In May, the Congress passed the 2008 Farm Bill, which regulates various food, nutrition, and apparently biofuel issues. Tufts food policy professor Parke Wilde writes on his blog today:

The 629-page text (.pdf) of the 2008 Farm Bill is so complex and unreadable that the U.S. food policy community has been on the edge of our seats waiting for the USDA/ERS side-by-side comparison unveiled today.

The ERS side-by-side tool compares the new Farm Bill with current law, title by title, so we can finally begin to understand what the law really means.

ERS is the USDA’s Economic Research Service. Their side-by-side webpage, which I think was just published this week, shows the provisions of the previous and the current bill side-by-side. (It’s not a comparison of the bill text, but of summaries of the provisions.)

This is interesting on a number of accounts. First, the fact that it is the USDA making this comparison suggests that everyone agrees that the bill itself is effectively incomprehensible even to professionals and scholars on account of its size and summarizing it is costly enough that only the government would do it, taking three months to prepare.

Second, if this is what was needed to understand the Farm Bill, was it passed without anyone understanding it?

Third- This comparison was made by and for professionals and scholars, not by tech geeks. Why aren’t we talking to them?

The ERS tool comes complete with a seemingly unintentionally hilarious intro video — overly dramatic with background music fit for the Miss Universe competition. (Wilde likened it to “a documentary by Kenneth Burns or an account of a manned mission to the moon”.)

The next list I’d like to tackle is legislative participation.

A number of innovative approaches have appeared in various legislative bodies, inviting public participation in what is arguably the most public of all processes: the creation of public policy.  While these projects vary in scope and effect, they all have granted a new level of access and authenticity to public deliberation, recognizing the public as a capable partner in the process of legislating. 

These are all legislative projects operating with official government sponsorship.  While there is a great deal of valuable work done tracking legislation and developing policy outside government, and also pioneering work developing in Congress for communicating with constituents, I’m focusing here on officially sponsored legislative participation.

• The Open House Project launched with Speaker Pelosi’s endorsement, developing a transparency reform agenda for Congress.
• The Irish House of Parliament, the Oirechtas, held an involved “e-consultation” project on their broadcasting bill.  From their site:
  • “The consulters, comprising of members of the Joint Committee of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources and the Office of the Houses of the Oireachtas e-Consultation Working Group, viewed the e-Consultation pilot as a significant departure from previous practice as it involved a dedicated website which allowed for the posting of submissions in a structured manner as well as a discussion forum and it constituted an attempt to communicate directly with the public on legislation and not just target traditional ’stakeholders’.”
• Rep. Honda posted legislation and accepted public commentary on their proposed STEM Act.
• Rep. Kuhl launched a “Fix Washington” project, where citizens proposed legislative priorities.
• Senator Lieberman developed the first E-government Act of 2002 in conjunction with a public Web site that collected priorities and suggestions.  From the accompanying report language:

  • On May 18, 2000, Senators Lieberman and Thompson launched an on-line `experiment in interactive legislation’, a website that sought public comments on 44 topics related to possible measures that Congress could take to advance the cause of e-government. Topics were organized into categories, such as `centralized leadership’, `funding innovations’, and `digital democracy: citizen access and participation,’ and ranged from `centralized online portal’ to `interoperability standards’ to `G-Bay’: enhanced online distribution of federal government surplus property.’ For each of the topics, a short discussion described the status of current efforts and the `New Idea’, or ideas, being offered for consideration. Visitors to the website could then submit their comments on the subject, and read views that had been submitted by others. Nearly 1,000 comments were submitted, approximately one half of which were posted on the website after being reviewed by Committee staff.13

    [Footnote] Comments were submitted by private citizens, academicians, federal employees, and even federal agencies. OMB also responded to the website by soliciting views from federal agencies; OMB officials then consolidated agencies’ responses and presented them to the Committee as a single document. Opinions, additional information, and alternative proposals submitted over the website proved helpful as Senator Lieberman formulated his electronic government legislation.

    [Footnote] 13Comments were reviewed primarily for appropriateness and relevance; Committee staff did not favor any particular viewpoint in deciding which submissions to post. The website was intended to educate the public about the potential of e-government, to solicit input and information on the many topics being considered for possible legislation, and to serve as both an experiment and an example of how the Internet could be used to make government processes more accessible to the public.

