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.
There’s a discussion of draft legislation to sunset the advisory committee on the records of Congress and consolidate the work of the ACRC in the hands of staff. For my money, some of the roles of the ACRC (e.g., video preservation & congressional web archive) should be rolled into the work of the Congressional Data Task Force. I’d hate to lose public insight into that work.
Timeline for several Clerk-related projects. The new committee portal and publication of committee votes as data is expected to reach minimum viable product in June 2025. A study on building a collaborative drafting tool is expected to be completed in September/ October 2025. The estimated completion date for the Lobbying Disclosure modernization effort, which will include unique IDs for lobbyists, is May 2026.
Regarding the new committee portal, it will be a one stop shop for staff to manage their work. Initially it will focus on activities related to the legislative process such as bill referrals, roll call votes, and so on. It will eventually expand to addressing planning a committee meeting, which includes requesting resources for Official Reporters and from the House Recording Studio, reporting committee activity to the Clerk, managing witnesses, and collaborating between committees.
Wish list. The Clerk, when asked to identify three projects to take on if money were no object, identified:
(1) creating a member portal that’s a one stop shop for all legislative matters related to a member of congress;
(2) speeding up production and adding new features to the committee portal (such as collaborating with GPO to create committee reports and building an eHopper submission process); and
(3) adding new features to the legislative information management system, such as tools to improve the exchange of data between the Parliamentarian and the Clerk, such as committee referrals and executive communications as well as incorporating CRS’s Text Analysis Program to speed up referrals.
