This morning I had the pleasure of attending the 34th meeting of the Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress.  Since congressional reform and improvement efforts all take place within a rich political, administrative, technological, and historical context, any time the institution of Congress coordinates broadly to assess itself, we should be paying attention.

Organizational realignments are often the reactionary responses to scandal (Credit Mobilier, Watergate), political struggle (the Cannon mutiny, Committee Chairs and civil rights), or changing technological expectations (1993 Committee on the Organization of Congress).

Congressional reform efforts are often contentious, political, and limited in participation, jurisdiction, and duration, which shouldn’t be a surprise, given the importance of legislatures’ independence generally.  Congress’s tendency to adapt in fits and spurts does lead to what can seem to be a shortsightedness, or deficit of attention (perhaps not a deficit, but a sporadic intermittent quality) which is filled in by the knowledge of long serving members and staff, legislative support agencies, lobbyists, and non-profits.  In short, the infrastructure of political knowledge and influence.  Some perennial challenges demand specialized knowledge and sustained attention, even if they require frequent legislative attention, as do the subjects of full committees or subcommittees.  For a full background on congressional advisory commissions, check out this CRS report, RS22725.

The Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress is one of these special congressional bodies, made up of political appointees, administrators, archivists, historians, and academic figures. They’re been meeting since 1991 to coordinate between the various agencies with a hand in the preservation of congressional records, under the authorization of Public Law 101-509.

Having grown out of a series of conferences, events, and speeches throughout the late seventies and eighties, the committee seems to have come of age just as the Internet was becoming congressionally relevant, making the commission an important counterpart to other agencies with technological jurisdiction, such as the Committee on House Administration, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, GPO, LOC, the CAO, Architect of the Capitol, or the Senate Rules Committee.  While their function is largely the advisory oversight and planning of Congress’s archival activities, the distinction between preserved archive and public database is only a matter of digitizating records and creating public access.  (”Only” may be an unfortunate phrase here, the National Archives and Records Administration’s yearly budget is in the hundreds of millions of dollars.)  While archiving may have been something that used to be directed at future generations or researchers, the Internet is transforming the struggles for effective archiving into the struggle for meaningful public access.  Among other things, an archive is the physical aspect of what should also be a public database.

This public database is being built.  The National Archives is building the Electronic Records Archives as discussed in today’s meeting by the Director of the Center for Legislative Archives, Richard Hunt.

Much of today’s meeting focused on different agencies’ reports on their outreach strategies for convincing members to take archiving their records seriously, by designating a repository for their records upon their retirement, adopting good documents management practices, or even by hiring an archivist (which was also a concern in their 1992 report.)  One committee chair reportedly responded to an attempt at archiving guidance by asking “what, am I dying or something?”

The Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate also reported on their recent endeavors, especially on the fifty percent increase in committee hearings during the first session of the 110th Congress, and on the challenges of implementing the requirements of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, which they endearingly referred to as “HLOGA” (pronounced huh-low-guh).

The main lesson of the morning for me was that disclosure and public information access are wrapped up with issues of records management and archiving. We’re working through the same administrative, political, and technological circumstances, on largely the same sets of information, and we have a great opportunity in the well coordinated work of the Advisory Committee, and the surprising receptiveness of its members.