There are a few transparency bills that are up for debate in Congress today: The Presidential Records Act and The Presidential Library Donation Reform Act. The Sunlight Blog has a good write-up summarizing the importance of these two bills, as well as a post by Ellen Miller.

I just checked GovTrack.org and here are the House votes results:

On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass: H R 35 Presidential Records Act Amendments

On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass: H R 36 Presidential Library Donation Reform Act

If you are interested in learning more about the history of Congressional transparency reform, checkout Sunlight.org's project, The Transparency Timeline.

Here's an It's-a-wonderful-life-esque look at the US Congress for your friday afternoon viewing pleasure. This video can be found at the Internet Archive's Prelinger Archives. I happened upon this film when it jumped out at me from the credits of John Hodgman's Spamasterpiece Theater Vol II: "Wuthering Wire Transfers."

that is all.

Now that a new administration will be coming into office soon, it is more important than ever to encourage our Government to make Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports publicly accessible online. Here at FGI, the topic of CRS Reports has been written about often, but I was inspired to create this blog post and take action after seeing Starr Hoffman’s DLC conference presentation last week (click on "Search Document" and enter "Starr Hoffman". Her PowerPoint, "Encouraging An Informed Citizenry" will come up as a PDF to download).

Starr is responsible for maintaining University of North Texas's Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports Archive. In her presentation, she gives tips for writing to Congressmen and lists some past legislative efforts (Bills that never passed both houses of Congress) to make CRS Reports publicly accessible. I have gathered some other Bills, as well as all the contact information for the sponsoring Congressmen and have included them in my Delicious.com "CRS" tag as well as in this list:

1998 H.R. 3131, S. 1578
1999 H.R. 654, S. 393
2000 H.R. 4582
2001 S. Res. 21
2003 H.R. 3630, S. Res. 54
2007 H.R. 2545, S. Res. 401

Senator John McCain
Introduced S. 1578, S. 393, S.Res. 21, S. Res. 54, & co-sponsored S. Res. 401
Senator Mike Enzi
Co-sponsored S. 393
Senator Leahy
Co-sponsored S. 393, S. Res. 21, S. Res. 54, and S. Res. 401.
Senator Tom Coburn
H.R. 4582 co-sponsor when he was in the House.
Senator Jim DeMint
Introduced H.R. 4582 when he was in the House.
Senator Joe Lieberman
Introduced S. Res. 401 and co-sponsored S. Res. 21 and S. Res. 54
Senator Tom Harkin
Co-sponsored S. Res. 54 and S. Res. 401
Senator Susan M. Collins
Co-sponsored S. Res. 401
Senator John Cornyn
Co-sponsored S. Res. 401

Congressman David Price
Co-sponsor for H.R. 3131, H.R. 654, H.R. 3630, and H.R. 2545
Congressman Christopher Shays
Introduced H.R. 3131, H.R. 654, H.R. 3630, and H.R. 2545
Congressman John Campbell
Co-sponsored H.R. 654
Congressman Tom Tancredo
Co-sponsored H.R. 4582
Congressman Jay Inslee
Co-sponsored H.R. 3630 and H.R. 2545

And you can find and contact your local Senator and your Representatives too.

James A. Jacobs did a Google search this past June for "Received through the CRS Web" OR "CRS Report for Congress" combined with site:house.gov and then again for site:senate.gov and got around 600 hits with each. For example, here are some domains he found that you can search within for CRS Reports or to search for those in Congress who may support public access to CRS Reports: bartlett.house.gov, holt.house.gov, radanovich.house.gov, weldon.house.gov, bennelson.senate.gov, carper.senate.gov, lugar.senate.gov, murray.senate.gov, etc.

For more information on CRS Report legislation efforts, visit this site which contains a "Campaign for Online Access" section.

Spread the word about this post and good luck in writing to your Congressmen! If you have other ideas, please share them in the comments.

Greetings all, I'm honored to be guest blogging this month here at FGI.

I'm a web developer at Sunlight Labs, which involves the development of sites and projects that aim to enable citizens and journalists to more easily access government data.

Those of us that spend our days wrestling with government data often spend a lot of time talking about the data that should be available but isn't. An issue of equal if not greater importance is how to make the already available data useful to a general audience. Anyone that has dealt with raw data from any government agency knows that simply passing government data along is typically not sufficient.

One example of a project done here at Sunlight that emphasizes making some of the complex outputs of the federal government meaningful to the average citizen is Capitol Words - a site that provides a daily and monthly view of what the most commonly used word in the Congressional Record was.

