Former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that "everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." In 1914, an uncharacteristically foresighted Congress spent $25,000 to establish a fact-finding arm whose mission was to gather "data ... bearing upon legislation, and to render such data serviceable to Congress." A century later, the Congressional Research Service generates hundreds of analytical non-partisan reports on legislative issues each year.

CRS reports often inform public debate. A recent analysis, which found no correlation between economic growth and cutting tax rates for the wealthy, set off a re-appraisal of long-held orthodoxy about tax policy. A 2006 analysis questioning the legal rationale supporting the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping policy caused many to look at the issue with fresh eyes. CRS analyses are routinely cited in news reports, by the courts, in congressional debate, and by government watchdogs.

However, unlike its sister agencies that investigate federal spending and analyze the budgetary effects of legislation, CRS does not release its reports to the public on a regular basis. This was not always so, and even now CRS routinely shares its reports with officials in the executive and judicial branches and with the press upon request. Congressional offices also act to disseminate the reports, publishing some on their websites, frequently sending others to constituents in response to requests, and giving them to reporters (often to help push a political narrative.)

But for a member of the public, it's difficult to access reports generated by the 600-person $100 million-a-year agency in any comprehensive way. Efforts by non-profit organizations to gather and re-publish the reports online have met with limited success. The private sector has stepped in, selling access to the reports at $20 a pop, but the premium accentuates the gap between the elites and everyone else.

For over a decade-and-a-half, some members of Congress have pushed legislation to ensure that CRS reports intended for a general congressional audience are routinely made available to the public. They believe that all Americans should have an equal opportunity to be educated about important legislative issues. They know that increasing visibility of the reports will make the reports better, too. For the 113th Congress, Reps. Mike Quigley and Leonard Lance are leading the charge in the House of Representatives.

CRS leadership has quietly undermined public-access efforts. They feared an influx of public comments and a weakening of the special relationship they believe CRS has with Congress. However, CRS has never been obligated to respond to public comment, and there hasn't been a deluge of inquiries even with the reports being sold to special interests and made available by activists online. Moreover, CRS's target audience -- congressional staff -- have increasingly turned to Google and Wikipedia as a starting point for research.

CRS’s continued relevance to policymakers is predicated on releasing its reports to the public that they serve. In an era where just about everyone expresses an opinion online, we must ensure that we have all the facts as well.

Today, Representatives Leonard Lance (R-NJ) and Mike Quigley (D-IL) reintroduced legislation that will make it easier for the public, the media, and government employees to better understand the important policy matters facing Congress. The bipartisan "Public Access to Congressional Research Service Reports Resolution of 2013," H.Res.110, would ensure that these reports, which are often cited by courts and the media and sold by third parties for $20 per copy, are freely available to the public on a website maintained by the House Clerk.

When Representatives Lance and Quigley introduced this resolution in the 112th Congress we praised the bill, noting that "reliable access to CRS Reports would ensure that everyone has timely and comprehensive access to the collective wisdom of hundreds of analysts and experts on political issues when they're at their most salient." This is perhaps even more important today with controversial issues like the sequester and gun control tying our legislature in knots. A few non-profit organizations manage to make some of these reports freely available, but only the CRS can do this in a truly comprehensive manner.

The resolution opens the doors to greater public understanding of Congress and should be applauded and supported.

More than 30 organizations have signed on to a letter supporting the resolution. If you want to learn more about the importance of making CRS reports publicly available, please take the time to read the letter, which is embedded below.

Open CRS Resolution Support Letter

It's been 225 years since the signing of the U.S. Constitution in September 1787, so the three years that have elapsed since we first asked the Library of Congress to publish the invaluable legal treatise Constitution Annotated online in a machine-readable format are little more than 1.3% of the age of our country. And the 670 days (i.e. 1 year and 10 months) that have flown by since Congress directed the Constitution Annotated be published online as it is updated, along with two other "vital legislative and legal documents," are but a brief flicker in geological terms. But in political terms, another congressional session is about to pass without the Library of Congress and GPO making good on their obligation to provide this important document to the American people.

