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Reps Quigley and Comer re-introduce Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act (ACMRA)
Representatives Mike Quigley (IL-05) and James Comer (KY-01) re-introduced the Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act (ACMRA) to create a single website on which Congress and the public can easily search, sort, and download all executive agency congressional reports. Quigley has introduced this bill every Congressional session since 2011. In the last session of Congress, the bill passed the House of Representatives unanimously, but stalled in the Senate.
The ACMRA will be a boon to the American public and will add thousands of difficult-to-find executive agency reports to the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and the “National Collection.” Take a look at the list of reports required to be submitted to Congress. This list is published at the beginning of each Congressional session as a House Document entitled “Reports to be made to Congress.”
Contact your Representatives and Senators to make sure we get H.R. 2485 over the finish line this time!
“As founder and co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Transparency Caucus, I am proud to re-introduce this hallmark transparency bill that I have introduced every Congress since 2011,” said Quigley. “This bill will increase government transparency by providing the public easily-accessible information on how agencies are accomplishing their policy goals. By consolidating this information in one location, my hope is that it will improve the institutional and technological capacity of the legislative branch and rebuild the public’s trust in our government. I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass this legislation in the House again this Congress.”
“Good governance requires the American people have full, transparent access to information about their government. Congress receives thousands of reports annually from federal agencies about how they are fulfilling their missions, but there isn’t a spot to find all of them in one place. The Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act provides Americans easy access to these reports by requiring all federal agency congressional reports be housed in one accessible location. If these reports can’t be easily found, the reports don’t serve their purpose. The American people need the information contained in these reports to be accessible so we can see and understand how the federal government is using their taxpayer dollars. The House and Senate must take up this commonsense legislation,” said Committee on Oversight and Reform Ranking Member Comer.
Bill introduced requiring Congressionally mandated reports be deposited to GPO
The Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act (ACMRA) H.R. 4631 was introduced yesterday by Representative Mike Quigley. If passed, it will require that all Congressionally mandated reports be deposited in a publicly accessible database maintained by the GPO. For more background, see Daniel Schuman’s writeup and background. The Washington Post wrote about the problem a few years ago titled “Unrequired reading.” Here’s the ACRMA bill text. 38 organizations, including FGI, wrote a public letter endorsing the bill.
The most interesting piece in the bill to me — well other than the requirement of executive agencies to deposit ALL mandated reports with GPO! — is section 4 subsection b, which directs OMB to issue guidance to agencies on implementing the act. My hope is that this is another opportunity to reform OMB circular A-130, which we here at FGI have suggested could be updated to better represent the needs of libraries and the FDLP.
The Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act was introduced yesterday in the House and Senate, thanks to the tremendous leadership of Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) and Sens. Ron Portman (R-OH) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). The bipartisan bill (read it here) requires:
all reports to Congress that are required by law to be published online in a central repository, and Congress to keep a list of all of its reporting requirements and check whether agencies have submitted reports on time.
ACMRA is important because it improves the legislative ecosystem for high quality information. In short, it empowers Congressional staff to do their jobs and the public to hold the government accountable.
via Bill Requiring All Reports to Congress be Published in Online Repository Introduced.
Quigley and Lance re-introduce H.Res 110: public access to CRS reports
Man, this week is Sunshine-week-alicious! The Sunlight Foundation has long advocated for — along with FGI, library- and open govt organizations — the free public access to Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports. CRS Reports are commonly not available to the public as CRS has this arcane and outdated rule that CRS reports are privileged communication between Congress and CRS. But CRS reports ARE available randomly online and Proquest, Penny Hill Press and other commercial publishers have long published them for a fee (I’ve even heard that CRS subscribes to Proquest to get access to their own reports historically!).
But this all may change. According to the Sunlight Blog, Representatives Leonard Lance (R-NJ) and Mike Quigley (D-IL) have reintroduced the bipartisan House Resolution 110 “Public Access to Congressional Research Service Reports Resolution of 2013” (text not received by GPO yet so not publicly available on Thomas). The Resolution would direct the Clerk of the House of Representatives to provide members of the public with Internet access to certain Congressional Research Service publications. Easy-peasy right?!
More than 30 organizations — including Sunlight Foundation and FGI — have signed on to a letter supporting the resolution. Please consider contacting your Representative and ask them to support H.Res. 110!
Open CRS Resolution Support Letter
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