• Senator Dick Durbin held public discussions on Open Left and Redstate, asking the question: “What Should We Include in our National Broadband Strategy?”
• Politicopia is a public wiki, set up in conjunction with the Utah State Legislature’s Rules Committee.
• I’m looking for any other examples.  Others that sort of fit:
  
  • In a sense, the California initiative process involves citizen participation, although it bypasses more than it augments the legislative process.
  • The Peer to Patent Project is probably the best designed example of substantive public involvement, although it isn’t legislative.
• Any other suggestions?

(updates as sent to the ohp group)

The coverage continues of the Republican House Members on the House floor, more easily trackable now through dontgo.us.

CRP just noted the implementation of the financial disclosure database by the Clerk of the House, as required by the HLOGA (here’s the White House’s press release ).  Enhancing public access to disclosure information filed with the Clerk of the House is among the Open House Project’s main reform proposals, so I’m particularly interested in the requirements’ shortfalls and successes.  Vague or poorly requirements can be counterproductive, so stories of unclear requirements or similar confusion are relevant to the design of future disclosure requirements and processes.  Here’s my lobbying disclosure report.

NextGov covered a recent report on government IT risk management, making points complementary to CTG’s framework for government IT analysis.

Looks like Obama is on Scribd, allowing the campaign to post embeddable documents and syndicate.  This is interesting to me as a big fan of embeddable pdfs, (see, for example, Carl Malamud’s GAO docs scribd group ) though I still prefer the UI at Issuu.

In the space unoccupied by the e-gov act of 2002, and the work of the Federal Judicial Center, a variety of free legal information sites are filling the void left by official judicial information provision.  Here’s the relevant section of the report fro the original e-gov act (H.Rept 107-787).  (This is on my mind because I’m at the IGOTF conference at Chicago, attending the open legal access working group.)

SEC. 205. FEDERAL COURTS.

(a) Individual Court Websites.--The Chief Justice of the United
States, the chief judge of each circuit and district, and the chief

bankruptcy judge of each district shall establish with respect to the
Supreme Court or the respective court of appeals, district, or
bankruptcy court of a district, a website that contains the following

information or links to websites with the following information:
(1) Location and contact information for the courthouse,
including the telephone numbers and contact names for the

clerk's office and justices' or judges' chambers.
(2) Local rules and standing or general orders of the court.
(3) Individual rules, if in existence, of each justice or

judge in that court.
(4) Access to docket information for each case.
(5) Access to the substance of all written opinions issued by
the court, regardless of whether such opinions are to be

published in the official court reporter, in a text searchable
format.
(6) Access to all documents filed with the courthouse in
electronic form, described under subsection (c).

(7) Any other information (including forms in a format that
can be downloaded) that the court determines useful to the
public.
(b) Maintenance of Data Online.--

(1) Update of information.--The information and rules on each
website shall be updated regularly and kept reasonably current.
(2) Closed cases.--Electronic files and docket information

for cases closed for more than 1 year are not required to be
made available online, except all written opinions with a date
of issuance after the effective date of this section shall

remain available online.
(c) Electronic Filings.--
(1) In general.--Except as provided under paragraph (2), each
court shall make any document that is filed electronically

publicly available online. A court may convert any document
that is filed in paper form to electronic form. To the extent
such conversions are made, all such electronic versions of the

document shall be made available online.
(2) Exceptions.--Documents that are filed that are not
otherwise available to the public, such as documents filed

under seal, shall not be made available online.
(3) Privacy and security concerns.--The Judicial Conference
of the United States may promulgate rules under this subsection

to protect important privacy and security concerns.
(d) Dockets With Links to Documents.--The Judicial Conference of the
United States shall explore the feasibility of technology to post

online dockets with links allowing all filings, decisions, and rulings
in each case to be obtained from the docket sheet of that case.
(e) Cost of Providing Electronic Docketing Information.--Section

303(a) of the Judiciary Appropriations Act, 1992 (28 U.S.C. 1913 note)
is amended in the first sentence by striking ``shall hereafter'' and
inserting ``may, only to the extent necessary,''.

