Looking Forward to the THOMAS Beta Website, by Daniel Schuman, Sunlight Foundation (Sept. 14, 2012).
In the near future, Congress is expected to release a major upgrade to its aging legislative information website THOMAS. The long-overdue update is part of a much larger effort to “enhance the effectiveness of mission-critical systems,” a response to significant public and internal pressure to improve congressional efficiency and transparency. The launch of “THOMAS Beta” is the first step towards developing what the Library of Congress describes as a completely “modern legislative information system” that will replace THOMAS and Congress’ more sophisticated internal legislative tracking website “LIS” in FY 2014. Both THOMAS and LIS will stay online alongside the beta website for several years.
While THOMAS Beta has been shown to stakeholders inside Congress, as far as I am aware there has been no formal engagement process with the public to identify specifications, discuss wireframes, or generally make sure the site meets the public’s needs.
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