Archives for September 2022

Recap of the September 2022 Congressional Data Task Force Meeting

The Congressional Data Task Force provided a series of legislative branch technology updates at its third quarter meeting on September 29, 2022, including a CAO presentation on adding metadata to Statements of Disbursement, a recap of the Library of Congress Virtual Public Forum, updates on the comparative print project and E-Hopper, updates on how the Congress.gov API beta is handling committee codes, and more. 

We have a full report below on what happened at the two-hour meeting below, and here are some highlights:

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The Recap: Library of Congress 2022 Virtual Public Forum

On September 21, 2022, the Library of Congress held its 2022 Virtual Public Forum on the Library’s role in providing access to legislative information. You can find summaries of the 2020 and 2021 forums here and here. It is our understanding that video of the proceedings will be made publicly available, and we will update this blogpost when that happens. Update: Video posted on 10/4/2022.

The forum mainly focused on Congress.gov and access to legislative information through electronic means, although it included significant discussion on digitization efforts. Legislative branch stakeholders made presentations on their work, including the House Clerk, Secretary of the Senate, the Government Publishing Office, the Congressional Budget Office, the Law Library of Congress, and the Congressional Research Service. The Library noted several hundred individuals RSVPed, and participants voiced their appreciation for the forum and recommended continuing it in the future.

An agenda was not released in advance of the meeting, which lasted 3 hours, and covered recent enhancements to Congress.gov, its features and new releases, recent projects, updates from data partners, a presentation from the Congressional Budget Office on its transparency efforts, a discussion of legislative data standards, a presentation on the Constitution Annotated, a brief history of Congress.gov and THOMAS, and a Q&A at the end. We suggest that, for future meetings, the agenda and rough timing be published in advance.

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Save the Dates: Congressional Data Task Force Meetings Set for End of 2022

The Congressional Data Task Force announced the dates of its third and fourth quarter public meetings.

The CDTF will hold its Q3 public meeting from 2-4pm ET on Thursday September 29. In the future, you can follow this link to register online.

The CDTF will hold its Q4 public meeting from 2-4 PM ET on Thursday, December 13. In the future, you can follow this link to register online.

Catch up with this recap from the June meeting.

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Library of Congress Launches Congress.gov API

On September 6th, the Library of Congress announced it launched a beta version of its Congress.gov API. While APIs for legislative data aren’t new for the Legislative branch — see, for example, the Government Publishing Office’s API — this is a pretty big deal. For the reason why, it’s helpful to know a little history.

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