The House of Representatives' document portal, docs.house.gov, launched in January 2012 with a surprisingly rich and relevant set of data: all bills and amendments (including drafts) that would come to the floor over the next week, and extensive XML metadata about each document and when it was updated. It's pretty difficult to overstate the value of this data. After all, information on what the House is about to do is vital -- to participate effectively in our democracy, you need to have some lead time.

The House has doubled down on its pledge to keep innovating, and has begun to release what promises to be an expansive set of committee information. Docs.house.gov’s expansion in breadth from floor proceedings to include committee activities provides significant new opportunities for the public to understand how the House functions as well as a much earlier entry point for citizens to become substantively involved in the legislative process.

Docs.house.gov is organized around a new calendar of committee activities that extends what's available on House.gov. The calendar identifies committee activities further in advance than the current system and provides a landing page with extensive information and documents related to committee activities such as the names of witnesses, written testimony, draft legislation, and so on. In addition, each committee activity has associated XML with structured information on both the activity and all related documents, so that developers can easily access and reuse the information. This more than satisfies our recommendation that the House improve how it gives notice about upcoming committee activities.

All documents contained in this portal can be searched and filtered by committee and subcommittee (here's documents from House Rules, for example), and every committee and subcommittee has its own RSS feed (like this one). It’s still not perfect: for example, it's not obvious how one could automatically discover the available XML on the site without scraping any HTML to discover associated IDs and URLs. But this could be addressed by offering a full XML feed of activity, like the House’s Floor page already does.

Taken together, these additions to docs.house.gov provide both a useful set of data and a promising new scope for this important legislative information portal. Our experience has taught us that gathering information in any automated way about House and Senate committees is an extremely frustrating experience, because every committee has its own website and its own way of doing things. Because of this, even while House and Senate floor votes are posted quickly and centrally, we've ended up in a situation where the votes members of Congress take while in committee are in no timely, central location. It's easy to imagine docs.house.gov evolving to become an incredibly useful guide that connects citizens to the information they seek. While it will never replace committee webpages – nor should it – docs.house.gov will help ensure that committee information is made more prominent among the activities of the House.

One additional noteworthy aspect of docs.house.gov is that it is built and maintained by the Clerk of the House. This means that the information it contains is non-partisan and should persist over time. While committee websites are often wiped clean when a new chairperson takes power, docs.house.gov should provide a measure of institutional memory independent of leadership and party. This is a smart move. In addition, we’ve noticed that some of the legislative support agencies have been unwilling or unable to play the role of a central legislative document clearinghouse. Having the Clerk’s office serve as a clearinghouse has managed to sweep aside all the bureaucracy and allow tangible progress to be made. Let’s hope that both the Senate and the legislative support agencies follow this example, now that the House has demonstrated what’s possible.

written by Eric Mill and Daniel Schuman

Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey wrote this post.

The Congressional Management Foundation announced its Golden Mouse Awards for the 112th Congress on October 23. The CMF began grading congressional websites in 2001 and announces the Golden Mouse Awards biannually to honor the best. Earlier this year, we conducted an investigation evaluating congressional committee websites.

Congressional websites have improved significantly since 2009, according to the  report. The most common grade jumped from an F up to a B between the 111th and 112th congresses. However, there is still room to grow in some significant areas. According to the report, many member websites "lack basic educational and transparency features." Alternatively, while members have been quick to utilize social media tools, committees have been slower to follow suit.

The CMF found that, when searching for information on their policy positions or votes, constituents look first at their member's websites. Despite this fact, many members have websites that do not provide useful information in a transparent way. For example, more than 40% of members do not post information about their votes, sponsored, or cosponsored bills. Additionally, 67% of member websites do not provide clear information directing constituents how to contact their member with casework requests.

In contrast,  most committees provide information expected by interested users in clear and readable formats. For instance, 90% of committees provide an archive of information on their hearings, and 78% have a video webcast feature. Committee websites lacked transparency in one major area- only 16% post information on individual legislators committee votes.

