Learn how Congress is starting to use Elasticsearch to modernize search, and how you can help to accelerate this change. Until just a decade ago, some of the most important precedents of Congress were stored and indexed on paper cards. This system was replaced by a slow, clunky SQL search and there was initially resistance when Xcential proposed to convert this to Elasticsearch (v1.7.2), because lawyers feared that ‘relevance’-based search would be less precise. With accurate results, 50 times faster, users were won over. Now there is a potential to use modern search, not only for precedents, but throughout the work of Congress and in state legislatures as well. We’ll talk about some of these projects, and how you could get involved (we’re hiring!).