The Congressional Research Service is looking for commercial products to help support its congressionally-directed efforts to improve its data analytics capabilities, according to a recently-released solicitation. The RFP provides insight into the types of tools and technology CRS is developing.
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The House Clerk’s technology project timelines
The transcript from House Admin’s hearing with the Clerk of the House was published this past week. It contains our first view of the questions for the record asked at the hearing, and there’s a lot of interesting Q&A. They cover the sunset of the advisory committee on the records of congress, a timeline for several Clerk-related projects, and the Clerk’s technology wish list.
Continue readingImproving committee video access and archiving
Video capabilities for House Committee proceedings is the subject of an RFI originally published on June 20th and supplemented on July 22nd. It’s focused on the “potential to host and livestream official Congressional hearing videos, and to provide public access to archived hearing videos.” Comments are due by August 30th.
Continue readingTracking lobbyists
A House modernization report on creating unique identifiers for lobbyists was published last week. The long-running project intends to make it easier to track lobbyists across lobbying reports. As things stand now, someone looking at the data from the lobbying reports cannot tell if a person listed as “John Smith” on a Q3 2024 report is the same “John Smith” listed on a Q2 2024 report. In other words, you cannot easily track lobbying activities over time, which is a significant purpose of the lobbying disclosure system. Lobbyists do have unique identifiers, but they are not published to the public, and it has sometimes been the case that Congress has given new lobbyist IDs to people who have lost their old ID, creating multiple IDs connected with a particular individual.
The House Modernization Committee recommended a unique lobbying ID be created and appropriators have authorized the creation of such an ID. This modernization report is the 13th in the series, with the first report back in May 2020, more than four years ago. The Senate provides no visibility into their end of the project.
The Clerk reports that since their January 2024 report, they have worked with the Senate to “formalize and launch a project to modernize the existing systems.” A “Lobbying Disclosure Act Executive Decision Board” continues to meet monthly, having met five times since January. In the coming months, they plan to continue with “project discovery and requirements gathering” to define key features of the redesigned lobbying disclosure system. The Board will use some of the $1.4 million in appropriated funds for research, development, and implementation of identity verification and improved account management. They are currently using some funds to “augment staff” to assist with system development.
The next report is expected by January 2025, and the estimated completion date for the Lobbying Disclosure modernization effort, which will include unique IDs for lobbyists, is May 2026.
House Asks for Feedback on Its Collaborative Legislative Drafting Study
The House of Representatives is asking developers and the general public for ideas concerning the House’s interest in collaborative legislative drafting. Collaborative legislative drafting is where multiple political legislative offices, internal expert offices and agencies, and outside stakeholders (from federal agencies to civil society to interest groups) are able to view and make suggestions on drafts of legislation. The RFI is available here.
Continue readingRecap of Congressional Data Task Force Meeting on June 6, 2024
The Congressional Data Task Force held its second quarterly meeting on Thursday, June 6, 2024. The agenda and other resources are available online and we expect video and slides will be published soon. The next Congressional Data Task Force meeting is scheduled for December 12, 2024.
Continue readingCongressional Data Task Force Meeting on March 13, 2024
The Congressional Data Task Force held its first quarterly meeting on Tuesday, March 19th, 2024. The agenda and other resources are available online here, and we expect video and slides will be made available soon. The next scheduled meeting is June 6th and December 12, 2024. It’s unclear whether there will be a fourth meeting around September, which is also when the Library usually holds its public-facing meeting on congressional data.
The following are highlights from the meeting.
Continue readingCongressional Hackathon 5.0: September 14, 2023
The Speaker of the House, Minority Leader of the House, and the CAO co-hosted Congressional Hackathon 5.0 on September 14, 2023. There’s video from part 1 and part 2 of the event, a summary video, and the official report has just been released. The following is our recap of the event.
Continue readingCongressional Data Task Force Meeting Set for March 19, 2024
The Congressional Data Task Force announced it will hold its next public meeting on March 19, 2024, from 2-4pm ET. This hybrid meeting will occur both in person and virtual.
Continue readingCongressional Calendar 2024 for Google and iCal
The House of Representatives and Senate follow their own calendars for when they are in session. They each make their respective information publicly available, but generally not in a digital format. The print PDFs that they publish likely are hard to read for people with visual disabilities. And there’s no official combined version.
In light of these omissions, I’ve gone ahead and published a combined House and Senate calendar in a digital format. You can use the following link to access the calendar for your Google calendar account, access a public-facing iCal version, and view the calendar from a web browser.
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