When it comes to social media adoption rates, the tables are somewhat turned. Individual members have taken to social media with gusto over the past two years, while committees are trailing behind. In 2009 only 21% of member websites linked to Facebook; that number is now 81%. Meanwhile, 71% of members link to a Twitter page and CMF found that 65% actively used the platform. Committees have been slower to adopt social media, with only 40% linking to Facebook and just 31% actively using Twitter.

During our own investigation, we found that, although there is wide variation in the quality of committee sites, there are some identifiable trends.

On the whole, House committee websites were superior to Senate sites. However, there was parity in certain areas. Both chambers lagged in making legislation, amendments, and markups available on their sites. Additionally, only four committees provided forms for whistleblowers to report issues. Like CMF, we found that committee sites had been slow to adopt social media, with the House being more advanced than the Senate. On the positive side,  every committee made it possible to view hearings online, although not all provided live webcasts.

The raw data from the investigation can be accessed here.

By policy interns Jacob Hutt and Eric Dunn

This is the third in a series of blog posts about congressional committee websites. For an overview of committee websites, see our first and second posts.

Social media and news releases are powerful examples of how technology can link citizens and elected officials. Congressional committees should publish informative content on their websites, but they should also make this content clear and accessible so that people can understand it. In this post, we take a look at how congressional committees make their websites work for constituents by releasing publications, reaching out to whistleblowers, and taking advantage of social media.

Publications

We looked at committee websites to see if they displayed reports from the committee, Congressional Research Service reports on committee-related material, the rules of the committee, or a comprehensive committee oversight plan.

The House Budget Committee was an exemplar of what we hoped to find.  The website featured reports on its Laws and Rules page, information about how the federal budget process works, and a glossary of budget terms provided by the GAO. These are excellent tools that highlight how access to these types of publications can make committee websites more effective.

Another committee that stood out was the House Committee on Education & the Workforce, which included fact sheets on pending legislation in the committee. Notably absent from almost every other committee website, fact sheets are a great resource for constituents looking for a way to digest legislation. Unfortunately, generally speaking, non-committee legislative publications (CRS reports, memoranda, GAO reports, etc.) are difficult to find on committee websites.

The Best: House Committee on the Budget and House Committee on Education & the Workforce

Whistleblowers

Congressional committees should give constituents the opportunity to participate in government and provide a secure way for whistleblowers to report fraud and abuse. Only four committees offer forms for whistleblowers to report waste, fraud and abuse on their websites: the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the House Committee on Financial Services, the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. All four forms remind whistleblowers that their information will be kept in confidence.

Social Media

New media is a crucial way for representatives to keep the public quickly informed and fully engaged. We traced six different types of media on committee websites: a blog, a Facebook account, a Twitter account, a photo gallery, a podcast link, and an RSS feed/email list.

The House Armed Services Committee is one example of social media done well. Links to the committee’s Twitter and Facebook pages appear at the top of their website. A member of the public tuned into their Twitter feed or Facebook page would have easy access to all types of information. The pages are updated every few hours with legislative activity, links to live streams of hearings, and other committee news.

The House Ways and Means Committee also stood out for its unique use of media - including a podcast and Youtube channel - to connect constituents with the work it is doing.

Other websites haven’t quite found their way into the 21st century. The Senate Armed Services website is a prime example of a website that serves an important government function but makes it difficult for constituents to find social media pages.

The Best: House Armed Services Committee

Committees By the Numbers

• 14 of 21 House committees have a Facebook page, compared to just 2 of 20 Senate committees.
• 18  House committees have a Twitter feed; just 2 Senate committees have one.
• 5 House committee websites have a regularly updated blog. The Senate has none.
• Just 4 committees make documents available in non-PDF formats.
• Only 9 House committee pages featured links to a comprehensive oversight plan (as required by the rules).

