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.

578 days ago, Congress directed that the legal treatise Constitution Annotated be published online, but it's still not available. The Constitution Annotated, aka CONAN, is a 100-year-old continuously updated congressional report that explains the US Constitution as it has been interpreted by the Supreme Court. With so many important rulings coming out of the High Court, it's important to understand the effect of its decisions on the Constitution.

Here's what Congress, via the Joint Committee on Printing, required in a November 17, 2010 letter:

Update the online edition [of the Constitution Annotated] as frequently as possible, and to create new and improved functions on the CONAN site. The Congress and the public should find this site accessible and user-friendly.

The master file for CONAN is updated frequently and is available as a website accessible only to Congress. (The public version is updated only once a decade and is released in a barely usable format, which is why JCP sent the letter in the first place.) Many organizations have asked that CONAN be published online in its original (XML) format. JCP has directed that it be published online in a timely fashion, but in the less-useful PDF format. (It would be fine to publish it in both.)

This shouldn't be a particularly hard project, so we can only help but wonder why there's been such a long delay, and how much longer we'll have to wait? As an interim measure, it may be simplest for Congress simply to release to the public what it already publishes on the Congress' internal website. That should require the technological equivalent of flipping a switch.

This upcoming year, CONAN will be up for its once-a-decade print edition. With at least 4,870 statutorily mandated copies, at an guesstimated cost of $226 per copy, the House and Senate will pay over $1.1 million to prepare a document that will go out of date almost immediately. (Even assuming that 60% of the costs are for layout, which is necessary for an online edition as well, that's still $440,000 to print a very heavy doorstop.)

Some of these costs may be avoided by asking Congressional offices whether they prefer a paper version or electronic access, as is the practice with other legislative documents. But the bigger question is: what's taking so long? Is this a sign of bigger problems inside the Library of Congress and GPO? When will this finally be finished?

It looks like we'll have to continue to wait and see.

A year ago today, Congress' Joint Committee on Printing directed that three sets of vital legislative and legal documents be published online "as quickly as possible." We've reviewed how well that order was implemented, and the results are not encouraging. Of the three documents, there's only apparent progress on one.

The vital documents are the Constitution Annotated, the Congressional Record, and the Statutes at Large. The Government Printing Office is responsible for publishing them, and shares that responsibility to a certain extent with the Library of Congress and its subsidiary agencies, the Congressional Research Service and the Law Library of Congress. These agencies are custodians of America's heritage, and have an important obligation to make it available to every citizen. Here's how they've performed.

The Constitution Annotated

The Constitution Annotated (or CONAN) is a constantly-updated legal treatise that explains how the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution. It's available to the public online from GPO, but in a cramped, out-of-date, technologically unsophisticated format. Members of the public have been asking for access to a better version for years.

JCP's instructions to GPO are simple and straightforward:

To make the online version of CONAN as useful as possible to Congress and the public, it is time to put the updates online as soon as they are prepared, rather than waiting to coincide with the two-year print cycle. The Joint Committee on Printing is authorizing you to work with the Library of Congress to update the online edition as frequently as possible, and to create new and improved functions on the CONAN site. The Congress and the public should find this site accessible and user-friendly.

What's happened since then? As far as is visible to the public, nothing. The most recent GPO-published  publicly-available complete version of CONAN dates back to 2002, and no updates have been published online since 2010. The webpage is hard to find, and only Congress has access to the latest version on its internal network, as provided by the document's author, the Congressional Research Service. GPO should save itself the trouble and share with the public what's already available on Congress' intranet.

The Congressional Record

The Congressional Record is the official record of congressional proceedings and debates. GPO has published an online version of the Record dating back to 1994, and the document was first published in its current format in 1873. The Library of Congress has published online earlier recordings of congressional proceedings and debates dating back from the founding of the country until 1873.

The Joint Committee on Printing authorized a collaboration between the GPO and the Library of Congress to digitize volumes of the Congressional Record from 1873 to 1998, which would fill in the missing gaps and provide a complete record of Congressional activity on the internet. JCP directed the online publication of "digital files with search functions, content management capabilities, and digital authentication."

Looking at GPO's website, the collection only dates back to 1994. THOMAS, however, appears to contain records going back to 1989.

There's more than a 100 year gap in the online records of congressional proceedings and debates, a majority of which is within living memory and has repercussions to this day. There's no evidence that any substantive work has been done on this in the last year.

