The next Congressional Data Task Force meeting will take place from 2-4pm ET on June 6, 2024. The public is welcome to attend in person or virtually. More information, including a link to RSVP and a (forthcoming) agenda, is here.
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
March 21, 2022
Recap of the March 2022 Bulk Data Task Force Meeting
Last Thursday, March 10, the Bulk Data Task Force held its first quarterly meeting of 2022. The virtual meeting, hosted by the House Clerk’s office, featured presentations from civil society representatives and updates from several legislative branch organizations including GPO, the Library of Congress, the House CAO, the House Clerk, Majority Leader Hoyer’s office, the Secretary of the Senate, and CBO. As Kirsten Gullickson from the House Clerk’s office noted, the virtual format allowed people to participate worldwide. Information from these meetings are posted online.
The video is not yet available, but we will update the blogpost when it is; you can also check here.
Mark your calendars: the second quarterly meeting is scheduled for June 9 from 2-3:30 EST.
Continue Reading December 1, 2021
Tweeting Out Legislative Branch Procurement
We are pleased to announce a new Twitter Bot that tweets procurement notices published by Legislative branch agencies on Sam.gov. These procurements and accompanying documentation can shed light on Legislative branch plans, operations, and priorities.
Continue Reading September 4, 2021
How to Track Legislative Memes
Legislation is how ideas are put into a format that Congress can process and transform into law. Some ideas are introduced again and again, but in different formats or at different times. Some bills in one chamber of Congress may have a nearly identical version introduced in the other. The same bill can be introduced again and again over multiple Congresses until it is enacted into law. Or a group of legislative ideas can be rolled together into a larger legislative package.
I like to think of ideas contained in legislation as legislative memes, which is a powerful way to understand what Congress is doing. We are working on a legislative tool, call BillMap, that allows you to track legislative memes as they move through Congress.
Continue Reading August 30, 2021
Recap of Bulk Data Task Force Meeting on July 14, 2021
The Bulk Data Task Force met on July 14, 2021, for the first quarterly meeting since October 2019, which is just before the COVID pandemic began. The virtual meeting included presentations from the House of Representatives, the Library of Congress, GPO, the Senate, and Demand Progress Education Fund. Video from the 2-hour long proceedings are available here and slides from the presentations are available on GPO’s Innovation Hub. More than 100 people were pre-registered to attend the meeting.
Continue Reading August 24, 2021
Statute Compilations Now Available in USLM
Today GPO announced that statute compilations are now available online (here) in USLM XML. A statute compilation is a document that contains a law originally passed by Congress and shows how later legislation has amended the law.
Continue Reading August 11, 2021
Library of Congress to host virtual public forum on updates to legislative data services
The Library of Congress will host a virtual public form on federal legislative information services on September 2, 2021, starting at 1PM ET. RSVP here. This is the second — and last — forum required of the Library by House Legislative Branch Appropriators “to facilitate public input into the Library’s legislative information services and how they could be improved,” although we hope it is not the last. The Library was required to invite the public to the event and to summarize the comments and evaluate implementation of the suggestions in a report to be provided to appropriators.
Continue Reading October 18, 2020
The Recap: Library of Congress Virtual Public Forum
On September 10, 2020, the Library of Congress held a Virtual Public Forum on the Library’s role in providing access to legislative information. The forum was held at the direction of the House Committee on Appropriations pursuant to its report accompanying the FY 2020 Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill. Per the legislative language, there will be another forum scheduled prior to October 2021. There was widespread interest in the topic: according to the Library, several hundred people registered for the event.
Prior to the forum, the Congressional Data Coalition and others sent a report containing more than two dozen recommendations concerning the Library of Congress’ legislative information services. They fell into five conceptual groupings: (1) Publish Information As Data; (2) Put the Legislative Process in Context; (3) Integrate Information from Multiple Sources; (4) Publish Archival Information; (5) Collaborate with the Public.
Continue Reading