I've run out of clever ways to say this, especially with so many others saying the same thing, but here goes. The Constitution Annotated is an important legal treatise that provides an easily understandable exploration of how Supreme Court decisions interpret the U.S. Constitution. It's already published on Congress' internal website as it is updated, and it should be published online in the same way. At a minimum, the Library and GPO should meet their obligation to do as Congress directed: publish these documents online "as quickly as possible." An informed public is the cornerstone of our democracy, and they should have this information readily available to them.

Representatives Leonard Lance (R-NJ) and Mike Quigley (D-IL) introduced legislation today that will help the American people, the media, and government employees better understand important public policy issues. The bipartisan "Public Access to Congressional Research Service Reports Resolution of 2012" (aka H. Res 727) would ensure that reports by Congress's $100 million-a-year think tank become available to the public on a website maintained by the House Clerk.

The reports, prepared by the Congressional Research Service, are frequently cited by the courts and the media and requested by members of the public, but CRS does not release them to the public. Instead, they come to widespread attention after they are released in dribs and drabs by Congressional offices and painstakingly collected by researchers. Some are collected and sold for $20 a copy, while others are made available by non-profit organizations for public consumption. By the time they become publicly available, the reports can become outdated, especially when an issue is moving quickly in Congress.

Reliable access to CRS Reports would ensure that everyone has timely and comprehensive access to the collective wisdom of hundreds of analysts and experts on political issues when they're at their most salient. This is already common practice in other support arms of the Congress, like the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office.

In the past CRS reports have been more widely available, but relatively recent CRS-imposed policies are increasingly limiting access even as the Internet has made the documents easier to share. In fact, the original limitation on public access was imposed in the 1950s on CRS's predecessor agency and arose from a concern about the costs of printing and mailing the reports -- not their confidentiality. In the Internet age, this limitation no longer makes sense, especially as these reports are already available on CRS's internal website in electronic form.

The legislation is careful to ensure that confidential memoranda between CRS and individual members of Congress are kept confidential -- only the reports that CRS makes generally available  to the 10,000+ hill staffers will be online. While it requires reports be searchable and downloadable, the resolution also ensures that confidential and copyrighted information will be redacted, along with the names and contact information for the report's authors.

Over the years, many members of Congress and organizations have called for public access to CRS Reports. The Sunlight Foundation has asked for this for years. Public access legislation has been sponsored in the House or Senate nearly every Congress going back for more than a decade. And in other countries, public access is routine: 85% of G-20 countries whose parliaments have subject matter experts make CRS-like reports available to the public.

The resolution introduced by Representatives Lance and Quigley opens the doors to greater public understanding of Congress and should be applauded and supported. Unlike most legislation, it only needs to be adopted by the House of Representatives, so contact your representative to urge that this important resolution be adopted. And don't forget to thank Reps. Lance and Quigley.

by Daniel Schuman and Eric Mill

House Appropriators may deal a tremendous blow to prospects for improving public access to legislative information. In a draft report expected to accompany the Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill for 2013, scheduled for a full committee vote tomorrow, appropriators misunderstand how data can be "authenticated," and kick responsibility for improving public access to legislative data to a non-public task force with no set reporting date. Unless corrected, this draft report represents a tremendous step backward for transparency, and fails to seriously grapple with the history of efforts to free legislative information for widespread public use.

Legislative Information Should Be Widely Disseminated

The purpose of THOMAS is to bring legislative information to as many people as possible; preservation and authentication is best handled through other long-established methods that THOMAS was never intended to address. The lack of authenticity to THOMAS data does not present a problem for most users. Rather, the largest problem with THOMAS is that the data is not provided so that it can be easily copied, placing a significant burden on citizens who wish to make sophisticated use of the information. The THOMAS website directly provides nearly a million users each month with an "inauthentic" version of information about legislative activities, a practice that will continue unabated under the draft committee report. While THOMAS often links to a GPO document that is "authenticated," its display of bill text, legislative summaries, cosponsor data, and other information is not certified as being correct, and often changes because of the Library's errors in how it publishes the data.

