Aiming to facilitate political discourse among everyday Americans, two UTD alums launched White Paper, an application for discussing and understanding legislative actions of the U.S. Congress.
Congress oversees the legislation of federal bills and resolutions that affect the lives of all Americans, but despite its massive impact on the American populace, many Americans remain ignorant about what the nation’s legislative branch is proposing or enacting into law. According to a 2023 Gallup poll, only 66% of Americans were aware of which political party has a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. To facilitate more awareness of Congressional bills, resolutions and candidates that are relevant to everyday citizens’ lives, data science alum Abdul Rafai and software engineering alum Inshal Haq designed White Paper around allowing users to discuss bills proposed by Congress.
“The motivation behind White Paper was to create a space to hold Congress accountable for their actions,” Rafai said. “Currently, I think there’s a lot … going on. And is there a space specifically allocated for discussions around Congress and representatives and how you can hold them accountable? No, there isn’t a space. There is Twitter, and people talk about [politics] on Twitter, but Twitter has everything, right? There’s not a designated space for [politics].”
According to its website, Rafai originally created White Paper last year at UTD as a small semester project with the goal of helping users see — and potentially influence — what bills their Congressional representatives were supporting. Since its inception, the project’s scope has grown. In addition to providing a platform to discuss Congress’ actions, White Paper also gives users the ability to find their representatives in the House and Senate. Rafai considers this feature essential for anyone that wants to get started with White Paper.
“[The find representatives feature] is [the first] thing that we recommend people to do because a lot of people don’t even know their current House rep,” Rafai said. “They might know one senator that’s popular, but a lot of people also don’t know their senators.”
Haq said he was recruited to design a mobile version of White Paper after pitching the concept to Rafai at the beginning of 2025, believing a mobile app would be more accessible to the public than a webpage. The app is tentatively scheduled to release on mobile storefronts between March and April of this year.
In addition to a new mobile app, Rafai and Haq said they are considering adding AI features to help users better understand the bills through summarization.
“Some bills have … hundreds of pages of just text and it’s a lot of jargon, [potentially] a lot of stuff people don’t want to read through,” Rafai said. “And so [we’re thinking of] leveraging AI [to create] relevant summaries about what’s relevant in the actual bill itself.”
According to Rafai, a large portion of White Paper’s growing userbase is driven by users who discover it through social media.
“We’ve had a few dozen users here and there, but then we’ll have spikes based off of social media posts, or we’ll [gain] a few hundred users because our posts will go … popular,” Rafai said. “We’ve seen this, and so far we’ve gotten really good feedback on social media where people have said, ‘Oh wow, this is something that could be very useful, this is something we want to see.'”
According to Rafai, all the money going into developing White Paper either comes from the project’s Patreon or the developers’ own pockets. Rafai and Haq said they are willing to fund the project themselves if it means achieving their goal of helping citizens hold Congress accountable. Karl Ho, a political researcher and professor of instruction at EPPS, also believes that White Paper can improve public policy.
“If this app can provide a platform for the public to have discussions over the bills [that are] not the law yet, [then] I think it’s a good thing,” Ho said. “[Through discussion] we can get better policy and better consultation and get better information.”
Anyone interested in using White Paper can create an account on its website to begin proposing, discussing and rating bills. Users interested in finding their representatives can do so on the website without an account.
Rafai and Haq said that the project is still in its early stages with more features planned for the future. Rafai and Haq said they invite users to send them questions and ideas about features as development continues.
“Hopefully, this new [software] … allows our democracy to become better because the policy, the information is getting more open and more transparent,” Ho said. “And if White Paper is showing this, [it] is a good sign.”