Congress should be like an open book.
Today the House of Representatives published its spending information as structured data (a CSV) in addition to printing three volumes of tables. This is the second time it has done so. (I wrote about it the last time it happenedand why it is important for accountability.)
Okay, Senate, it’s your turn. Publish your semi-annual spending statement as data.
Today the House of Representatives’ Committee on House Administration hosted its fifth annual Legislative Data & Transparency Conference in the U.S. Capitol. The Conference brought together staff from House and Senate and legislative support offices, civil society advocates, technologists, overseas legislatures, and featured a speech by House Speaker Paul Ryan. More than 150 people attended, with more participating online.
There’s too much to recap from the conference — my notes, taken in real-time, are online, as is a video of the proceedings — but this blogpost will focus on the highlights. Once again, the most important aspect of the conference was that it brought together all the internal and external stakeholders to work together, announce progress, celebrate advances, and educate one another. It was a tremendous success.
Speaker Paul Ryan announced a new project to publish enrolled legislation as structured data (in United States Legislative Markup Language). The project encompasses all enrolled bills (the final copies of legislation passed identically by both Houses of Congress), public laws, and statutes at large. In its first phase, all enrolled bills from the 113th Congress forward (i.e. January 2013 forward) and all statutes at large from the 108th Congress forward (January 2003 forward) will be published online in the same structured data format in which the U.S. Code is published.
While this sounds technical, what it does it allow the Congress to begin using more sophisticated tools to manage its legislation, including how it is written and updated. It becomes possible to tell better stories around what has happened with bills enacted into law, including formatting the laws so that one can see how they have changed over time.
It is expected that ultimately all legislation enacted by Congress will become available as structured data. Because much of the federal law is non-codified, this will make it easier to show how the law has evolved over time and reflect the current state of the law at any given time.
In addition to the technical details, Speaker Ryan’s announcement underscored the House’s continued dedication to making important information about legislative activities available online and in formats that support analysis and reuse. It is a doubling-down on the commitment made at the beginning of the Congress, in the House Rules package, to ensure that legislative information is available to the public in structured data formats — to support improving congressional processes and public insight into congressional action.
The Congressional Data Coalition had asked for this improvement, and some member offices have been requesting these changes as well.
Phone Directory. The House of Representatives has built and will release to the public in August an online telephone directory. Using responsive design, so that it works on mobile devices, the phone directory allows anyone to obtain phone numbers and address information for any House staffer via a cleverly-designed interface. You can sort by member office, committee, or search for a particular staffer.
It’s also possible to download the underlying data set, whether as a CSV or PDF. This may save the House money on printing directories and provide more up-to-date information, particularly as staff move around all the time. The website was built by the Clerk and is extensible, so it may become possible to include the staff issue areas at a future date.
Congress.gov Data Updates. In response to public requests, the bulk data behind Congress.gov will be updated every four hours so that users can download the most recent data. Coming soon will be an RSS feed that will tell users when the data has been updated, so users known when to run their update processes. This is a change from the once-a-day update, which was discussed at the last Bulk Data Task Force meeting and had created problems for some users. The data updates will also be reflected on the GitHub page so that programmatic users will know specifically which data has changed.
Congress.gov Interface Updates. Congress.gov now has legislative alerts and other new tools (including improving command line and other searches). On July 5th, THOMAS will be retired after 21 1/2 years of service.
Office of Law Revision Counsel. The OLRC had 4 significant updatesbuilding on work from last year.
First, it will expand information about non-positive law that’s made available to the public to include XML format, not just PDFs.
Second, the development of Ramseyers — to track changes for legislation reported out of committee — is proceeding and it is expected to be used as part of the legislative process. This goes hand in hand with the Amendment Impact Program, which eventually will be publicly available and will make it possible to see how amendments change bills and bills would change laws in real time.
Third, the legislative lookup and link tool, which provides contextual information about references inside legislation, will become a public tool that everyone can look up on a public website.
Fourth, the OLRC is developing with leg counsel a new/updated legislative markup language to encompass new uses and data types. This is a second generation legislative markup language, of which the first was the Bill DTDs, and will empower many more ways to make sense out of legislative language.
I don’t want to get too deep into everything else for the sake of brevity. However, I do want to briefly mention:
If you want still more, here are recaps of prior Legislative Data and Transparency Conferences:
The House’s Legislative Data and Transparency Conference is this Tuesday, June 21, from 9-4, in the Capitol Visitor Center auditorium in Washington, DC. RSVP here.
The conference brings together individuals from Legislative Branch agencies with data users and transparency advocates to foster a conversation about the use of legislative data – addressing how agencies use technology well and how they can use it better in the future. This is the 5th annual conference, and the conversations that take place help change the nature of government.
House Speaker Paul Ryan and and the UK’s Director of Parliamentary Digital Service Rob Greig will both address the conference.Continue Reading
On Wednesday, the Data Coalition hosted a Legislative Data Demo Day to show what’s possible when we make our laws and legislation more accessible.
Across all of our policy initiatives, the Data Coalition encourages federal and state governments to create or collect data in machine-readable structures using non-proprietary formats. This past Wednesday we explored how legal and regulatory information can be reformed in order to provide maximum value to both lawmakers, and the public.Continue Reading
The 21 year-old legislative information website THOMAS will be retired on July 5 was the top news from last Wednesday’s congressional Bulk Access to Legislative Data public meeting. The fact that THOMAS was shutting down was not news, but the timing was.
While it didn’t generate a story in the press, two other developments are particularly important regarding how Congress engages the public. For the first time, the meeting was webcast and panelists—who came from offices and agencies throughout the legislative branch—responded to questions from people inside and outside the room. This will soon become regular practice; and video will shortly be available. Even more striking, Congress is responding to technical comments made on GitHub to the data it releases, creating an ongoing, real-time conversation about public access to legislative information with all the relevant stakeholders. This is a big deal. Continue Reading
The Library of Congress announced that the legislative information website THOMAS is scheduled to stop functioning on July 5, with Congress.gov to replace its functionality. This will allow the Library to focus all its energy on Congress.gov instead of having also to maintain a very awkward, 21-year-old website.Continue Reading
The Congressional Bulk Data Task Force will meet this Wednesday at 10:30 am in the Legislative Resource Center in the Cannon Building near room 133. The Library of Congress graciously has offered to host the event online– go here after 10:15ish for a live feed.
On the agenda:
The OpenGov Foundation hosted the Door Stop Awards yesterday, which recognized the largely (but not entirely) unsung efforts to open the doors of Congress to the American people.
Last night, at the first ever Door Stop Awards last night, six Members of Congress and congressional staff were honored by the open government community for their tireless efforts to drag Congress into the digital age and make the legislative branch more open, responsive, and accountable.Continue Reading
In a time of ad hoc victories, partisanship and short-term thinking, The OpenGov Foundation is excited to announce an award for those who created structural changes inside public institutions that result in long-term transparency. They didn’t just open the door to the public, they installed a door stop to ensure that it never closes again.
The Door Stop Awards focuses on those who have not only sparked change, but have driven change over time within an incredibly challenging environment. The honor will go to a current or former member of Congress and congressional staffer from each party.
Did you know the Congressional Research Service has published reports on the federal defense budget, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamp) benefits, changes to hemp-growing restrictions and porcine epidemic diarrhea virus? Now you do, thanks to the R Street Institute’s Governance Project.
Using the Scribd digital library service, we have published 20 years of CRS annual reports online, including lists of the reports published by the agency. The report lists are available for viewing and downloading here.Continue Reading
