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.

Another of the Open House Project report recommendations is slowly becoming reality.

The omnibus appropriations report (HR 1105) contains language that specifically addresses access to legislative data:

Public Access to Legislative Data - 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. The Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, and Government Printing Office and the appropriate entities of the House of Representatives are directed to prepare a report on the feasibility of providing advanced search capabilities. This report is to be provided to the Committees on Appropriations of the House and Senate within 120 days of the release of Legislative Information System 2.0.

While requiring a report may seem to be a long way from actual, say, FTP access to the data that runs THOMAS, this is actually a significant move.  As Carl Malamud points out, on an O'Reilly Radar post, "The language only requires a report, but a report to an Appropriations subcommittee means a whole bunch, because if they don't like your report, you don't get money."

We've been advocating for bulk or programmatic access to legislative data for some time, and the May 2007 Open House Project report features a chapter specifically about data from the Library of Congress.  Since Josh Tauberer was the primary contributor to that chapter, I'm happy to see him weigh in on Congress's latest: (via Mother Jones blog)

Tauberer expects that the availability of additional and easier-to-use congressional data will spur innovation. "You can expect to see other sites spring up doing new and interesting things with the information." He anticipates charts, graphs, and maps that represent congressional goings-on visually—"ways of visualizing the congressional process that we couldn't yet imagine."

Creative visualizations, advanced analysis, reliable re-publishing -- while these each are rather clear public goods, they aren't the easiest things to sell to Members of Congress.  I'm grateful to have worked closely with Rep. Honda's staff, this large step toward a new public relationship to Congress.  Here's what Rep. Honda had to say, as quoted on Wired:

“In our web 2.0 world, we can empower the public by providing them with raw data that they can remix and reuse in new and innovative ways," says Honda, who is vice chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch. "With these tools, the public can collaborate on projects that can help legislators to create better policies to address the pressing challenges facing our nation.”

Having a Member on the Leg Branch Approps subcommittee articulating the benefits of data access will help the public to become empowered, as he describes, much more quickly, and it must be addictive -- Rob Pierson, Honda's Online Communications Director (who I've often worked closely with) is even requesting feedback on the proposals from readers at Wired.

The bill should be considered shortly in the Senate.

Update: To be clear, Rep. Honda inserted the provision in the report.