The next Congressional Data Task Force Meeting is set for December 19, 2023 from 2:00 – 4:00 pm EST.
Continue Reading September 3, 2023
Notes from the Congressional Hackathon on April 6, 2022
(Everyone is welcome to add edits/ comments. Document created by Daniel Schuman at Demand Progress daniel@demandprogress.org)
Continue Reading August 21, 2023
Congressional Hackathon 5.0 Set for Sept. 14, 2023
Today Speaker McCarthy and Minority Leader Jeffries announced Congressional Hackathon 5.0, set for September 14, 2023 at the US Capitol. The official announcement is here. Here’s how they describe it:
“This event will bring together a bipartisan group of Members of Congress, Congressional staff, Legislative Branch agency staff, open government and transparency advocates, civic hackers, and developers from digital companies to explore the role of digital platforms in the legislative process. Discussions will range from data transparency, to constituent services, public correspondence, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, committee hearings, and the broader legislative process.”
Continue Reading August 18, 2023
Library of Congress Public Forum on its Legislative Information Services
The Library of Congress will hold its annual meeting with the public on its legislative information information services, with a focus on Congress.gov, on Wednesday, September 13, from 1-3 PM ET. The forum will focus on user suggestions for enhanced access to congressional information/data on congress.gov and also provide an opportunity for the Library to provide updates on improvements to that website.
Follow these links to RSVP for in-person attendance and for virtual attendance.
Continue Reading May 22, 2023
Developments from the Congressional Data Task Force Meeting on March 14, 2023
The Congressional Data Task Force convened on March 14, 2023, to discuss a range of topics related to the use and management of data within the legislative branch. The meeting, which included representatives from various government offices and civil society organizations, highlighted several new and interesting developments. Go here for video and slides from the presentations.
Among the highlights:
- Implementation of the Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act is due by the end of the year
- The Library of Congress is planning to update/release an API for committee meetings, hearings, and committee prints by the end of 2022
- The House Statements of Disbursements will soon be published as CSV with a number of new identifiers
- The House Digital Service is planning for the upcoming Congressional Hackathon
- The Senate is continuing to make progress on the availability of its video
May 4, 2023
A Biased Yet Reliable Guide to Sources of Information and Data About Congress
Big Picture
1/ There’s big gaps in the data story
2/ Even when there’s data, it may not tell the whole story
- Info about Congress isn’t entire reliable, even when it is official, e.g., the Congressional Record (“revise and extend”)
- Congress historically is a paper-based institution, driven by people with agendas, and it has inconsistent archival practices, e.g. GPO established in 1860, National Archives created in 1934
- Its institutions are built to solve a particular problem, not work for all time. Plus there’s a lot of turf wars, e.g., the former THOMAS.gov
- Analyses, even by experts, can be unreliable because of the source data or unexpected actions. See, e.g. CRS report on the number of staff in an office (done by counting phone numbers) or the various supplementals
3/ The people who dogfood the data, such as Josh Tauberer at GovTrack, Derek Willis formerly of ProPublica, and OpenSecrets, are often forced to build additional reliability and usability into the data than that available from official sources.
4/ This presentation is idiosyncratic and focuses on particular use cases. Major topics include:
- Federal spending information
- Oversight and accountability
- Legislation
- Congressional committees
- Information about Congress
- Money in politics and ethics
- Other interesting and important stuff
April 30, 2023
House Publishes More Earmarks Request Data, Which We Enhance
At the end of last week, the House Appropriations Committee published all earmark requests for FY 2024 on the committee’s website, including publishing them as a spreadsheet. This is great and welcome news. For the first time, the appropriations spreadsheet separated member names into different columns and included state, district, party, and recipient address. This makes the information significantly more usable. Thank you.
In fact, it’s so usable, we spent a little time over the weekend making it even more robust. We enhanced their spreadsheet by adding bioguide IDs for each member, appropriations subcommittee codes, a standardized recipient address (with help from ChatGPT), and extracted the recipient state and zip code. We have been playing around with using the AI to categorize whether the recipient entity is a non-profit or a governmental entity. We can imagine a lot of use cases for this cleaned-up data.
The spreadsheet is available online here. We are continuing to tinker with it.
Continue Reading April 26, 2023
Congressional Data Task Force Meeting Set For June 22, 2023
The next Congressional Data Task Force Meeting is set for June 22, 2023 from 2:00 – 4:00 pm EST.
The meeting will take place in hybrid format. You must register online here, at which point you’ll be prompted to indicate whether you want to attend virtually or in person. If you attend in-person, the meeting will take place in the House Longworth Building, room B-248/B-249.
Continue Reading February 20, 2023
Recap: Congressional Data Task Force December 2022 Meeting
The newly renamed Congressional Data Task Force met virtually on December 13, 2022. Resources on the event, including a video of the proceedings, slides from the clerk and slides from GPO, are available on the Innovation Hub here.
Continue Reading February 14, 2023
Congressional Data Task Force Meeting Announced for March 14, 2023
The next Congressional Data Task Force Meeting is scheduled for 2-4PM EST on Tuesday, March 14, 2023.
To register, use the following link: https://ushr.webex.com/weblink/register/r10370082ab6d3795e3bd3a105f7c717d.
Continue Reading