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

Public access to legislative information could get a boost this Friday at a House subcommittee hearing. The Legislative Branch Appropriations subcommittee will be marking up Congress' budget for FY 2013, which will present the opportunity to require that the data behind THOMAS be made available to the public in a better format.

Why does this matter? Simply speaking, our democracy is founded upon an informed public acting through its elected officials to make policy. THOMAS makes this possible, but its limitations make it difficult.

Developers and programmers have worked to overcome THOMAS's limitations, creating websites like OpenCongress and GovTrack.us that together have nearly twice as many visitors as THOMAS, mobile device apps like Sunlight's "Congress" Android app that's been downloaded 400,000 times, as well as integrating the data into news coverage (like at the New York Times) and special purpose sites like WashingtonWatch.com.

Unfortunately, weaknesses in how THOMAS makes the data available limits what can be accomplished by even the most talented developer. No one expects THOMAS to do everything, but it suffers from basic problems. Its web page addresses break after 15 minutes, it doesn't provide redlines of bills, you can't get alerts when legislation is moving, and it does a poor job of integrating relevant legislative data. There's a laundry list of improvements here. In addition, there are other tasks that shouldn't be done by THOMAS, but should exist... whether as simple as connecting relevant CRS reports to legislation or as dynamic as adding an interactive social media layer.

These are examples of the benefits of opening up the data that drives THOMAS. Beneath the 1990s web interface is an up-to-date database of bills, bill status information, legislative summaries, and much more. Releasing the data in a developer-friendly format (i.e. structured data made available in bulk) would empower innovators to improve upon the services THOMAS provides, and to go in entirely new directions, all at no cost to the public.

When the THOMAS website went live on January 5, 1995, it was the result of a bipartisan effort to grant "citizens across the country and around the world ... access, via the Internet, to congressional information." THOMAS significantly improved how legislative information was made available online -- it provided additional materials in a centralized location, and did not charge the public for access -- with a pledge that over time "enhancement[s] will be made to THOMAS to upgrade its features."

While citizens around the world gained access to some congressional information, enhancements to THOMAS's capabilities have been limited in scope. Its limitations kindled a desire in users to be able to build their own tools to make use of legislative data. These efforts have been severely hampered because THOMAS doesn't give the public access to its underlying database, instead releasing its information piecemeal through thousands of webpages.

This challenge was partially overcome by technologists like Josh Tauburer, who in 2004 launched GovTrack.us, which he describes in his great new book Open Government Data as "one of the first websites world-wide to offer comprehensive parliamentary tracking for free and with the intention to be used by everyday citizens." But there's a catch. The unstructured way the THOMAS data was released required him to find some way to gather and organize the data.

He turned to screen scraping, which involves "programmatically loading up web pages, looking at their HTML source, and extracting information using simple pattern matching." Jim Harper at Washington Watch, which tracks bills and government spending, also uses screen scraping. They've run into similar problems: screen scrapers don't catch all the data, they're a pain to build, they easily break, and can suffer from a time lag. All of this could easily be fixed by publicly releasing the structured database behind THOMAS.

In fact, releasing the database -- often referred to as providing "bulk access to data" -- is a longstanding open data principle that has been called for by many people over the years.

In May 2007, a coalition of organizations and experts released the Open House Report, which recommended (among other things) the creation of a "Legislation Database."

"Congress should make available to the public a well-supported database of all bill status and summary information currently accessible through the Library of Congress. This database, as well as its supporting files, should be in a structured, non-proprietary format such as XML. "

This recommendation was embraced by Representative Mike Honda, then Chairman of the House Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee. In November of 2007, a committee staffer asked the Library of Congress "to report back on solutions to provide raw legislative data to the public, as well as the resources required to accomplish this." No such report has been released by the Library to the public.

Around the same time, legislative language was inserted into an explanatory statement accompanying the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-8) that declared "There is support for enhancing public access to legislative documents, bill status, summary information, and other legislative data through more direct methods such as bulk data downloads and other means of no-charge digital access to legislative databases."

This direct endorsement of bulk access to legislative data did not yield measurable results from the Library of Congress, which is responsible for the THOMAS database. Not did the myriad of meetings, phone calls, and letters from congressional staff to the Library.