(f) Time Requirements.--Not later than 2 years after the effective
date of this title, the websites under subsection (a) shall be
established, except that access to documents filed in electronic form

shall be established not later than 4 years after that effective date.
(g) Deferral.--
(1) In general.--
(A) Election.--
(i) Notification.--The Chief Justice of the

United States, a chief judge, or chief
bankruptcy judge may submit a notification to
the Administrative Office of the United States

Courts to defer compliance with any requirement
of this section with respect to the Supreme
Court, a court of appeals, district, or the

bankruptcy court of a district.
(ii) Contents.--A notification submitted
under this subparagraph shall state--

(I) the reasons for the deferral; and
(II) the online methods, if any, or
any alternative methods, such court or

district is using to provide greater
public access to information.
(B) Exception.--To the extent that the Supreme Court,

a court of appeals, district, or bankruptcy court of a
district maintains a website under subsection (a), the
Supreme Court or that court of appeals or district

shall comply with subsection (b)(1).
(2) Report.--Not later than 1 year after the effective date
of this title, and every year thereafter, the Judicial

Conference of the United States shall submit a report to the
Committees on Governmental Affairs and the Judiciary of the
Senate and the Committees on Government Reform and the

Judiciary of the House of Representatives that--
(A) contains all notifications submitted to the
Administrative Office of the United States Courts under

this subsection; and
(B) summarizes and evaluates all notifications.

As Paul just wrote on the Sunlight Blog, there’s quite a scene developing this afternoon on the House floor, as House Republicans gather for what Rep. Culberson is calling a “peprally” about offshore drilling and energy.  It’s hard to get good updates on what’s happening, but I have a question:

(For details, here’s coverage from the Politico)

Is this against House Rules? (pdf)

Here’s Paul’s post:

• Twitter and Qik Cover Pro-Oil Drilling Protest in House

  POSTED BY
  Paul Blumenthal

  Ben Pershing at the Washington Post writes, “If a party stages a protest on the House floor but no one can see or hear it, does it make a sound?” Yes, it makes a tweet.

  After adjourning for the annual summer recess, House Republicans took to the floor to protest the failure of the House to hold a vote to allow offshore drilling. Since the protest happened after adjournment was announced, the House cameras and lights were turned off. While Republicans shouted from the floor and journalists hurried to see what was happening, GOP Rep. John Culberson was tweeting away the happenings from the floor. Culberson even let some other lawmakers take over his account including Roy Blunt, Adam Putnam, John Shimkus, Tom Price, Ted Poe, Virginia Foxx, and John Shadegg. Culberson’s tweets marked yet another moment where Twitter broke a story before it could make it to the news.

  Culberson is also Qiking the event. Pretty cool stuff.

  But, Twitter isn’t the only angle to this story. These lawmakers aren’t simply taking to the floor to demand help for gas consumers, they are pushing a central facet of the oil industry’s legislative agenda: offshore drilling. Just yesterday it was announced that, yet again, ExxonMobil broke the record for largest quarterly profit pulling in $11.7 million.

  And as many can predict, the oil industry is very liberal in its contributions to the campaigns of congressmen who support their agenda. Let’s start with the lawmakers who are mentioned as on the floor by press accounts and Rep. Culberson’s tweets:

  Career Contributions from Oil & Gas Companies.
  Brady, Kevin (R-TX)	$369,797
  Blunt, Roy (R-MO)	$362,248
  Culberson, John (R-TX)	$301,961
  Boehner, John (R-OH)	$185,000
  Shimkus, John (R-IL)	$184,161
  Pence, Mike (R-IN)	$150,950
  Poe, Ted (R-TX)	$128,650
  Shadegg, John (R-AZ)	$119,495
  Putnam, Adam H (R-FL)	$70,300
  Foxx, Virginia (R-NC)	$47,100
  Sali, William T (R-ID)	$43,000
  Price, Tom (R-GA)	$24,500

  That’s a lot of money on the floor of the House right now.

  Posted: August 1, 2008 - 2:54 pm. Tags: Campaign Finance, John Culberson, Off-shore drilling, Oil drilling, Oil Industry, Qik, Twitter

The Congressional Management Foundation has been doing the yeoman’s work on addressing the problem of constituent communications. Through their Communicating with Congress project, CMF has been designing solutions for advocacy organizations and congressional offices, to help them create systems that can efficiently deal with massive advocacy campaigns.

Tim Hysom, from CMF, just wrote to the Open House Project google group, describing their latest initiative:

You aren’t alone. Citizens, grassroots advocacy organizations, and
congressional offices are all equally frustrated with the current
state of affairs. Citizens feel as though their voices are not heard
on Capitol Hill, grassroots organizations want Members of Congress to
understand the magnitude of support or opposition to pending
legislation, and congressional staff are overwhelmed by an exponential
increase in communications volumes without the proper tools and
systems to help them manage the flow.