By policy interns Jacob Hutt and Eric Dunn

This is the second in a series of blog posts about congressional committee websites. You can see our first post here and our final post here.

In our last post, we reviewed how well committees made their inner workings publicly available. In this post, we look at their pages for hearings, subcommittees, legislation, and ethics disclosure.

Legislation and Markups

It is crucial that bill markups and draft legislation be available online prior to consideration. Committee pages on legislation and markups should include the legislation that was referred to the committee, drafts of legislation, the chairman’s mark, amendments, a summary of amendments, any votes on amendments, and the committee report on the legislation. In general, both House and Senate committees could do a much better job of this.

There were highlights, however: the House Rules Committee features an “Active Bills” page that shows a real-time list of actions taken on a specific pieces of legislation, including the time the bill will reach the floor. The House Natural Resources Committee provides a page for every piece of legislation with a summary, a link to the full text and markup progress, and relevant hearings on the legislation. And the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources has individual pages for significant legislation passed, such as the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 and the American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009. But these were exceptions to the rule. Most committees did not make this information available.

The Best: the House Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

Hearings

On hearing pages, we expected live broadcasts of the hearings, indications of the type of hearing taking place, a list of witnesses, witness testimony, documents submitted to the committee, and a transcript of the hearing. We were pleased to see that all committees make it possible to view hearings online. However, we did not evaluate the extent to which live hearings are made available (all hearings available vs. a few  hearings available), which has been a problem for some committees, such as the House Appropriations Committee.

That said, there were clear differences among committees: some advertised their hearings very well (the House Natural Resources Committee); some were a bit difficult to navigate once on the hearings page (the House Judiciary Committee); and some included information that helped users orient themselves on the issues of a specific hearing (the House Energy & Commerce Committee website has background memos on each of the hearing pages).

The Best: The House Energy & Commerce Committee

Subcommittees

Although certain committees do their work as a full committee, most hold hearings and debate legislation in subcommittees. We listed many standards for subcommittee pages, suggesting that they should offer the same content as a normal committee page: links to live hearings, copies of witness testimony, legislation the subcommittee was considering, minority leadership information, and more.

We found the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee to be a perfect model for subcommittee pages. They include relevant legislation, resources for veterans, membership information, and jurisdiction. Most of the subcommittee coverage was similar to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s page, which meets many but not all of the recommendations we made for subcommittee pages. By contrast, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and its subcommittee page had almost no substantive information on their subcommittees.

The Best: The House Veterans’ Affairs Committee

Ethics Disclosure

One of the hallmarks of transparency is ethics disclosure, whether it is members disclosing their personal incomes or committees disclosing earmark requests by certain members. This was rarely featured on committee websites. We found two exceptions: the Senate Appropriations Committee, which has personal financial disclosure records available for every member of the committee next to their name; and the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, which identifies specific earmarks that each committee member has requested. (The committee has not updated this information since the House of Representatives imposed a moratorium on earmarks, even though earmarks have continued in a different guise.)

In addition to these committee-specific disclosure efforts, the House Committee on Administration posts monthly financial reports that committees are required to file with the House Committee on Administration. Beyond these required reports, committees should post members’ financial records, as the Senate Appropriations committee has done.

The Best: Senate Appropriations Committee and the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee

Many committees, particularly in the Senate, have work to do in enhancing their content, specifically in the legislative area. More websites need comprehensive legislative webpages where citizens can view the changes made to a bill before it becomes a law. While committees are making good progress on these websites, we hope that as they continue to publish substantive material onto the web, they will remember the need for both accessibility and ease-of-use in publishing this material.

By policy interns Eric Dunn and Jacob Hutt

This is the first in a series of blog posts about congressional committee websites. Follow these links for the second and final blogposts.

Congressional committee websites are Congress’s front door. It’s in committees where the majority of legislative work is done, and it’s where the public can have the greatest impact on legislation. Recently, we went through all forty-five House, Senate, and Joint Committee websites and evaluated them based on a transparency checklist made by Sunlight in 2010. In this first of a series of blog posts, we reveal general trends from our evaluation and highlight the websites that stood out, the ones that need some work, and a few that were just awful.

