Archives for March 2015

On Friday, March 27th, the Congressional Data Coalition and allies submitted testimony to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch. In the testimony, we commend he Senate for committing to publishing bill status, summary, and text in a structured-data format that is capable of download in bulk. We also requested the Senate continue down the path of public access to legislative information by addressing the following issues:

• Extend and broaden the Bulk Data Task Force
• Publish the Congressional Record in XML and eliminate electronic publication gaps
• Publish a complete and auditable archive of bill text, in a structured electronic format
• Instantiate a Senate-wide committee record publishing system
• Publish a contemporaneous list of widely-distributed CRS reports that contains the report name, publication/revision/withdrawal date, and report ID number
• Release widely-distributed CRS reports to the public
• Publish Bioguide in XML with a change log
• Publish the Constitution Annotated in a machine readable format
• Publish Senate office and support agency reports online
• Publish Senate Expenditure Reports in a machine-readable format

We previously submitted testimony on the FY 2016 congressional budget to the House of Representatives.

The House of Representatives will be holding its 2015 Legislative Data and Transparency Conference on April 29th at the CVC. The public is invited. I will post more information as it becomes available.

Also, please remember that the OpenGov Foundation is holding a legislative data hackathon in DC running from the 29th to May 1st (which we are co-sponsoring). More information on the hackathon is here.

Update: RSVP here. Invitation below.Continue Reading

On March 6, the Congressional Data Coalition and allies submitted testimony to the House Legislative Branch Appropriations Committee regarding its 2016 appropriation that applauded recent progress in making legislative data more open while urging additional reforms. It is worth repeating the significant progress that has been made and our recommendations for the future, so please find a summary below. The full testimony is here. Continue Reading

Members of the Congressional Data Coalition will be headlining a SXSW panel entitled: “Your Laws, Your Data: Making Government More Open.” Join us on Friday, March 13 from 12:30-1:30 in room Room 10AB at the Austin Convention Center. Speakers include Daniel Schuman, Congressional Data Coalition co-chair; Molly Schwartz, associate fellow, R Street Institute; Molly Bohmer, data curator, Cato Institute ;and Rebecca Williams, policy analyst, data.gov. Continue Reading

When the House of Representatives adopted new rules for the 114th Congress, it took an unprecedented step forward. As part of the orders for the new Congress, the House committed to broadening the availability of legislative documents in machine readable formats. As Joe Biden might say, this is a big freaking deal.

The Committee on House Administration, the Clerk, and other officers and officials of the House shall continue efforts to broaden the availability of legislative documents in machine readable formats in the One Hundred Fourteenth Congress in furtherance of the institutional priority of improving public availability and use of legislative information produced by the House and its committees.

In plain English, the House will do more to make sure information about what it does is available to journalists, non profits, and the general public. As it turns out, most people get information about Congress from third parties, so this will greatly expand access to information about Congress. It also is the latest in a series of moves to expand smart publication of legislative information.

Of course, we at the Congressional Data Coalition have recommendations on what the House should do. Continue Reading

The Congressional Data Coalition is pleased to join our friends in co-sponsoring #Hack4Congress in San Francisco on March 21-22 and Washington, DC on April 29-May 1. What is it? Well…

#Hack4Congress brings together political scientists, technologists, designers,  lawyers, organizational psychologists, and lawmakers to foster new digital tools, policy innovations, and other technology  innovations to address the dysfunction in Congress. 

Here’s logistical information:Continue Reading