The Congressional Record is the official journal of the daily proceedings of Congress. It is mandated by Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution, which emphasizes how essential it is for the people to know what their legislators are up to. It is even published today in a digital format. Unfortunately, today it is far too large to be of any real benefit to the general public.

Capitol Words was born out of a suggestion that it would be interesting to see simply the "word of the day" as a way of getting a sense of what was on Congress' mind. By giving the average citizen a window into what Congress is doing, it is possible that they will become more engaged then they otherwise might have been. Some citizens may even be inspired to dig deeper and look at the Congressional Record.

Simple presentations of government information such as the popular tag cloud, or even just a simple word, can provide access to data that may be freely available, but is still not accessible to the general public. As great as it is to see more and more government data being made available, hopefully people will also develop new and interesting ways to present government information in a manner useful to all citizens.

"What used to take hours to dig up and analyze is now laid bare for you to see in seconds or minutes," so states the homepage of MAPLight.org, a new website that brings together campaign contributions and how legislators vote, creating more transparency of the connections between money and politics. This includes:

- How each legislator voted on each of the 5,000 bills in the 2003-2004 California legislative session.

- All campaign contributions made to each legislator from 2001-2004, categorized by the interest or industry of the contributor.

- Supporters and opponents of each bill, and the industries and interests those supporters and opponents represent.

- A brief description of each bill, and the subject the bill is about.

- The full text of each bill, including committee reports and amendments.

So far, MAPLight.org currently includes all 5,000 bills in the 2003-2004 California legislative session and all California campaign contributions from January 2001 through December 2004. They are seeking donations and support to extend MAPLight.org to include data for other states and U.S. Congress. This is a very promising project, so let's give them our support!

The Special Library Association (SLA) announced today that EPA plans to re-establish the closed libraries by September 2008.

SLA met with EPA officials today to review the agency's report to Congress on the future direction of its library network.

The report, submitted to Congress yesterday, includes a summary of the network standards developed with respect to physical space, on-site collections, staffing and services of EPA’s Regional and Headquarters libraries, as well as a plan for allocating resources from the the 1 million dollars given to them by Congress:

•Re-establish on-site libraries in Region 5, 6, and 7, and the consolidated EPA Headquarters Repository and Chemical Library in DC.
•Enable Regional EPA libraries to update their collections, facilities, and equipment to meet Network standards.
•Conduct a formal needs assessment for EPA library services to support future development.

I am glad to see that EPA took the hearing's recommendations to meet with affected stakeholders and library organization officials seriously, but I do not think they met with anyone before the report to Congress was due, as was recommended at the hearing. At least, I have not heard or read about any such meeting. Correct me if I'm wrong. Nevertheless, EPA states:

"Over the next few months, we will continue to engage affected stakeholders (including our employee unions) as we finalize our specific plans for each library. The Agency is committed to working with its employees and outside parties on its future digitization plans (based on the third party review), a customer needs assessment, and long term strategic planning efforts".

Lawrence Lessig gave a lecture at the National Press Club on Thursday and introduced a plan designed to increase congressional transparency via the launch of Change-Congress.org.

The website provides a venue for data on earmarks, campaign financing, etc. and advocates an end to corporate and private interests. It organizes citizens to push candidates to make four commitments: No money from lobbyists or PACs, vote to end earmarks, support publicly-financed campaigns, and support reform to increase Congressional transparency.

Change-Congress.org has ambitious goals, that's for sure. Will it work? Greater transparency is needed, and this initiative will certainly help in that effort. But can "big money" every truly go away? Nevertheless, it is a noble effort, and I urge you to join their cause, take the pledge, and volunteer your efforts in contacting candidates to take the pledge!

Just a reminder that Lawrence Lessig will lecture at the National Press Club on Thursday, March 20th at 1:30 pm. The lecture will also be available via webcast. Lessig will introduce a plan designed to increase congressional transparency, called "Change Congress". More information about Lessig and this event can be found at the Sunlight Foundation website.

The FAS Project on Government Secrecy Blog contains an informative post about secret sessions of the House of Representatives, including one that took place on March 13th to consider classified matters concerning the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

For more information about secret sessions, read "Secret Sessions of the House and Senate" and "Secret Sessions of Congress: A Brief Historical Overview," by the Congressional Research Service. I knew that the Senate held secret sessions (54 since 1929), but I did not know that the House only held three secret sessions since 1830 and they took place in 1979, 1980, and 1983! However, there were unsuccessful attempts to hold a secret session to discuss the assessment of the war in Iraq in 2006 (search for page H7371) and the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2008 (pages H4795-4796, H4808, and H4867-68). Also, the proceedings of a secret session are not published unless the House or Senate votes to release them. If they vote to release them, then the transcripts will be printed in the Congressional Record, but if the House votes not to release them, then the they are preserved at NARA and may be available to the public after 30 years.