To the extent to which THOMAS information should be authentic, the report does not engage with best practices around authenticity of data on the Internet. Verifying the authenticity of data can be performed securely and reliably with the use of metadata external to the data itself. In fact, this is precisely how GPO's FDSys currently authenticates XML documents of the US government, including its legislation, regulations, and laws. GPO accompanies each document it publishes with a "PREMIS" metadata file that includes information needed to cryptographically verify the authenticity of documents. For example, here's the PREMIS file accompanying HR 6289. Worries about authenticity are a red herring.

Bulk Access is a Separate Question from Authenticity 

Bulk access to THOMAS data is a simpler and less controversial step than this draft report contemplates. The underlying information is already publicly available on the THOMAS website, and third parties already are scraping the data from the site to make it available in bulk. It simply makes sense for the Library to meet the needs of the public directly through providing the data in bulk itself. This merely opens up another avenue to access info that's already being released. It would also eliminate any errors created through the scraping process.

The Draft Report Creates a Secret, Never-Ending Process

The draft report would require the establishment of a task force to examine and report back on a number of issues raised in the report regarding bulk access to legislative data. This is seriously flawed in several major ways.

First, bulk access is about granting the public better access to legislative information. It stands to reason that the public should be included in all discussions. However, the proposed task force does not include any non-governmental participants. A number of individuals and organizations are expert in these matters, and should be full participants.

Second, the draft report imposes no deadline for a report from the task force. The last time Appropriators required a task force on a similar matter, four year ago, it never reached any conclusions or reported back. Without a deadline, the same will happen here.

Third, the task force's report should be provided to the public as well as to the committee at the time it is completed. Draft reports should also be made available for public comment.

Fourth, the report language is terribly overbroad: it prohibits the establishment of bulk data downloads of legislative information prior to the reporting back of the task force. Making use of modern technology to provide information in better ways should be something that is encouraged, not prohibited. Information is already being provided to the public in bulk regarding certain legislative activity. Would this report language stop the GPO from providing bulk access to the Congressional Record, as it does now? Would it prohibit the House of Representatives from providing bulk access through its innovative docs.house.gov portal? If so, that would be a disaster for transparency.

Finally, the idea of a task force to assess these questions ignores that these issues were already addressed by the Library of Congress in a 2008 memo.The memo explained that the XML database containing bill metadata was expected to be able to be released in bulk by May 2008. It also stated that "CRS... will continue to identify and analyze ... the following policy matters for the Committee's consideration," including "data accuracy" and "data permanence and authentication." Where are the results of CRS's analysis? What is the strategic plan for THOMAS referenced in the memo? Where is the study promised that would engage in "an examination of permanence and authentication of legislative data, along with any attendant issues, risks and workload?"

Simply put, the draft committee report's establishment of a task force is another recipe for delay. We saw this four years ago, the last time the Library was pressed to make improvements on this issue. The time is long past for action, and the Appropriations Committee will be judged on whether it makes another plan to make a plan, or whether it establishes real deadlines for progress. THOMAS itself was created in a matter of months when the Speaker of the House decided it was a priority. Bulk access to legislative data will also come about when legislators decide that being transparent is more important than establishing a task force to talk about it.

In the last 18 months, the House of Representatives has made significant strides towards greater openness and transparency in congressional deliberations, but significant work remains. The Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill for 2013, which was marked-up by a subcommittee last week, presents a major vehicle for the House leadership to make good on its promise to implement common-sense transparency measures this session.

While there are many issues that can be addressed a number of different ways, Sunlight will be looking at  the full committee markup to see if the bill:

-- Provides bulk access to THOMAS data

-- Fully funds the Office of Congressional Ethics

-- Requires Publication of  CRS Reports online

-- Publishes the Constitution Annotated online as it's updated in XML

-- Reinstates the Office of Technology Assessment

-- Makes reports to Congress available online

-- Publishes House spending information in an appropriate format for the data

Improve Public Access to THOMAS Data

THOMAS was created by Congress to make legislative information freely available to the public, but the Library of Congress has not kept up with best practices. One such practice -- "bulk access" -- would ease the development of new tools and technologies by publishing THOMAS data files online, promoting accurate and timely information dissemination. Congress has expressed its support for bulk data as have many organizations, but the Library continues to stall despite a 2008 memo describing how easy it would be to implement.