This is your opportunity to help shape a better—more effective—method
for reaching out to Capitol Hill.

The Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) has been studying
communications to Capitol Hill for almost a decade and has put forth a
proposal which we believe would vastly improve the current system and
benefit all stakeholders. This new model for constituent
communications is detailed in a draft report by CMF, entitled,
“Communicating with Congress: Recommendations for Improving the
Democratic Dialogue.” It also includes specific recommendations for
congressional offices, citizens, and advocacy groups that will help
improve communications to and from Capitol Hill.

You can leave comments on their draft plan on the CMF Web site.

I’m ecstatic. All right, so this all goes back to late 2006, a bunch of people sitting at their computers writing some emails about what Congress should do with data. I distinctly remember Dan Newman and I both thinking that the Library of Congress should make its raw legislative database (that powers THOMAS) available directly to us to build applications off of, rather than the screen-scraping that I was doing. One thing leads to another, the Open House Project, the legislative databases section of the OHP report in May 2007 (which I principally wrote), then later that year with the support of Rep. Mike Honda, in November CHA asked the LOC to look into the issue (more), and then in the last month his office submitted text for the House Legislative Branch Appropriations Report, which made it through subcommittee markup of the bill, to give this request a little more teeth (like, ehm, the force of law).

His office also submitted a second paragraph which I’ll get to below.
Keep reading →

(For everyone looking for an update or an explanation about Congress examining its web use restrictions, I just sent the following email to the Open House Project google group, explaining why the issue is important, and what I think that community has to offer.  If you’d like to be involved or follow that discussion, you can sign up for the group.  -John)

The issue has raised a larger question than the one originally intended to be addressed in the house — video.

The Senate is in the midst of reconsidering their recommendations too (see congress daily today, sub only).

The question now before the Franking Commission is how to update what Pelosi and Capuano have both admitted are “antiquated” restrictions.  They have to balance legitimate concerns — decorum, commercialization, and improper taxpayer funded political content — against what all involved parties have recognized as immense potential online.

Clearly, the current rules are unclear, unevenly enforced, and poorly understood.  That this “hooptedoodle” (great word!) is even possible is evidence of that point, which I don’t think is in question by anyone.  The need for an update, revision, loosening, recodification, or whatever, is well accepted on the hill.

Dismissing the argument as being about a trendy web service misses the more interesting thing that’s going on here:  We’re seeing the leadership from both parties in the House affirm the role of technology and public engagement in representative democracy, in an explicit, practical way.  Of course it’s adversarial, that’s what party leaders do.

There are a ton of other reforms I’d like to see addressed, and I’m hoping that we’ll soon have a slew of other accomplishments and issues to focus on, public congressional video (go Carl!) among them.

The useful thing we can do, though, is to recognize that the people on this list are probably the best equipped people to help define what acceptable web use looks like.  It isn’t an easy problem.

I’m trying to focus on what’s clearly the case.  The rules need to be updated, confident engagement online with clear standards is the goal, and right now the chilling effect of a combination of restrictive and unclearly enforced rules is keeping Congress from doing as much as it should online.  (I talk a lot more about this in my interview with Dave Witzel here, especially starting at “what’s the steak without the sizzle?)

So, I’m hoping we can start to talk more about the details of member web use restrictions.  What really constitutes commercial endorsement?  When does conduct become unacceptable or undignified?  What role should Congress play in enforcing those questions online?  Where do the edges of “official duties” lie anyway?  Are we treating the Internet differently than we do traditional media?  (See Boehner’s recent post for an expansion on this theme.)

Probably more importantly, what are the principles we can use to approach those questions with clear minds?

I’d like to expand on the question of how we can reasonably approach those questions, but I think this email was necessary to clear the air first, and explain what I think the discussion should be about, and what I think this list has to offer the dialog.

(from the Sunlight blog)

New lines are being drawn about the restrictions Members face when using the Internet.

House Minority Leader Boehner today released a memo, entitled the “Internet Freedom Alert”, criticizing a letter sent by Rep. Capuano to the Chairman of the Committee on House Administration.

Member Web use restrictions are among the main Open House Project priorities, and one of the chapters of the report is about the restrictions set by the Franking Commission, which operates under the Committee on House Administration. (This chapter was written by David All and Paul Blumenthal.)