General Trends

Overall, House committee websites were better than Senate ones. Even between committees with the same jurisdiction (we’re looking at you, House Armed Services and Senate Armed Services) the quality of websites varied widely.

The House Armed Services Committee website:

vs.

The Senate Armed Services Committee website:

Websites often focus on form over function. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee boasts a website that looks great but lacks crucial features, such as subcommittee pages and social media tools. Committees with a direct constituency (Veterans Affairs, for example) were more likely to be functional than member-focused committees (such as Senate Rules).

Lastly, almost all congressional websites (with a few notable exceptions we’ll explore later) do not offer clear protections for whistleblowers or meet our basic criteria for disclosure.

The Stand-outs

Two committee websites stood out as extremely impressive. The first, the House Committee on Natural Resources, met 43 of our 60 recommendations and its pages on legislation and subcommittees should serve as a model for other committee websites. Similarly, the House Armed Services Committee website not only met most of our criteria but was also one of the few committees to have a regularly updated blog.

Needs some work

Many committee websites are good, but not great. The Senate Committee on Armed Services website provides some informative content, but the design looks like a high school project and it has no connection to social media. The Senate Finance Committee website has useful documents tucked away or missing, and many of those documents that are present are outdated. Many of the websites -- the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, for example -- do not have pages for legislation that include important information like the chairman’s mark or proposed amendments.

Just plain awful:

A few websites are painful. The Senate Ethics Committee is rough on the eyes and difficult to navigate. The websites for the Joint Committee on Printing and the Joint Committee on the Library are by far the worst of them all - they have not been updated in years. Half of the committee members pictured on these websites are no longer in office.

The Joint Committee on Printing's website:

Here are our evaluation spreadsheets for all 45 committee websites:

You can also see the Senate, House, and Joint committee website evaluations on our Tracking Committee Website Transparency wiki page.

In our next two posts, we’ll look at what’s on committee websites and how well committees reach out to constituents.

[Update: We have broadened the mark-up category to include any page referring to markups or legislation and hearings.]

Yesterday, Representative Bono Mack introduced a resolution amending House rules to require live internet streaming of all committee and subcommittee markups of legislation. According to Bono Mack's official announcement of House Resolution 1675, this would "grant citizens the opportunity to witness and participate in the legislative process -- start to finish."

Bono Mack's resolution is a rather simple but meaningful step that Congress can take in the direction of transparency. Sunlight has long advocated for streaming video of all committee proceedings and pertinent events such as the White House health care summit and the recent Republican open meeting with lobbyists.  We've also recommended wiring all hearing rooms for live streaming and automatically broadcasting all open committee proceedings as a part of our package of proposed changes to the House Rules for the 112th Congress.

We commend the Congresswoman on her resolution, and hope that it may be considered during a lame-duck session after November's elections or, at the very least, serve as a framework for broadcasting rules for the next Congress.

Two of the key House committees that have passed health care reform legislation are disclosing significant information from the committee markups on their web sites. The Energy & Commerce Committee and the Education & Labor Committee both provide links to all amendments offered and all recorded votes taken during the markup hearings.

This is a regular practice of both committees, but not in most other congressional committees. The Energy & Commerce and Education & Labor Committees are two of five committees in the House of Representatives that regularly post links to both amendments offered in markups and the recorded votes on each individual amendment. The other three committees are Agriculture, Financial Services and Judiciary.

We, at the Sunlight Foundation, have been advocating for a rule requiring all bills be posted online for 72 hours prior to consideration. We also care about the transparency in other areas of the legislative process, particularly at the committee level where a lot the actual work takes place. The advancement in committee web site disclosure over the past couple of years has been both phenomenal and frustrating. The level of transparency offered by these five committees is emblematic of what committee transparency should look like -- even if we feel that it could be even better -- and did not exist just a few years ago. There is no reason, however, that the other thirteen committees with regular legislative activities (this excludes Rules, Standards of Official Conduct and other joint or special committees with no role in reporting legislation) could not provide the same level of transparency.