At the recent legislative subcommittee hearing, Rep. Honda mentioned that text has been inserted into the committee's report that would in some way address the bulk data question. The last time this happened, the language was watered down sufficiently so that the Library of Congress successfully evaded its obligations over the last half a decade. We hope the bill will contain these two provisions:

(1) Congress directs the Library of Congress to implement bulk access to THOMAS within 120 days of passage

(2) Congress directs the Library of Congress to immediately create an advisory committee on improving public access to legislative information that is composed of people inside and outside of government.

Fully Fund the Office of Congressional Ethics

The Office of Congressional Ethics is the House of Representatives' independent ethics watchdog. It came into existence in March 2008 after a series of corruption scandals prompted congressional leaders to explore creating a transparent, outside enforcement entity. While OCE is not as robust as originally contemplated, it plays a crucial role in ethics oversight. Last year, the office survived a counterproductive effort by nearly 100 members of Congress to significantly reduce its funding. This year's appropriations bill maintains OCE's funding at $1,548,000, which is the same level as last year. We believe that OCE should be strengthened, but at a minimum, its funding should be sustained at least at this level.

Publish CRS Reports Online

Congressional Research Service reports undergird the public's understanding of Congress, but CRS no longer directly releases the reports to the public. As a consequence, while many reports used by citizens, courts, and government employees are on the internet, they are often out-of-date, and a fair number are available only for a fee or not at all. By comparison, sister agencies like CBO and GAO regularly publish reports online. For more than a decade, organizations and members of Congress have urged that CRS reports be publicly available, and CRS concerns have been refuted by a former counsel to the House of Representatives. The reports are already digitized and available on Congress's intranet; it would take a trivial effort to publish them online.

During the markup of the 2012 Appropriations Bill, Rep. Leonard Lance introduced an amendment that would have required the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate to maintain a website containing CRS Reports and Appropriation products while protecting confidential advice from CRS. Similar legislation has been introduced by Rep. Quigley. We hope that House Appropriators will move to make these reports more readily available to the public.

Release the Constitution Annotated Online

The Constitution Annotated (or CONAN) is a continuously-updated 100-year-old legal treatise that explains the Constitution as it has been interpreted by Supreme Court. Maintained by CRS and printed by GPO, a hard copy is published (and put online) only once a decade, with printed updates every two years. However, CONAN is updated frequently, with those updates available on Congress' internal website. In November 2010 (18 months ago), the Joint Committee on Printing directed that the continuously-updated version of CONAN be made available online as a searchable PDF, but it still is not. Many organizations have asked that the underlying document be published online in its original (XML) format, which is more user friendly than a PDF, and would take minimal effort to release.

This upcoming year, the Constitution Annotated will be up for its once-a-decade print edition. With at least 4,870 statutorily mandated copies, at an estimated cost of $226, the House and Senate will pay over $1.1 million for a document that will go out of date almost immediately. We suggest that some of these costs may be recouped by asking House offices if they wish to receive a print copy, as a continuously updated web version is already made available to all congressional offices. Regardless, we urge that the web version that is already made available to congressional offices also be made available to the American people in its web friendly format. While publishing the document as a PDF would be a small step forward, the best use of taxpayer dollars to maximize usability would be to publish it in XML, the format in which it is prepared.

Other Provisions

Sunlight support additional measures in the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill. Those provisions include:

The reinstatement of the Office of Technology Assessment, as proposed by Rep. Rush Holt last year. OTA provided Congress http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/taxonomy/term/Office-of-Technology-Assessment/ with the “means for securing competent, unbiased information concerning the physical, biological, economic, social, and political effects” of technology.

