Josh’s recent post, and general attentiveness to newly introduced legislation, has me thinking about the different kinds of reform that might result in increased transparency.

It seems to me that it’s worth looking into how a lot of transparency reform and process reform tend to be favored perenially by the political minority. Any transparency reform that affects the prerogatives of the majority will probably be harder to enact than those that just involve basic implementation.

A host of other reforms involve Congress adjusting to evolving technological possibilities, and the expectations that come along with them. XML sets a new standard for content management, and data access expectations increase. People use the Internet as their primary source of information, and members and committees are expected to post more, more often.

Some reforms might require new appropriations, slightly changed authorizing language, and others might take a few hours of staff attention.

It’s probably important to keep in mind, though, that despite the different goals we have in mind for Congress (and public access to it), that Congress tends to adjust cautiously, but at the same time has a long rich history of enhancing its own abillity to process and publicize information, and that these adjustments are very much tied up in the political situations of the day. While partisan politics may make an easy target for constituents frustrated by policy results, it does provide an effective engine for incremental and dialectic progress, as our legislature was designed.