reformation group, uses data from OpenCongress to inform its visitors if their representatives are supporting a bill to open up new low power FM radio stations. Click here to see how.

Lesser known bills - like the Belated Thank You to the Merchant Mariners of World War II Act - don't receive much action on the site, but plenty of visitors are coming to the site to learn and share about the most significant bills before Congress - like the House Democrats' health care bill - "America's Affordable Health Choices Act." Information about that important piece of legislation has been viewed on the site almost 80,000 times, with many viewers leaving comments and voting to support or oppose the bill.

And readers are taking advantage of e-mail. Lawmakers have reported receiving large amounts of communication regarding the health care reform legislation, Moore says.

"We're just going to see more and more citizen participation," he said. "I think Congress is going to have to change the way it does business to open up their process. I think they're going to be forced to be more transparent."