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Congressional Data Coalition: open Congressional information and make Congress work better

Yesterday, FGI, along with a group of citizens, public interest groups, libraries and trade associations comprising the Congressional Data Coalition, submitted testimony to the House Appropriations Committee regarding legislative branch funding priorities for fiscal year 2017.

The group made recommendations on where the House should focus next or what kinds of data should be released:

  • Extend and Broaden the Bulk Data Task Force
  • Release the Digitized Historical Congressional Record and Publish Future Editions in XML
  • Publish all Congress.gov Information in Bulk and in a Structured Data Format
  • Include All Public Laws in Congress.gov
  • Publish Calendar of Committee Activities in Congress.gov
  • Complete and Auditable Bill Text
  • CRS Annual Reports and Indices of CRS Reports
  • House and Committee Rules
  • Publish Bioguide in XML with a Change Log
  • Constitution Annotated
  • House Office and Support Agency Reports

Recognizing that accomplishing these ends will take funding, the group also urged continued financial support for GPO and LC to maintain and develop congress.gov, fdsys.gov, and their successors.

For the fifth year in a row, today members of the Congressional Data Coalition submitted testimony to House Appropriators on ways to open up legislative information. The bipartisan coalition focused on tweaking congressional procedures and releasing datasets that, in the hands of third parties, will strengthen Congress’ capacity to govern.

via A Guide for Appropriators on Opening Up Congressional Information and Making Congress Work Better — Demand Progress.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.


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