Inclusion of the Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act, which would would gather together all reports to Congress from federal agencies in one place. It requires that they be published online by GPO in bulk, in open formats, and in a timely fashion, so that people can easily learn about the work of the federal government. The legislation would not require any additional appropriation, and would bring much needed transparency and coordination. It has already passed the Committee on Oversight and Government reform, was introduced in the Senate, and is awaiting action by the House.

Avoiding decreasing funding levels for the House of Representatives and certain legislative support agencies below the subcommittee proposal. Funding for the House has already diminished by at least 10% over the last two years. This raises the concern that congressional staff may become more susceptible to influence from lobbyists, and that support entities (like GPO, the Clerk, and the Library of Congress) that have transparency roles will be less able to fulfill their missions.

Publishing the House Expenditure Reports in a data-friendly format such as CSV. The quarterly reports contain all spending by the House of Representatives, and are currently published online as a PDF. Starting in 2009, then Speaker-Pelosi began publishing House Expenditure Reports online, which was a significant step forward in making them available, as they had only been published in giant books. Unfortunately, publishing columns of data in a PDF does not allow for the data to be analyzed. Simply put, we're only halfway to House spending transparency. The Sunlight Foundation goes through significant effort to scrape the data from the PDFs and put them into spreadsheets, but this should really be done by the House. It would increase accuracy and timeliness -- and so long as the House releases the information, it should do so in the most useful way possible.

As I wrote yesterday, each day seems to bring a small step forward on improving public access to legislative information, with two notable developments today.

First, Rep. Honda gave a tantalizing hint of progress on bulk access to legislative data at this morning's subcommittee markup of the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill (sorry no video). He said that "there is exhaustive discussion on bulk data downloads in the [sub]committee report." It's not clear exactly what this means -- the subcommittee report won't be made available to the public until the full committee markup, which is tentatively scheduled in two weeks -- but it's an indication that public attention has joined with bipartisan support from appropriators, overseers, and leadership to make progress on making legislative information available to the American people.

From what I've heard, the pushback is coming largely from the support agencies, although the nature of those concerns are not clear. With the Law Library of Congress taking the lead on THOMAS in recent years, including making some small but useful changes to the site, there is hope that they will grow into their role as facilitators of online transparency. All along, the public interest community has been asking for bulk access to THOMAS data and the creation of an advisory committee on THOMAS.

Second, the objections raised by legislative support agencies are not particularly weighty, at least according to a 2008 memo from the Library of Congress to the Committee on House Administration regarding the availability of THOMAS data. As far as I'm aware, this is the first time it's been made accessible to the public. What's notable is how the Library of Congress was technologically positioned to deliver on legislative data transparency four years ago, but apparently did not move forward. At a minimum, it should alleviate concerns about the difficulty of technological implementation.

According to the memo, the Library expected to finish developing an XML database containing bill metadata such as bill summaries, status of bills, and information on co-sponsors four years ago (in May 2008.) What's revealing about this is that much of the information about legislation has been available in a structured database for nearly half a decade -- and in the kind of format that developers need.

Moreover, the Library reports that "the resources will be available to copy the database daily into an Anonymous File Transfer Protocol [FTP] site so it is accessible to the public" by the time the LIS 2.0 database is completed. This would allow the data to be made available in bulk. (There are better ways to do so, but this is an acceptable solution.)

Also at the time of the memo, March 2008, full text of bills and committee reports were available on GPO Access, but not in XML. From what we can tell, nearly all bills are now available in XML, although it is unclear whether committee reports are prepared in XML. All of this could also be made available in bulk using the technology described in the memo.

The memo raises one major policy implication concerning who owns the data, contemplating that it belongs to the House, Senate, Congressional Research Service, and Government Printing Office. In the literal sense, that's backwards: the information is owned by the American people and held in trust by Congress and its legislative agencies. These entities do serve as repositories of the information, however, and deserve consideration as to the technological means by which it is made available. However, that's with the understanding that these entities should strive to meet the public's need for the information and expansively follow the policies set by Congress in favor of transparency.

We'll continue to keep a close eye on how all this develops.

Library of Congress letter to Committee on House Administration on THOMAS