Sunlight Foundation

Congress often requires agencies to report on their activities and asks for research to be done to inform their work. These taxpayer funded reports provide valuable insight but are not made available to the public or the press in a consistent manner or centralized location, hindering both congressional and public oversight.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a nonpartisan service that provides Congress with exclusive reports on a wide range of issues. It is often called the ‘think tank’ of Congress. The budget is approximately $100 million of taxpayer money yet the CRS has actively resisted releasing these reports to the public. Americans have to implore their member of Congress or hope that the report they are interested in has snuck its way online in order to access the non-partisan, expert research that their tax dollars pay for.

• Sunlight's Position

  • Improving Public Oversight of Government: The Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act

  • CRS Reports Should Be Publicly Available

  • H.R.1380 – Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act

    A bill supported by the Sunlight Foundation to create a public website of all congressionally mandated reports.

• Projects

  • OpenCRS

    OpenCRS is a project that serves as an online public collection of many CRS reports. Sunlight has funded OpenCRS in the past.

• Reporting

  • Blog posts on the Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act

  • Sunlight Blog Posts on CRS

• Editorials

  • New York Times: Sharing Congress’s Research