Over time, there has been a shift of responsibility for THOMAS to the Law Library from other parts of the Library of Congress, as announced in their January 5, 2010 holiday newsletter. Although the newsletter raised hoped that the "analysis of the system's functionality and content based on user feedback" would lead to improvements in access to the underlying data, no movement on this issue was forthcoming. Even so, the public and members of Congress have continued to press forward on the issue.

For example, in May 2010, I had the opportunity to testify on behalf of Sunlight before the House Legislative Appropriations subcommittee. We called on Congress to:

Grant the public access to legislative documents, bill status and summary information, and other legislative data no later than 120 days after the start of FY 2012. We also ask for the immediate creation of an advisory committee, composed of relevant legislative agency employees and members of the public, that will meet regularly to address the public's need for access to this information, and the means by which it is provided.

In September 2010, Rep. Foster introduced legislation to improve public access to THOMAS. The bill would have provided bulk access to bill summary and other THOMAS data, created an advisory committee to make recommendations on improving THOMAS, and urged the Library to work towards providing bulk access to the full text of the legislation. The session ended before there was an opportunity for action.

Even though the 112th Congress brought a change in leadership in the House, bipartisan interest in making this information available to the public continued. Indeed, over the years appropriators, overseers, and leadership have pushed the ball forward. In June of 2011, the Committee on House Administration held a hearing  on making congressional documents available electronically as a transparency and cost-savings measure. One of the panelists, Cornell's Tom Bruce, advocated that the House focus on providing legislative data in bulk and in a timely fashion.

In December, Reps. Cantor and Hoyer co-hosted a Congressional Hackathon, which brought together nearly 300 developers and policy wonks to discuss how to use technology to make the legislative branch more open. Out of that meeting came three action items, the first of which was "providing legislative data in a bulk format to enable third-party developers to create more dynamic interfaces for legislative information."

By the middle of the month, the Committee on House Administration set forth standards for the electronic posting of House and committee documents and data. In January, the House launched a groundbreaking transparency portal. It provides a one stop website where the public can access all House bills, amendments, resolutions for floor consideration, and conference reports in XML, as well as information on floor proceedings and more. Information will ultimately be published online in real time and archived for perpetuity. So far, only documents considered by the full House are available online, but it's expected that Committee documents will be available by the beginning of 2013.

The House transparency portal is a tremendous breakthrough, but it does have significant limitations. Because it came online in 2012, it doesn't capture the historical information contained in the THOMAS database. As a House resource, it doesn't have Senate records. And it doesn't contain bill summaries, related bills, and other information prepared by the Library of Congress and GPO that are made available through THOMAS. Therese limitations can be overcome in time, and they clearly points the way to the future, especially if the Library of Congress doesn't act.

On February 2, the House held a full day Legislative Data and Transparency Conference, which brought together nearly all of the key players in making congressional information available to the public. On behalf of Sunlight, I delivered a talk on benchmarks for measuring success for legislative data transparency, which clearly included a call for THOMAS data to be made available in bulk. Surprisingly, the Library of Congress' representative, when directly asked about THOMAS, indicated the issue wasn't even on the radar. Three days later, the Sunlight Foundation submitted comments to the House Legislative Branch Appropriations Committee on the importance of making legislative data available to the public, as did Josh Tauburer and Open Congress.

By April, a coalition of 30 organizations wrote a letter to legislators asking Congress to provide bulk access to THOMAS and create an advisory body. Part of the letter reads as follows:

We estimate that for every person that goes directly to the THOMAS website, at least two people visit a third-party website. But even these sites must rely on legislative information generated and maintained by Congress, which is only available through the difficult-to-use THOMAS website. There will always be a need for a congressionally-mandated website, but Congress should ensure that the innovative and transformative uses of legislative information by third parties is grounded upon accurate and timely data. And that means providing bulk access to everyone.

So here we are in May. The three best legislative opportunities to require bulk access to THOMAS this legislative year, in increasing order of difficulty, are in the Leg Branch Approps Subcommittee mark-up on Friday, the full committee mark-up, and in the final vote on the House floor. (The Senate also provides an opportunity, but the House traditionally has led on these issues.)

It's time to fulfill the promise of citizen access to legislative information. Congress should require bulk access to THOMAS legislative data no later than 120 days of passage of the appropriations bill, and create an advisory committee that regularly meetings to look at public access to legislative information and is composed of people inside and outside of government. It would make information that's already required to be publicly available much more useful to everyone, and impose (at best) a minimal cost.

