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New Dataset on FY2022 Congressionally Directed Spending
Here’s an interesting dataset to bookmark. After a 10-year moratorium on earmarks, the House Appropriations Committee recently released PDF tables of fiscal year 2022 congressionally directed spending projects. But those PDFs aren’t actually usable for any sort of deeper data analysis. So the Congress Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center has just released the Congressionally Directed Spending FY2022 Dataset. It’s a database of all the FY22 “Final Funded Projects” in H.R. 2471, with some additional member data included (the original tables often only include last name). Check out the Congress Project’s blog post for more on how they extracted and cleaned the data. Good work by the Bipartisan Policy Center!
OPEN Government Data Act (S. 2852) passes Senate
Here’s some good news from our friends at the Sunlight Foundation. After much work by Sunlight, the Congressional Data Coalition, and many others, the “Open, Public, Electronic, and Necessary Government Data Act” or the “OPEN Government Data Act” (S.2852) just passed the US Senate with an amendment by unanimous consent. The OPEN Government Data Act has been a core priority of the Sunlight Foundation in Washington in 2016. The OPEN Government Data Act would put into law a set of enduring open data principles upon which we can all agree! Hopefully, in early 2017, the US House will introduce a similar bill and send the bill to the President — and then they can get to work on making CRS reports publicly available too!
From Sunlight’s daily newsletter:
…the Senate has provided a unanimous endorsement of a set of enduring open data principles that the Sunlight Foundation has advanced and defended for a decade: that data created using the funds of the people should be available to the people in open formats online, without cost or restriction. We hope that the U.S. House will quickly move to re-introduce the bill in the 115th Congress and work across the aisle to enact it within the first week of public business. We expect the members of Congress who stood up for open government data this fall to continue do so in 2017.
2016 Legislative Data and Transparency Conference (#LDTC16), Tue, Jun 21, 2016
Sign up now for this year’s Legislative Data and Transparency Conference (#LDTC16) held in Washington DC. In years past, they’ve streamed the proceedings, so definitely sign up for free if you’re interested in open legislative data, even if you’re not in the DC area!
The 2016 Legislative Data and Transparency Conference (#LDTC16), hosted by the Committee on House Administration, will take place on Tuesday, June 21, 2016, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Capitol Visitor Center Congressional Auditorium.
The #LDTC16 brings individuals from Legislative Branch agencies together with data users and transparency advocates to foster a conversation about the use of legislative data – addressing how agencies use technology well and how they can use it better in the future.
WHEN
Tuesday, June 21, 2016 from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM (EDT) – Add to Calendar
WHERE
Capitol Visitor Center Congressional Auditorium
via 2016 Legislative Data and Transparency Conference Tickets, Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 9:00 AM | Eventbrite.
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.
Legislative Data now available in bulk. Thanks GPO and Library of Congress!
Here’s some big news. According to Daniel Schuman at the Congressional Data Coalition, today the Government Publishing Office (GPO) and the Library of Congress opened up the bulk data tap for bills, bill summaries, and bill statuses! See below for Daniel’s description of the new service and its implications.
Today the Government Publishing Office and Library of Congress completed a full revolution in public access to legislative information. Information about legislative actions in congress -– the bills, summaries of the bills, and their status –- is now available online, in bulk, in a structured data format. As I wrote in December, this has great significance:
- It marks the publication of essential legislative information in a format that supports unlimited public reuse, analysis, and republication. It is now possible to see much of a bill’s life cycle.
- It illustrates the positive relationship that has grown between Congress and the public on access to legislative information, where there is growing open dialog and conversation about how to best meet our collective needs.
- It is an example of how different components within the legislative branch are engaging with one another on a range of data-related issues, sometimes for the first time ever, under the aegis of the Bulk Data Task Force.
- It means the Library of Congress and GPO will no longer be tied to the antiquated THOMAS website and can focus on more rapid technological advancement. (At least for data from the 113th and 114th Congresses).
- It shows how a diverse community of outside organizations and interests came together and built a community to work with Congress for the common good.
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