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 readingSerial Set for 69th Congress is Now Online
GPO + Library of Congress announced they have completed scanning the serial set for the 69th Congress (1925-1927). A serial set contains all the numbered Senate and House Documents and Senate and House Reports for that period.
Continue readingHow 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 readingRecap 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 readingStatute 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 readingLibrary 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 readingThe 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 readingNews: Upgrades to EveryCRSReport.com
This past week we upgraded our EveryCRSReport website, which as of this writing contains approximately 17,700 reports. By comparison, the official CRS website has only around 8,500 reports. The result is that we will continue to provide you the most up-to-date CRS reports as well as an extensive archive.
Continue readingLibrary of Congress to host virtual meeting on its legislative information services
On Thursday, September 10th, the Library of Congress will host its first-ever virtual forum on the Library’s legislative information services at 10 a.m. ET. (Follow the link to RSVP).
Continue readingRecommendations to the Library of Congress: Legislative Information Services and How They Could Be Improved
In anticipation of next week’s Virtual Public Forum hosted by the Library of Congress, we submitted the following recommendations to the Library of Congress on how it could improve its Legislative Information Services. The report is available online here. The recommendations cover the following five categories:
- Publish Information as Data
- Put the Legislative Process in Context
- Integrate Information from Multiple Sources
- Publish Archival Information
- Collaborate with the Public