THOMAS was created by Congress to make legislative information freely available to the public, but the Library has not kept up with best practices. Congress should break the logjam and keep the promise of making free legislative information available to everyone in a way that encourages the public to make the most of it.

News Without Transparency: House Passes Bridge Bill After an Earmark Debate

Matt Rumsey and Melanie Buck wrote this post. 

Earlier this spring, the New York Times reported that the House approved bipartisan legislation allowing construction of a new bridge crossing Minnesota and Wisconsin. At the price of $700 million the bridge will connect two towns, each with 4,000 residents.

Much of the information included in the article can be accessed via Congress’ online legislative information system, THOMAS. THOMAS was launched as part of Newt Gingrich’s efforts to modernize House technology following the 1994 elections and continues to provide an outlet for increasing public access to government information. Using THOMAS you can access the text of the legislation as well as information on votes, sponsors, and related bills.

The article states that “the vote was 339 to 80, with 16 Republicans and 64 Democrats voting against the measure.” Roll call votes are recorded by the Clerk of the House and can be accessed through either the Clerk’s website or in a centralized THOMAS location. House rules mandate that most votes are recorded electronic device. Vote information is then published in the Congressional record and posted online.

Critics of the bill claimed that the legislation effectively served as an earmark, approving a specific project in its sponsors’ congressional district and including $8 million that had previously been earmarked for the project. Since Congress decided to ban earmarks in late fall 2010, it has frequently been reported that similar projects are still being funded through various loopholes. Prior to the earmark ban, both the House and Senate required that earmark requests be reported to the Office of Management and Budget. It is still possible to search for earmarks between FY 2005 and FY 2010 using the OMB database.

The new bridge is intended to replace The Stillwater Lift Bridge, originally built in 1931. The article states that while the bridge was initially intended for light traffic, it now carries 16,000 cars per day. This information can be confirmed by  accessing a public website maintained by the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

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"The News Without Transparency" shows you what the news would look like without public access to information. Laws and regulations that force the government to make the data it has publicly available are absolutely vital, along with services that take that raw data and make it easy for reporters to write sentences like the ones we've redacted in the piece above. If you have an article you'd like us to put through the redaction machine, please send us an email at mbuck@sunlightfoundation.com.

Today 30 organizations from across the political spectrum joined together to ask Congress to improve public access to legislative information. Our joint letters to congressional appropriators and rulemakers urges Congress to direct that the THOMAS legislative database be published online and to establish an advisory committee on further improvements.

THOMAS, Congress' legislative information website that provides basic information about legislative and congressional actions, has fallen far behind the needs of its users. Many have turned to important websites like GovTrack, OpenCongress, and WashingtonWatch to monitor congressional activities.

These sites and others, which repackage and add important context to legislative activities, extract data from the THOMAS website through a painstaking and often brittle process. To make this process easier and more reliable, the Library of Congress should publish THOMAS information "in bulk," which makes the entire legislative database available for download at once, instead of publishing information in such a way that it can only be gathered by scraping data from hundreds or thousands of webpages.

Bulk access to legislative information is already common practice inside and outside the government. For example,

•  The Government Printing Office publishes six major databases, including the Federal Register, in bulk;
•  The House's Office of Law Revision Counsel publishes the U.S. Code in bulk;
•  New Jersey and New Hampshire publish their legislative information in bulk; and
•  Data.gov has nearly 400,000 datasets available in bulk, including 4,395 high-value datasets.

The transparency community, technology innovators, journalists, good government organizations, and private companies have long sought bulk access to legislative data. In May 2007, a coalition of organizations called on Congress to "embrace structured data by publishing the status of legislation and other information to the web ... in structured data formats". In 2009, Congress articulated support for bulk access to legislative data in an explanatory statement accompanying an appropriations bill. And in November 2011 one of the action items emerging from the House's Congressional Facebook Hackathon was an endorsement of releasing "structured machine-readable legislative data ... in a bulk format."

This past year the Sunlight Foundation, GovTrack, and Open Congress submitted testimony to House Appropriators calling for bulk access to legislative information. We applaud the major strides made by the House of Representatives in improving public access to the House's legislative information, but what's missing is the kind of information only available through the THOMAS website. This includes bill summaries, bill status information, bill co-sponsors, and other information that provides important context for legislation.

