Rep. Vern Buchanan has it on his BlackBerry so he can communicate with his colleagues. David Hersenhorn, reporter for the New York Times, uses it while reporting on the Hill. Adam Conner, Facebook's Public Policy Representative, needs it to lobby Congress. But what is "it"?

"It" is a smart phone application that creates a Facebook-like directory of members of Congress right in your pocket. Congress in Your Pocket, as the business is called, offers an incredible amount of information on each of the 535 members of Congress including the office address, website, contact form, political party, phone number, Twitter account, election information, last opponent, member bios, and links to news and campaign contribution information. For those interacting with the Hill, this application is a must have. And if you work in certain states, there may be an app for that as well.

Currently, there are three versions of Congress in Your Pocket available for the iPhone. They range widely in price, from $0.99 to $99 (yes, one costs 100x more), depending what information you want on it. We've test driven the $9.99 version and loved the feature set and ease of use. In fact, we've written about it and discussed it on Federal News Radio.

More recently, we got a chance to speak to Michael Cohen, owner of the Cohen Research Group that is behind the application, to discuss this helpful tool. 

Q: Why did you create the application?

Because I believe everyone should have the opportunity to contact the people who represent them. The information should be public, easily accessible, and user-friendly. As we have grown more mobile, first with Palm Pilots, and now iPhones and BlackBerry devices, there is no need to print paper directories. Paper directories are usually out-of-date even before they're printed.  

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Q: How long did it take to develop?

The iPhone application took several months to develop, but it was years in the making. I first had the idea to do this while I was working for The Gallup Poll about 10 years ago in the government division. Back in the day, when I was walking around with a Palm Tungsten device, I had a spreadsheet of everyone in Congress but then developed an app to sell online. The application, from start to its first release, took about six months. This was right at the beginning of when Steve Jobs announced the app store. The application has been in iTunes for 13 months and we have upgraded the functionality over a dozen times for free.

Q: Do you have plans to create something similar for the agencies?

We have thought about doing something similar for agencies, particularly the larger ones. This is based on our experience in expanding the application to states. People simply want to have this information with them, instead of having to refer to a clunky, out-of-date and expensive Yellow Book. Just as with states, we are looking to add teammates who have knowledge of their particular location or agency. To do this right, you have to know the audience of what a person might want. So ideally, if we're fortunate, we'll have an ex-staffer contact us with an idea for their former agency. Currently, we are in discussions with a group out of Australia to bring it to their country as well as New Zealand. We're open to these kinds of partnerships worldwide.

Q: Do you have any other plans for applications?

Right now the focus is getting the big states on our map (http://www.congressinyourpocket.com/map.cfm). We are about to send Michigan to Apple for review today and we are close to completing New York. We have several other targets, but it really depends upon finding the right person to work with. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, it's crucial to our strategy that we work with someone who either lives in that state or has a very strong familiarity with that state's legislature. That way, we include the right information in the right way and have the ability to get it out to folks who need it the most. But we do offer them for smaller states. For example, I was just contacted this morning by someone who lives in Iowa who would like to work with us.

Q: Do you sell this for BlackBerry as well?

Yes, every application we offer for the iPhone is now available for BlackBerry as a web application. We have hired a gifted developer to help us move to native applications that could be deployed within an enterprise. iPhones are great, but they are very much a one-to-one solution. For BlackBerry, we have a lot more flexibility and a much broader market, especially in Washington.  

Quick story: apparently the government relations people of RIM and Apple know each other. They went to lunch and the Apple person showed the RIM person our application, essentially saying "look at what we have on our platform." We get a call from the BlackBerry person the next day and they have been very helpful ever since then.

Q: Do you have any cool updates planned?

Yes. We are working on two things that will be most useful for professionals and citizens alike: Notes and member search by zip code. Notes will allow you to take short notes within the application on your meeting with a member of Congress or interesting tidbits you might have picked up from a different source. For folks just getting involved in politics for the first time, we are adding a search by zip code function. This is particularly challenging since there is no great central database for this kind of information and, as you know, zip codes can be served by different members. We're working very hard on that one.  

We also added full database search on names, states, parties, districts, committees, and bios. This allows someone who is interested in, for example, health care reform, to search for the word "Health" and it will pull up all of the committees with that word in it as well as bios of people who believe that is an important issue to them. It's very fast and very, very powerful. We're not aware that it exists in any other mobile platform. We've also taken advantage of the 3.0 Apple update which allows users to send email to staffers without leaving the application and choosing which things you'd like to see in our ever-expanding "More" section.

Q: I'd love to be able to email my congressman right from my iPhone without having to go to their contact form/go online... is that possible?

Sadly, members of Congress have decided to "unlist" their email addresses. We are aware that they have them, but there is no good way to call an office and ask a staff assistant for their boss's email address so people can directly contact them, even if they are constituents. However, staff email addresses follow a specific and consistent algorithm, so we follow that. Anyway, a good rule of thumb is that if you want to get something done in Washington, contact the staff first.

Q: Are there other applications like this you would recommend?

We like ours, but I would recommend taking a look at CongressBills, a free application that is part of the way there to where we want to go with legislation. 

Q: Have you ever thought of including sponsored bills in the application by interfacing with Govtrack?

We have thought about it, but sometimes third parties require significant fees if you are packaging their information in a paid application. We have valuable partnerships with LegiStorm for congressional earmarks, travel, and staff pay. We also have a great relationship with the National Institute for Money in State Politics. But it's a good suggestion. Currently, we have a solution for this but it's less mobile friendly than we'd like. We provide direct links from the information pages in our app to the corresponding pages in Thomas.loc.gov. We'd like to take it further to get to a full legislation search in a eye-candy kind of way for mobile devices. We're not there yet, but it's high on our to-do list.

Q: Tell us about your company.

Cohen Research Group is nearing its five-year anniversary in December. Our primary work is in market research for corporations like Hard Rock Cafe worldwide, which is refreshingly apolitical. It's great work and it reminds us all that there is a world outside of Washington where people simply want to have a meal and a good time in a way that's creative and has intrinsic value. But, I hold a Ph.D. in American Government and Public Policy as well as a Master's degree in Mass Communications, so when I get the itch to be involved in the process, we work with organizations and non-profits. We do not take candidates as clients.  

Of course, there is the applications division, which we started last year and is becoming a much larger part of our business than I had anticipated. With over 22,000 users to support, it's a big job for our team and a challenge to us to improve every day. I'm one of the people who wakes up everyday exited and thankful for what I have.  

The recession has been difficult on a lot of people but the lesson of this application, to me, is that you can be innovative and successful even in a recession... AND, you can do a lot of good. If we can facilitate more communication between citizens and their government, that's great. If we can also help those charged in our government to make it work better internally, then that's something pretty great as well.