The recommendation serves to help congressional staff manage incoming communication. It’s a method of triage on the one hand, and a tool to help tally communications by position on the other. Critical as this may be, I find tallying to be incredibly superficial — and it really reveals, I think, that the world of communicating with Congress has become extremely narrow. (But I’ve written on that before.)

The preface describes it as a “study of the archival sources that document the operations of Congress.”  The “archival sources” described in this document comprise the entire body of public congressional information, the substance of both administrative minutiae, and legislative substance.  Just as we are interested in the capacity of the public to be conscious of its legislature, we should be interested in the legislature’s capacity to take stock of itself, to engage in constructive introspection.

I came across this document being repeatedly cited while reading the yearly reports of the Advisory Committee on the Preservation of the Records of Congress, and still find rich irony in the fact that the document itself wasn’t available in a digital form.  That’s not to say anything against the Advisory Committee, which seems to be an outgrowth or a result of the task force that wrote S.Pub 102-20, and also inspired H.R. 5241 from the 101st Congress, a bill reorganizing the National Archives, among other things.  The Advisory Committee seems to be among the very best of examples of an organization created to meet an emergent need, cutting across jurisdictions and what one of its members recently described to me as “negotiated terrain” (a description I very much liked).

The complex problem of coordinating congressional information is difficult, but not for the usual reasons.  As far as preservation goes, the administrative coordination is already in place, and it seems that the research (and even enforcement ) about disclosure mechanisms has been in place for quite some time.  What has been lagging is not administrative will, but the digital culture and popular expectations that make IT investment a real priority.

This is clearly changing, as new staffers expect to represent their members of Congress online without encountering arcane restrictions, as citizens expect to encounter government information and services through the same search engines they use for research and shopping, and a new brand of journalism is springing up that depends not on cultivating trusted sources through personal relationships, but on careful consideration of primary sources–exactly those “archival sources” this document so comprehensively describes.

While some disclosure will be resisted for as long as the benefits of secrecy outweigh the outcry over obstruction, and privileged access will always be at odds with the broader public interest, it is good to see that a detailed anatomy of congressional information has already been constructed in great detail.  The question that remains is how well will Congress adapt to new expectations of information access — a question that necessarily comes along with a digitally empowered citizenry.

Important links:

A new website www.opengovdata.org came out of it, which has nice announcement text

as well as a wiki wiki.opengovdata.org (which I’m hosting, so blame me for problems) for ongoing discussion on neutral turf.

There’s a Flickr tag with a bunch of photos. You can see that Tim O’Reilly’s big colored sticky note cards played an important role in many sessions.

One of the tangible results of the conference was a set of eight principles for how to determine whether some government data is “open”. It’s similar to how we use criteria elsewhere to determine whether software is open, and also the Open Knowledge Definition. And it was suggested that we develop some sort of branding that we all can make use of to support and point to the principles. The discussion pages linked from some of the terms in the principles are editable wiki pages and do need to be fleshed out with suggestions from anyone.

Also, Dan Newman started some discussion about how to mobilize citizens at large over transparency issues. I am eager to see how that discussion continues— I expect some organizing will happen on the (open) mail list created at the conference (and linked from www.opengovdata.org; yes, yet another mail list…).

While much of the discussion centered on best practices and ideas around (what seemed to me to be) more traditional advocacy, I tried to add some of my thoughts on what might make for more effective non-traditional advocacy and outreach. Speaking in public is always useful exercise for me, and, as is often the case, my thoughts are better organized after speaking than before.

My initial thesis was that the form of our advocacy is determined by the form of our awareness, and that the Sunlight Foundation, by extending the reach of our awareness of Congress, is broadening the field of advocacy opportunities possible for both the public and for traditional advocacy organizations.

Sunlight grantees, and other similarly minded folks engaged in entrepreneurial political Web design are enabling these opportunities to flourish, and Congress is adapting, both as in terms of staff, and as a technological institution.

My advice for advocacy groups could probably be summed up in a few brief points:

• Simply overloading Congress with email has an upper limit of effectiveness, overloading members of advocacy organizations with similarly excessive appeals has similarly diminishing effectiveness.
• While re-imagining advocacy is unlikely to replace email anytime soon (as many prefer it when offered alternatives), adding other features to advocacy methods will increase effectiveness (retention, appeal, impact, ability to get attention from Congress)
• To best affect a legislative information ecology, you should be a part of it.
• This means taking advantage of Congressional data sources, being databases like opensecrets or opencongress, legislative support agency publications (like CBO, GAO, or CRS), or committee reports. These publications take immense staff effort to create, and they probably get some satisfaction out of people actually reading them.
• Members of Congress can’t ask you to do their work for them, but, if you’re interested in getting their attention, there’s nothing to stop you from doing it anyway. In other words, you can write legislation, read the House or Senate rules, suggest questions for a committee hearing, or outline arguments or messaging. If someone was trying to do your job for you online, wouldn’t you check to see how well they were doing?
• Blog Ads are a massively under-appreciated way of reaching specific and involved constituency groups, and well worth looking into. They’re also very very cheap when compared to advertising alternatives.
• By asking your members to engage with the substance of Congress (and helping them to do so), they’ll more likely be viewed as relevant, and likely to enforce political consequences reinforce good or bad decisions.