We estimate that for every person that goes directly to the THOMAS website, at least two people visit a third-party website. But even these sites must rely on legislative information generated and maintained by Congress, which is only available through the difficult-to-use THOMAS website. There will always be a need for a congressionally-mandated website, but Congress should ensure that the innovative and transformative uses of legislative information by third parties is grounded upon accurate and timely data. And that means providing bulk access to everyone.

Organizations encourage rulemakers to publish THOMAS legislative information in bulk

Organizations urge appropriators to publish THOMAS data in bulk

Written by Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey

The House of Representatives'  internal operations budget was the subject of a Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee hearing this morning. In the last two years, the House's budget was decreased by 10% from its FY2010 level, and it may be set for a further reduction.

Ander Crenshaw (R-FL), chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch, made clear in his opening statement that he expected the eventual budget allocation to be lower for FY 2013 than in previous years. Mike Honda (D-CA), the subcommittee's ranking member, called cuts to the House budget "misguided" and questioned the effect they would have on staff compensation, office operations, and the legislative process. The effect of budget cuts on Congress's ability to do its job was the subject of a 2010 Sunlight Foundation report.

A number of department heads submitted testimony for the hearing. Of particular interest were statements by the Clerk of the House and the Office of Law Revision Counsel that discussed ongoing transparency measures, many of which are crucial for how the public learns about the House's operations.

Karen Haas, Clerk of the House of Representatives, highlighted the Clerk's transparency efforts in her opening statement and written testimony. The Clerk's proposed budget, a 14% decrease from FY 2012, includes funding to continue "deploying new technology as part of a continuing effort to improve the efficiency and transparency of House floor proceedings." Haas touted the launch of docs.house.gov, improvements to HouseLive.gov, and an upgraded interface to track House floor activities on the Clerk's website as successful initiatives. We agree.

The Clerk's transparency plans for FY 2013 include the addition of committee documents to docs.house.gov, improved video streaming services, and an update to the Legislative Information Management System that will complete its modernization. We welcome the further improvements to docs.house.gov, and hope that along with an improved LIS will be better access to legislative information. The Clerk's office is also working with the Senate to develop a web-based filing system for lobbying disclosure information, an improvement which is long overdue.

Haas also cited CBO estimates that the electronic filing and disclosure system mandated by the recently passed STOCK Act would cost $4 million to implement and $1 million every year to manage. This cost was not factored in to the Clerk's budget request. Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH) expressed disdain for the legislation and concern over the cost. To be effective, the STOCK Act must be fully funded and enforced.

Ralph Seep, the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives, submitted a budget request equal to his offices' FY2012 appropriation. His statement highlighted recent upgrades to the US Code's online presence and stressed efforts to update the code in a more efficient manner. The FY 2013 request would make it possible for LRC to continue converting to an XML based production system and maintain and make further upgrades to their website. We agree that these improvements are important, as the public deserves timely access to laws as they are codified. More on LRC here.

It is also worth noting that this hearing was not webcast.

Additional Resources:

• Statement of the House Sergeant-At-Arms Paul Irving
• Statement of Chief Administrator Officer Daniel Strodel
• Statement of Kerry Kircher, General Counsel
• Statement of Inspector General Theresa Grafenstine

Image credit to RambergMediaImages.

Making sure that people can get information about what our government is doing is the heart of what we do at Sunlight. And right now, there’s a chance to make some big changes.

A committee in Congress is working on an appropriations bill that could make it easier to find out what Congress is doing by changing how information is released by the Library of Congress through a website through THOMAS. They’re writing the bill as we speak (er, type...), so this is a perfect moment to speak up for greater transparency.

Why we need quality information from the Library of Congress

Currently, the only way we can get to know about legislation and see any action taken on a bill is through a website operated by the Library of Congress -- known as THOMAS. Because THOMAS is not easy to use for ordinary folks, a few tech groups including Open Congress, GovTrack and PopVox have built tools to make the process of reading government legislation online much easier. However, extracting information from THOMAS is no walk in the park. This is because the information has to be collected from thousands of pages and can be glitchy and delayed.

We need Congress to change that. They can do this by requiring the Library of Congress to put online legislative data in THOMAS using a “geek” favorite process known as “bulk access.” This process makes accessing online information simpler, faster and easier. And really, all the cool kids in government are doing it these days. Literally hundreds of thousands of data sets are available on Data.gov, the House of Representatives has a spiffy new transparency portal and even the good ‘ol Government Printing Office has gotten into the act. Bulk access means that the public gets reliable information right when they need it -- immediately. And legislative information, what Congress is doing and actions on bills, pretty obviously falls into the category of information the public needs to be especially accurate and available immediately.

