Improving the House Statement of Disbursements: Feedback Requested

The House of Representatives wants to improve how the Statements of Disbursements are published as data and they are asking for your help and input. A summary of how we got to this point is immediately below. Skip to the bottom if you want to share your views on how the Statements of Disbursements should be published, including reviewing a sample data set that contains the House’s proposal as well as a link to where you can provide feedback.

Continue Reading

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:

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

Library of Congress announces date for Virtual Public Forum on Congress.gov

The Library of Congress announced it will hold its third virtual public forum on congress.gov on September 21, 2022 from 1:30-4:30 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.

Pursuant to Congressional direction, the Library of Congress hosted virtual public fora over the last two years, which we summarized in these blogposts from 2021 and 2020. The Library had previously said it would hold this meeting, but had expressed concern about a decrease in attendance from the first to second forums. (To date, nearly 1,500 people have watched the second forum online and 6,000 have watched the first one, both of which are quite large numbers.)

To attend you must RSVP online here. The Library also has an online feedback form for those who wish to submit comments individually.

Continue Reading

Building Digital Capacity in Congress: Recommendations for the House Digital Service

Click here to download a PDF version of the paper.


Despite many reforms over time, Congress has struggled to keep up with the pace of technological change and the new burdens it has brought. In particular, because of its distributed governance, legislative branch IT operations must contend with a greater number of coordination problems, inefficiencies, and vectors for process failure. This, combined with growing district sizes and constrained resources, has left Congress’s digital capacity far behind what it needs to keep up with emerging technology trends and support everyday Americans seeking to engage with their representatives.

Continue Reading

The Congressional Data Task Force Continues Efforts to Modernize Congressional Tech, Including Itself

The Congressional Data Task Force announced significant legislative branch technology modernization efforts at their second quarter meeting on June 21, 2022, starting with a name change from the Bulk Data Task Force in recognition of the expanded scope of the working group as it goes into its second decade of existence.

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

Continue Reading

Bulk Data Task Force Meeting Set for June 21, 2022

The Congressional Bulk Data Task force announced its upcoming quarterly meeting with take place on Tuesday, June 21, from 2-4 p.m. To join the meeting, register on its webpage.

On the agenda:

  • Welcome and Background (Meeting starts at 2:01/2:02)
  • Reports/Presentations/Updates from civil society organizations
  • Reports/Presentations/Updates from our Legislative Branch organizations: LOC, GPO, House Clerk, House CAO, Senate Secretary, CBO, others
  • Time for Discussion/Questions and AnswersAnnouncements/Closing (Meeting ends at 4:00 pm EST)

Don’t miss our recap from the March 2021 meeting.

Advisory Committee on Records of Congress Sets Meeting for June 10, 2022

The Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress has announced its semi-annual meeting on June 10th, 2022, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 pm ET. To attend the meeting, you must RSVP to archives@mail.house.gov by June 3rd. More details about the ACRC meeting are here.