From the stream of news coming from Congress about the budget, one might think that committee meetings and legislation on federal spending would be easily accessible online. That's often not true.

For example, the legislative text for four major appropriations bills are not yet online despite their apparent approval by both the full Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday and the relevant subcommittees prior to that. The four missing Senate bills are: Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2012; Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012; Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2012; and Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2012. The public's only chance to see the legislation is after all the important decisions have been made. By comparison, the House generally makes legislation considered by committees available to the public prior to votes.

None of the Senate committee reports for these bills are available online, either, except for the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, which is on THOMAS. The reports explain the decisions by appropriators and often provide significant guidance on how money will be spent.

Senate Appropriators do release streaming audio of subcommittee markups, although the audio feed isn't always reliable. The House, by contrast, will live stream video of its markups, but only when the committee finds it convenient; it often does not broadcast meetings at all. This goes against the spirit -- and likely the letter -- of the new House Rules passed by the 112th Congress.

Unfortunately, the best way to look at the legislation and reports in a timely way is often by using expensive private news services. Congress owes the public a better explanation of what it's doing.

There was a terrific op ed in the Maryland section of the Washington Post this weekend by two locally based activists who were writing to demand that the Maryland legislature, and the state Board of Public Works get with the transparency picture.

Reforms should start with the General Assembly’s online legislative tracking system. “Up-to-the-minute” access provides nearly instantaneous information on the bills and proceedings on the House and Senate floors, but it is available only to those in state office buildings and the couple hundred lobbyists willing to pay $800 a year to get these updates faster than once a day...

Posting committee votes online is a necessary step forward, and one that will help ensure voters can hold their legislators accountable for the decisions they make. But why wait until after the fact? To influence the process, citizens need to be able to participate more reliably. They should be able to watch committee proceedings, sign up to testify online and check the order in which bills will be heard at least one day in advance.

Yes indeed. These are great suggestions and honestly -- and hopefully -- could be made by activists across the country. But there's no reason to stop with demanding real time, online access to legislative or spending bodies. Why aren't all government agencies required to make all public information online, and why not make it all available online in real time so the information can be used to inform the process? This should be government's default when it comes to information. Why is government not routinely using all the new web and mobile based technologies as a means for engaging citizens in a two-way dialog with them, or to provide services for them when they are needed? (You've got to love the story of Mayor Cory Booker helping out one of his consitutents in response to a Twitter plea.)

Sunlight is very interested in learning about current best practices in the states along these lines. Tell us what you know in the comments below.

One goal for this year: We'd like to see activists in every state demanding the same kind of openness that Heather Mizuer and Ryan O'Donnell have asked from their government officials. 

Based on the Open Government Directive issued by the White House yesterday, American Public Media is asking its National Public Insight Network to find out what kind of data people would really like to see. Here's a link to their survey.

Minnesota Public Radio has already begun to ask its listeners this question: What Data Do You Want? How Would You Use It? And the answers they are getting are serious, thoughtful and informative.  Here are some recent submissions (each from a different contributor):

I would like to be able to able to "drag and drop" any type of event data - such as legislative voting records of a bill, purchases by an agency, crime report in my neighborhood, right on to my Google home page to get updates in real time. There are many standards (RSS/Atom etc.) that make this easy to do...

NRCS data. Billions of dollars go to federal farm subsidy programs and the FOIA forbids sharing specifics of that data, even among agencies. The federal info could be very valuable to state agencies working on pollution control projects and also represents a major lack of transparency in a federal program...

I would like to see very clear and very precise information on private donations to our elected officials. Specifically how much money, goods, and services were donated and what interest group the donations represent. I would like this information made public as soon as the donations are made - not several years after a vote was taken on an issue...

Information about contributions to political parties that are over $1,000 and an easy way to access what earmarks are attached to bills passed by congress, better yet a system that connects earmarks with contributions in the same data base...

This is really good stuff. There's a meme here. Online. RealTime. Data.

Over the last month, Sunlight has examined the document collections of the Office of the House Clerk and Office of the Secretary of the Senate to find out what they have. There seems to be an even split between public documents that are available online and those which you have to visit their office to read – or are not publicly available at all. Here is our list of House and Senate documents, which contain summaries of what we found.

The Senate makes available a handy report listing all of their public documents, but you have to goto their public record's office to obtain a copy. (We've uploaded the 2009 version.) The House doesn't have an equivalent report, although they do make available a bookmark listing some of their resources. Both offices charge a per-page printing/copying fee ($0.10/page for the House and $0.20/page for the Senate). Neither office lets users make copies of their electronic files, whether in whole or in part, even though many files are available in electronic format on dedicated computers in their offices.

According to our count, the House Clerk's office has 12 different kinds of documents: 6 are available online, 4 are available only at their office, and 2 are not available publicly at all. Likewise, the Senate Office of Public Records has 14 different kinds of documents; 3 are available online, 9 are available only in their offices, and 2 are not available publicly at all.

There are a number of interesting variations regarding how reports are filed and when they're made available. Some of the information made available online can be downloaded in bulk, although much of it is only available piecemeal. Also, there are different reporting periods for different kinds of filings, even though many of the filings occur quarterly. Moreover, staff and Members of Congress may file some documents electronically while others must be submitted in paper.

Congress would be well served to permit Members and staff to file all reports online. Likewise, it would make sense to have all of the public reports made available online in a searchable and downloadable database. Finally, each office should release a list, updated annually, of the reports that they hold and how they can be obtained.

(Much thanks to Jessica Pearce and Miguel Villalobos for their research assistance.)

The Senate is going to follow the House in posting their office expenditure reports online for the public to view. Yesterday, Sen. Tom Coburn offered an amendment to the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act requiring the Secretary of the Senate to post all expenditure reports online.

Coburn's amendment has elements that are both better and worse than the House's efforts to disclose office expenditures. The better is a lot better: reports will be posted in a searchable, itemized format. (The House plans to only post PDFs.) Unfortunately, we won't get to see those reports until the 2011. Coburn's amendment delays disclosure, likely for the Secretary of the Senate to build infrastructure for disclosure, until the start of the 112th Congress, or 2011. The House will begin disclosing later this year.

Below is the language of the amendment:

SEC. __X. REPORTING REQUIREMENT.

Section 105(a) of the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act 1965 (Public Law 88-454; 2 U.S.C. 104a) is amended--

(1) in the last sentence of paragraph (1), by striking shall'' and insertingmay''; and

(2) by adding at the end the following:

``(6) Beginning with the report covering the first full semiannual period of the 112th Congress, the Secretary of the Senate--

``(1) shall publicly post on-line on the website of the Senate each report in a searchable, itemized format as required under this section;

``(2) shall issue each report required under this section in electronic form; and

``(3) may issue each report required under this section in other forms at the discretion of the Secretary of the Senate.''.