Some of these other committees do provide some level of disclosure in the markup process. The Natural Resources Committee posts links to the votes on amendments, but not the amendments themselves. The Science & Technology Committee only posts amendments that have been accepted by the committee and does not include vote information. On the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee site, I noticed only one linked amendment and no vote information.

Those following the health care debate should be thankful that two of the three committees that marked up the bill in the House are exceeding their peers in online disclosure. The ability to have all the information on the legislative path of such important legislation is vital and it's great to see the efforts of a few years of advocating for better committee transparency pay off.

After one week of markups on the health care reform bill, we are already seeing that pressure on Congress does bear fruit. Unlike the cap and trade bill negotiations, all three committees held open markups, streamed online with some, but not all, documents disclosed to the public. While nothing we have seen is ideal -- leaving aside the Energy & Commerce Committee markups, which I'll get to momentarily -- the movement is towards greater disclosure at the committee level, where input can be most important. The Education & Labor Committee's tweeting of votes on amendments and the availability of two discussion drafts from different committees allows the public with greater knowledge of the bill's ever changing status. Overall, we are seeing earlier attempts at transparency in the legislative process.

The Energy & Commerce Committee, led by Henry Waxman, should come out for special praise. This committee is providing greater access during the bill formulation process than any other. The committee web site contains streaming video of the markups, archived video of past markups, a discussion draft for proposed changes to the bill, PDFs of every amendment and vote information on each amendment. The committee is also holding markups over a four day period, rather than holding one or two days of markups, allowing the public a greater ability to have a voice in the process. This isn't a one-off for Energy & Commerce either. During their markup of cap and trade legislation, the committee posted all amendments to the web site along with votes. The other committees with jurisdiction over the cap and trade bill didn't even hold hearings. Other committees should look to Energy & Commerce as a great example in committee transparency.

The one committee left to look out for is the Senate Finance Committee. As noted earlier, Senate Finance Chair Max Baucus plans to announce his plans for health care reform this week. Senate Finance is considered the crucial broker on any health care bill and should be watched with a close eye. (We've taken it upon ourselves to look at committee member connections to lobbyists.) The same transparency that we ask of the relevant House committees should be asked of the Senate Finance Committee.

Right now, Congress isn't where we want them to be, but we are seeing progress. Bills are still being rushed through Congress and committees do not disclose nearly enough information to allow citizens to have a meaningful impact on the sausage-making in Congress. That being said, the pressure that you are putting on Congress to read their bills and provide full disclosure of legislative material to the public is having a real impact. Keep the pressure up at ReadTheBill.org and demand real transparency along the full legislative path of each and every bill.

This is a quick update on what the committees in the House have done with the health care bill since the tri-committee markups began. Both the Education & Labor Committee and the Ways & Means Committee passed the bill out of committee, while the Energy & Commerce Committee continues to hold hearings.

Education & Labor Democrats tweeted all votes on amendments, but the web site did not carry actual text of amendments or descriptions. The Education & Labor Committee also does not address how they changed the bill through the mark-up process and there is no chairman's amendment.

Ways & Means didn't release any votes on amendments. The site does carry a chairman's amendment, in the nature of a substitute, to the bill, along with a summary description (you can see all documents here). So, at least we have a draft of what Ways & Means is looking to change when the chairmen reconcile their different versions.

Energy & Commerce is still holding markups sessions, but that hasn't stopped chair Henry Waxman from posting a chairman's amendment and a few other documents, including a number of amendments, to the committee web site.

While the process isn't ideal, I think we're seeing the committees make some real headway in releasing more information in a timely fashion, particularly considering the speed with which these markups occurred.