When the administrators in charge of the House submit their budgets, their priorities and shortfalls are pretty clearly displayed for the appropriators. They justify their existence. Since they oversee various aspects of public access to Congress, increased pressure for digital public access affects the way they report their priorities. Here is the testimony, as prepared, of the CAO, the Clerk, General Counsel, Inspector General, Law Revision Counsel, and Sergeant at Arms.

Chief Administrative Officer of the House

The CAO is responsible for rewiring committee rooms for video:

in the digital era, Members and their constituents have come to expect higher broadcast and recording quality and digitalization of the House’s archiving and distribution technologies. Beyond the obvious value the installation of modern equipment provides, the next phase of these improvements will afford another key benefit: by linking all rooms to the House Recording Studio an increased transparency of committee activities will be achieved.

The CAO’s testimony also has updates on the Greening of the Capitol Initiative, the Wounded Warriors Program, offering better benefits packages for House employees, and new Member initiatives.

Clerk of the House

In addition to making it easier to file lobbying reports, lobbying disclosure updates are now (apparently) enabling XML downloads of disclosure information:

This new capability allows users to download lobbying information, in eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML), by filing year and period. I am pleased we were able to implement this system so quickly and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Subcommittee for reprogramming $323,000 in FY2008 funds to finance this important project. We are facing continuing expenditures in the area of software development and maintenance imposed by the changes in Lobbying Disclosure, Gift and Travel Disclosure, Financial Disclosure, and the post employment termination notification requirements and these costs are reflected in our FY2009 budget request.

On the Member Information System:

The first phase of development of a new Member Information System was started in July 2007, and the completion date for phase one is February 2008. This effort will simplify data entry, streamline maintenance, and ensure data integrity for Member and committee information, by consolidating two disparate systems into one.

On Historical Services:

The Office of History and Preservation, with the support of this Subcommittee, continues to make tremendous progress in fulfilling our support of the House’s curatorial, archival and historical information needs, while responding to increased requests for assistance as compared to previous years.

On the Legislative Resource Center and House Library:

we would like to digitize the House Library collection and implement outreach activities, making the Library more visible and easily accessible. We are in the infancy stages of planning for this project, and after working with the Architect of the Capitol will come back to the Subcommittee with an update and any requests for future funding.

(I’m all for digitizing this sort of resource, given that any partnerships (if necessary) are started with a good sense of benefits of risks; see also NARA’s plan, and the GAO’s current headache.)

Office of the General Counsel

The Office of the General Counsel starts by explaining their responsibilities, which pertain mainly to giving legal advice to members and officers of the House relevant to their official duties. Those that pertain to public disclosure include legal information requests from outside agents (the exective, the public, subpoenas, etc), evaluating privileges (including the legislative branch’s immunity under the Speech or Debate Clause ), the confidentiality of constituent information, internal House policy development, and advice on FOIA as it pertains to Congress, and the Privacy Act.

Inspector General

Summarizing Office of the Inspector General’s official duties, they write:

we have over 19 reviews in progress that have been carefully scoped with the assistance of the Committee on House Administration (CHA) to further address the security and integrity of House information systems, the accuracy and reliability of the House financial information or the efficiency and effectiveness of House administrative processes and functions.

The OIG focuses largely on administrative and financial effectiveness, and touches only on IT in writing about potential committee Web site security lapses.

The Office of Law Revision Council

The OLRC maintains the US Code, and also “prepares to enact titles of the code into positive law.” This distinction is unfamiliar to me, and is explained as taking the laws of the United States from a condition of only being “prima facie” evidence of law to being legal evidence of the law. (This explanation didn’t really help.)

The OLRC is also working on the transition to XML, along with many other parts of Congress, and is looking forward to working with an entire US Code in XML:

Assuming the quality is satisfactory, the plans for the next stage are to perfect the conversion and style sheet and use the XML data to build a much improved web site for the Code. Additional long range plans include developing procedures and software to produce the Code in XML as its native format.

The Sergeant at Arms

The Sergeant at Arms controls much of the physical property of the House, working on security, gallery and press passes, member and staff badges, emergency systems, and evacuation procedures.