I finally found some good news to cheer me up after writing the last two posts. ;-)

UC Berkeley Library used wiki software to create a congressional research tutorial called Congresearch. It includes Flash tutorial videos on finding a bill, a hearing, a congressional debate, etc. This one is my favorite. Over time, more tutorials will be added. You can offer them feedback too.

The tutorial homepage also contains links to current congressional news, recent votes and a link to their customized Congressional Search Engine created with Google CSE to create a focused Google search on current official U.S. Congressional websites and news organizations focusing on Congress.

I am in Gov Doc 2.0 Nerd Utopia.

Here is a great example of "Government Documents 2.0" in action: OpenCongress.org offers several Web 2.0 tools such as the OpenCongress Facebook application, where you can put bills that interest you on your Facebook profile. You can show your support or opposition to each bill, or simply remain neutral by selecting the "just following" option. Each bill links back to OpenCongress, so your patrons or friends can get all the information they need in order to understand and become involved with the issues themselves.

One of their Web 2.0 tools that I use for my GovGuides Wiki (a work in progress, mind you!), is the "Bill by Issue Widget". I created one for the Environmental Law GovGuides Wiki page I'm working on. It displays the latest bills introduced in Congress on anything to do with environmental law enforcement.

If you are not familiar with OpenCongress, it's a free, open-source, non-profit, and non-partisan web resource "with a mission to help make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement". OpenCongress is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation. It uses data provided by GovTrack.us, which collects data from official government websites, such as Thomas. For more info, see previous FGI posts about OpenCongress: My OpenCongress, Congress Remix, and FGI's "Remixes page".

OpenCongress makes it easy to understand each bill by giving a brief summary, who sponsored it, its status, and related bills. And yes, there are links to the full text of the bill and its voting history from Thomas. However, I do encourage students in my instruction classes to cite the original sources that OpenCongress leads them to, such as the full text of the bill from Thomas, congressional record references, or the homepages that OpenCongress links to for various committees and congressmen, etc. And of course I remind them that not everything is online, especially older government information, so they must turn to the print sources that I show them how to locate and use. By that time, the students are much more apt to pay attention and understand the importance of the exotic experience of handling/using the 1945 volume of the Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications or a Congressional Record volume from 1918. ;-)

I find OpenCongress to be a very user friendly and a convenient "one stop shop" for learning about legislation. Students in my library instruction classes seem to love using it, so if it gets them excited about government information, then I love it too!

C-SPAN has recently released a great new online resource with lots of potential:  the  C-SPAN Congressional Chronicle (currently in beta) is an index to the C-SPAN video recordings of the House and Senate floor proceedings. According to C-SPAN the video recordings are matched with the text of the Congressional Record as soon as it is available.  Each appearance has a video link where users can watch and listen to the actual remarks.  C-SPAN  hopes that this site will provide a useful tool for viewers and followers of Congress to research, watch, and review the actions of the Congress. They welcome  bloggers and websites to create links to various videorecordings and also welcome comments and suggestions for improving the service. 

The Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation have announced My OpenCongress (registration page).

• Announcing "My OpenCongress": Network, Comment and Vote on Congress

You can create a personalized view of all the information you want about the laws being made in Washington, track any bill, senator, representative, or issue area and much more.

See  these suggestions that they put together on how to get started.

Congress Wants To Allow New Web Tools by Aliya Sternstein, National Journal's Technology Daily, December 12, 2007 PM edition [subscription required]

Congress is slowly moving ahead with rule changes that would allow House members and senators to enhance their Web sites with links and content from commercial sites, like social networks and video-sharing services.

Options under consideration include permitting members to use video-streaming sites if the sites are ad-free and protect the uploaded material from tampering.

Getting a hearing quickly is difficult if not impossible -- unless you have money. Now, without fanfair, one committee is making it easier. See a list here, and read more about it in Dan Froomkin's article, Citizen Journalists, Start Your Engines! (December 4, 2007).

Major hearings are often transcribed in real-time by CQ Transcripts and the Federal News Service, but those are copyrighted works that are only available to those who pay for them or have a subscription to Nexis.

Up until now, it took more than six months for public-domain transcripts of most hearings to become available. They had to work their way through an arduous proofing and approval process before finally being published by the Government Printing Office.

But now, without any formal announcement, the House Oversight Committee has started Web-publishing the preliminary transcripts prepared by official stenographers as soon as they are available -- typically within a few days of the hearing. In other words, while the news is still fresh.

Let's hope other committees follow its lead.