Topics like the release of quality government information online isn’t something members of Congress are used to hearing about from their constituents, but that’s why it’s so important that we take action. Every call that we make will be that much more impactful, and knowing that constituents are paying attention will go a long way toward making sure that Congress does the right thing by increasing transparency.

Four people in Congress that have the ability to make this change right now. They are the chairmen and ranking members of this committee: Rep. Ander Crenshaw (FL-4), Rep. Mike Honda (CA-15), Sen. Ben Nelson (NE) and Sen. John Hoeven (ND). And they need to hear from us.

If any of these four are your representatives, call them! Call 1-888-793-9786 and enter your zipcode to be connected to their offices.

If you’re not, that’s okay -- this is an issue that affects of all of us, and we need to spread the word. So go ahead and contact them, but do it in a way that lets other people in their districts hear about it -- online.

Click on any of the below links to tweet at them or post on their facebook pages that Americans deserve to know what our government is doing. Make sure to tell them this bill -- the legislative branch appropriations bill -- needs to do two things:

• Require the Library of Congress to implement bulk access to THOMAS
• Create an advisory committee of people both inside and outside government to make sure we have the best public access to legislative information possible

Write on Sen. Ben Nelson's Facebook wall: http://www.facebook.com/senatorbennelson Or tweet at him: Tweet to @SenBenNelson

Write on Sen. John Hoeven's Facebook wall: http://www.facebook.com/SenatorJohnHoeven

(Sen. Hoeven doesn't appear to have a twitter account)

Write on Rep. Ander Crenshaw's Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Congressman-Ander-Crenshaw/

Or tweet at him:

Tweet to @AnderCrenshaw

Write on Rep. Mike Honda's Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/RepMikeHonda

Or tweet at him:

Tweet to @RepMikeHonda

This week I participated in an international meeting on "Achieving Greater Transparency in Legislatures through the Use of Open Document Standards." It was co-hosted by the United Nations, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and included representatives from 16 parliaments, non-governmental representatives, multi-lateral organizations, and academia. It is impossible to recapitulate all the conversations that took place, but  presentations are (or will be) available online here and video will be available online as well.

I was struck by the candor of the participants, the breadth of the undertakings by the various parliaments, and the apparently sincere desire of many parliaments to learn from each other and from the non-governmental community. For my part, I made a presentation on the state of legislative transparency in the American context, with a focus on principles to evaluate whether electronically-stored government data is being properly made available for public use, followed by an examination of first steps that parliaments can take to increase public access to legislative information. The full text of my remarks are available below.

Access to Parliamentary Information and Open Data Standards

Today the House of Representatives promulgated standards on how to electronically name a broad range of legislative documents, from bills to amendments to committee reports to individual legislators. Combined with the recently launched transparency portal docs.house.gov, important legislative information can now be automatically and uniquely identified by computers and retrieved at permanent URLs, with more data to come online in 2013. The public release of these standards will help ensure that third parties have a common vocabulary to describe the same document, which will make data sharing much easier.

This is the latest in a series of steps by the House of Representatives to give the public better access to legislative information. The document was released by the Committee on House Administration, which is responsible for the promulgation of technology standards to make the House more open and transparent.

House of Representatives Document Naming Conventions v 1.2

Earlier this week, appropriators held a hearing on funding for the legislative agencies that make government information available to the public.  Three members of the open government community, the Sunlight Foundation, the Participatory Politics Foundation, and Josh Tauberer, filed comments on the importance of making legislative information directly available to the public as a downloadable database, instead of item-by-item, which is the current practice.

The Sunlight Foundation testified on this topic (a.k.a. "bulk access")  last year, and has sketched out some interesting new tools that it could empower. But of course, one major use would be to strengthen the already fantastic services available at OpenCongress and GovTrack, while supporting additional innovations.

Progress on bulk access has been slow. Several years ago, the Congress required the Library of Congress and others to examine the issue, but these agencies have dragged their heels and -- as far as we know -- have failed to finish that analysis. Sunlight's comments are available below.

Sunlight Foundation Bulk Access to THOMAS Testimony Leg Approps 2012-02-06