• Daniel Newhauser from Roll Call announced the U.S. House of Representatives will be launching a new website in April. The article says the new site promises to be more “user-friendly … [and will offer] up-to-date information on the home page about committee schedules, the latest votes and information from the Clerk of the House.”
• The Department of Homeland Security is planning a new social media outreach program, according to an article on FiercegovernmentIT.com.

• Govtech.com reported that the state of Oregon has released a new data portal, Data.Oregon.gov. Oregon has become the latest state to offer raw data where the public can take information about things like state contracts, agency salaries, and expenditures. You can create filters, segmented data sets, charts, and maps. Data can also be exported as XML and CSV files for your own API, or as a PDF for easy presentation as is.

For a full list of states offering such a data portal, see the federal parent site Data.gov for an interactive map.

• In another news item, the Des Moines Register wrote a piece about how the Iowa Flood Center at the University of Iowa will be publishing online flood maps to help citizens and city officials throughout the state better prepare for flood disasters.
• Here is an article from the Houston Chronicle reporting that a bill has been proposed in the Texas House to ban city and state public officials from emailing, texting, and posting on the internet while they are “on the clock”.