Statutes at Large

The Statutes at Large is the official source for the laws and resolutions passed by Congress. It was first published by a private company in 1845, but responsibility for publication was transferred to GPO in 1874, with administrative responsibility shifting in 1950 and again in 1985. Like the Congressional Record, the Library of Congress has published online historic statutes at large covering the years 1789 to 1873. THOMAS also has long made it possible to browse (but not search) copies of the Statutes at Large from 1973 to present.

The JCP instructed GPO to work with the Law Library of Congress "to create digitized volumes of the Statutes at Large and to develop robust searching and content management tools." In essence, their role is to fill in the gaps. JCP further instructed that "once the content has been prepared, the Statutes at Large will be published online by GPO, and the Library of Congress will use their GPO content in its public database of legislative information known as 'THOMAS.'"

Unlike with the other two publications, there is tangible evidence of progress. GPO has now publishing a digitized version that covers from 1951-2002, which is a significant undertaking. However, the documents have not been integrated into THOMAS, and are still somewhat difficult to use because of their large size. Moreover, GPO published another set of digitized documents, from 2003 to 2007, that are kept in a separate location on GPO's website and stored at a much greater level of granularity.

This project is only partially complete, with a sizable gap in the public record from 1874 to 1951. Moreover, the documents haven't been integrated into THOMAS.

GPO Statement

I asked GPO to comment on their ongoing efforts to comply with the Joint Committee on Printing's letter. Here is their response:

GPO and the Library of Congress have worked together to digitize the U.S. Statutes at Large (content covers volumes 65-116, 1951-2002) and make them available through GPO’s Federal Digital System (www.fdsys.gov).

GPO and the Library of Congress are collaborating on a project to digitize the print bound Congressional Record dating back to 1873. GPO first put the daily Congressional Record online in 1994, and digital versions of the bound Congressional Record from 1998-2002 are currently available on FDsys. GPO is working with CRS on the dynamic version of CONAN.

Conclusion

I would like to call this a work in progress, but there doesn't appear to have been much progress. GPO hasn't provided an explanation for the delay, a timeline for completion, or a plan to get things on track. I know that GPO and its legislative branch colleagues can act with greater speed than we've seen thus far.

I am concerned by the apparent failure to think of how the public will find and use this information. Why aren't all the existing data sets integrated into THOMAS, where people will look for them? Why isn't the data available in bulk, so that developers can build tools to share the information more widely? Why aren't members of the public involved in the design and specifications of these sites, to make sure their needs are addressed?

The JCP described these documents are "essential to understanding our laws and legislative history" and proclaimed that "they should all be readily available online in electronic format." It is long past time to make this happen. The public deserves an explanation of what's gone wrong and when to expect results.

Update: I want to add that none of this should be construed as a commentary on what GPO, LOC, or other agency funding levels should be. Generally speaking, funding cuts would make it less likely that these important initiatives will come to fruition. Instead, I would urge Congress to more closely scrutinize compliance with its directives, and encourage agencies to be more open about their progress and the challenges they face. With respect to funding, it may be that digitization and online publication will lead to significant savings -- especially in terms of the current need to print many copies of these documents as well as the cost to government of paying private vendors to access ostensibly public documents -- but my main point is that the public has a right to this information.

(One more thing -- you may find that some of the links to documents stored on GPO's website, FDsys, don't always work. I don't know why that is, but they often time out for me, too.)

Two of the world's shortest congressional business meetings took place today between 11:37 and 11:41am.

The Joint Committee on the Library, which oversees the Library of Congress, was gavelled into order at 11:37, and in the ensuing two action-packed minutes, Senator Chuck Schumer was unanimously elected as the committee's chair, and Rep. Gregg Harper was elected vice-chair. The Committee then adopted its rules from the 111th Congress for the 112th Congress and adjourned at 11:39.

Immediately thereafter, the Joint Committee on Printing, which oversees the Government Printing Office and public printing generally, came into order at 11:39. At that time, Rep. Gregg Harper was duly elected as committee chair, and Senator Chuck Schumer was elected vice-chair. After adopting the Committee's rules from the 111th Congress as its own, and a short statement from the new chair, the JCP adjourned at 11:41.