Boehner’s letter today rightly sounds the alarm about Capuano’s newly proposed Franking commission guidelines. In his letter, Capuano admits that Web use restrictions need to be redesigned, and proposes that acceptable Web sites and uses be compiled by the Committee, and that content from Members, when posted on outside sites, should “meet existing content rules and regulations”, and should “not be posted on a website or page where it may appear with commercial or political information.” (pdf)

While reconsidering or reforming these antiquated restrictions is a laudable goal, the proposed guideline reforms are only a half-measure toward modernized engagement online, and don’t address the underlying problems with these unnecessary restrictions.

The Committee on House Administration and its Franking Commission are tasked with making sure taxpayer money isn’t spent on commercial or political advertising on the Web. While there is good reason to limit incumbents’ advantage to be gained online, Capuano’s memo overstates the liability that comes when Members of Congress use popularly accepted communication tools. Exaggerating the risks online hamstrings Members and staff at exactly the time when they should be boldly engaging with constituents.

Communicating online involves only negligible cost, which means that the potential advantage given to incumbents, or the potential for a conflict of interest, is only very slight. Imagine a traditional example. No one would impugn the motivations of a Member who grants an interview to a very small newspaper in their district, where perhaps their grandchild is a journalist. Even though such an interview has a distinct financial benefit for the small paper, Members are free to speak with whomever they wish, and can be confrontational, or only pick interviews with sympathetic figures, at their discretion.

This discretion is important. Members need to be able to communicate freely, and the financial consequences of where their voice is featured are tiny compared to the possible consequences of trying to limit Members’ speech.

Has it ever occurred that a Member gives interviews to only one particular newspaper? I doubt it. That just isn’t the way motivations work in a political world.

If the potential for conflict of interest or political advertising is so low the context of the traditional press, then why are we treating the Internet differently? Is the Internet so unfamiliar, so public, that it should be considered undignified to have a video on the same page as a link that might link to pornography? That worry was reasonable in 1995, but not now.

People generally understand the potential of digital communications tools. Most services are provided without cost, and are open to public viewing, and, increasingly, public content submission. While this opens the door for disruptive participation, it also provides us with the immense potential of our shared digital connection, with consequences as fundamental as those of the printing press or the telephone.

If Members can use whatever brand of inkpen, or any brand of paper, or buy whatever shoes they want, they should be given radically expanded freedom to use the Internet, and make the same empowering discoveries that their constituents are. Even if that same pen was once used to scribble a ransom note.

The Committee on House Administration still has a line to draw, and plays an important function through the Franking Commission in preventing abuse of taxpayer funded resources. The restrictions, however, should reflect a balance between the liability they’re meant to avoid, and the potential benefits Congress could realize. The conflict of interest (or undignifiedness), is minimal, at best, and the potential benefits are nothing short of revolutionary.

Citizens are overcoming their fears about engaging online, and Congress should follow suit.

Congressional staff working on reforming Franking restrictions should be praised for their efforts, and Republican Leader Boehner should be praised for his bold stance on such reforms.

(from the ohp google group)

I’ve talked to probably 6 people on this list with ideas about publishing Congress’ “Dear Colleague” letters.

Dear Colleagues are letters sent between Members of Congress, often daily, often detailing legislation and asking for support or cosponsorship.  The Committee on House Administration recently announced new plans to “allow for greater categorization and customization of electronic Dear Colleagues.”

CHA also notes that staff sometimes receive up to 70 of these letters per day, a rather astounding number.

My question is this:

Is there reason to either push for the publication of all Dear Colleague letters (or some subset of them)?  What would be the ideal publishing method, and what might be a good incremental step toward that?

I expect that most members would welcome Dear Colleagues’ publication, since they’re written similarly to press releases, and are about getting attention.

On the technical side, I expect that an ideal situation would be for the House system to offer a “public” option for Dear Colleague distribution, where the default is public.  In the meantime, cc-ing some predefined third party public ingestion email would probably work, with that email connecting to a database and a public facing index of dear colleagues, functioning on an opt-in basis.

Any reactions or ideas?  I’m especially interested in any thoughts on why this would be a bad idea, since I can’t think of any.

Probably the highlight of PDF for me was seeing this talk by Mark Pesce, whose blog I’ve followed closely for 8 months. This presentation is very quotable, and very entertaining. (video follows)