<blockquote>[W]e're proud to introduce Scout, a tool that allows you to create customized keyword alerts to notify you whenever issues you care about are included in legislative or regulatory actions. This project embodies our goals as an organization: anyone can now freely get the immediate access to information that previously required significant organizational capacity in your state capital or Washington, D.C.

Start by entering a keyword or phrase you would like to get updates about. Scout then saves your subscriptions and sends notifications via email or text message whenever the subscribed issue or bill is talked about in Congress, mentioned in the Federal Register or comes up in state legislation. Through your profile you can create as many alerts as you'd like and group them by tags with the additional option to make them public for others to follow your issues. Users can also complement a Scout subscription by adding optional external RSS feeds, such as press releases from a member of Congress or an issue-based blog." <strong>Source:</strong> <a href="http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/06/11/scout-sunlights-new-custom-alert-service/">Sunlight Foundation</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>[W]e’d be remiss if we didn’t give credit to the Sunlight Foundation’s latest legislative language tool, Scout (<a href="http://scout.sunlightfoundation.com/">http://scout.sunlightfoundation.com/</a>), for alerting us to the existence of the original provision. You can use the tool to set up email alerts for key phrases or follow a particular bill. It covers Congress, regulations across the whole executive branch, and legislation in all 50 states.

We use Scout to get updates anytime Congress is considering expanding what can be withheld under the federal FOIA by setting up an alert that searches bills in Congress for the term “552 (b)” (thanks to a reform written into law last year, all new b3 statutes must cite FOIA – USC 552)." <strong>Source:</strong> OpenTheGovernment.org, via the <a href="http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/05/25/scout-is-already-delivering-results/ ">Sunlight Foundation</a></blockquote>