Both committees have important tasks to take up during the 112th Congress. They collectively share responsibility (along with the Committee on House Administration and the Senate Rules Committee) for how congressional information is made available to the public. As a starting point, we hope these two committees will update their websites that have fallen into disuse.

We hope that they will work diligently to make public information available online, in real time, and in machine readable formats. Several years ago, we released a report with recommendations on this point, and there's still a lot to do. I testified earlier this year on allowing bulk access to legislative data, and I hope this issue will be addressed in the near future.

The JCL will have particular involvement with the selection of the new director for the Congressional Research Service. As this panel discussion hosted by the Advisory Committee on Transparency identified, there is much to do to bring CRS into the 21st century, including making CRS reports publicly available.

The JCP will likely spend much of its time this year identifying ways to operate more effectively and efficiently. We hope that the effort involves releasing public documents online, in digital formats that can be easily manipulated by computers. And, of course, we're hoping for action on the Constitution Annotated as well.

I’m rather late in sharing the news, but “enhanced access” to three of “our nation’s vital legislative and legal documents” will soon be possible thanks to a letter from the Joint Committee on Printing to the Government Printing Office and the Library of Congress. Specifically, it authorizes the two legislative agencies to work together to provide “enhanced access” to the Constitution Annotated, the Congressional Record, and the Statutes at Large.

The Constitution Annotated

We’ve been banging on the drum for improved access to the Constitution Annotated for a year-and-a-half, and I’m pleased to announce a partial victory. To recap, the Constitution Annotated is a government publication that explains the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court. Although updated on a frequent basis and readily available to congressional staff, the complete Constitution Annotated is released to the public only once a decade -- scrubbed of helpful metadata. Updates reflecting recent Court decisions are released separately every two years, far short of what’s available to Congress.

The Joint Committee on Printing has directed that updates to CONAN (as it’s affectionately know) be put online as soon as they are prepared. But, instead of publishing it in XML, the structured data format in which it is prepared, CONAN will be published as a PDF. My former colleague Clay Johnson explained two years ago why publishing files only as PDFs is bad for open government. We appreciate that the document will be searachable and have a hyperlinked table of contents, but we’d like the underlying data, too. More than 20 organizations last year asked for CONAN to be made publicly available online in structured data format as it is updated in real time, as did then-Senator Feingold, and we hope that we’ll ultimately get there.

Congressional Record

It is a surprising fact that the official record of the proceedings and debate of the U.S. Congress are only available online (for free) from 1999 forward and prior to 1873. The JCP has now given GPO the go-ahead to digitize volumes of the Congressional Record during that 125 year gap. I fear that it will be made available only as a PDF, which will require a tremendous and expensive effort to transform those files into a structured data format that everyone can use. Still, making the documents available in some way is better than none. The American people have a right to see the crucial debates in Congress that continue to shape our world.

Statutes at Large

Believe it or not, it’s impossible to find all the laws enacted by congress online. Although the U.S. Code is available in its entirety, it is not always “positive law”; to find the original bills as they were enacted and are often still in effect, you have to look to the Statutes at Large. In essence, the Statutes at Large are a chronological compilation of bills enacted into law. (The process by which the bills are broken apart and transformed into the U.S. Code is discussed here.)

The JCP has now authorized GPO to work with the Law Library of Congress to digitize and publish online absent volumes of the Statutes at Large and “develop robust searching and content management tools.” Hopefully this means more than scanning them and putting them online as PDFs, but even that would be a great step forward. We’ve been interested in this for quite a while, and we’re glad to see that things are moving forward.

The Road Ahead

The JCP letter was sent nearly 3 months ago -- on November 17 -- and I am unable to find any evidence that the Constitution Annotated has been updated online or that progress has been made on the Congressional Record or the Statutes at Large. That is not to say that nothing has been done, but I was hoping to see, well, something. Although JCP has directed these agencies to complete these projects “as quickly as possible,” the absence of deadlines and historical reluctance on the part of some of the institutional players raises concerns about forward movement, particularly with respect to the Constitution Annotated.

We have other ideas about how Congress can improve public access to lawmaking information. Some of them are described in my “Read the Bill 2.0” post. The truth is that we are only beginning to scratch the surface of what should be available. I applaud the JCP’s efforts to move things forward, and I hope that the pace will only quicken.

Constitution Annotated, Congressional Record, and Statutes at Large