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.

Even if the leadership in both parties make a priority of publicizing committee proceedings, the committee chairs in their variable discretion (as we called it in the report) still need to make it a sufficient priority for it to happen.  To encourage them to do so, we’ve drafted a letter, working closely with VoterWatch (and Perla Ni) to articulate what we are looking for–accurate, timely records of what happens in public hearings, posted online permanently in text, audio, and video.

I’ve also created a pledgebank pledge, which you can view or sign here, (or through facebook), which says the following:

The pledge has links to more detail (and to the letter to committee chairs), and is set to succeed only at 50 people by mid December.  We’re up to 11 as of this email.


Press Credentialing:

I recently finished Donald Ritchie’s Press Gallery, which covers the congressional press galleries through the 19th Century, with a focus on the development of institutional standards that reify things like conflicts of interest and endemic corruption.  (Institutions like ethics committees, or press galleries reify, or recognize and make real, conflicts of interest–effectively or not, where before they were just seen as incidental profits.)

Interestingly, these distinctions (for example, understanding that a reporter shouldn’t also be a committee clerk, a lobbyist, and an stock speculator, all at the same time) largely develop through new technology being introduced, which creates tension and new incentives within the reporting community.  This point is very clearly made in the preface to Reporting from Washington, Ritchie’s book that starts around 1932:

I’m sure there’s a detailed comparison to be made here, taking blogging and comparing it to the growth of such institutions as the initial party-affiliated papers, the penny press papers, the wire (telegraph based) services, larger syndicated papers, radio, and television.  A case could be made that the Internet isn’t so uniquely revolutionary (at least in this sense), but operates in a long tradition of evolving distinctions, each taking a different concern, conflict of interest, party interest, or business interest, and removing them from the narrative of the reporter.

The Constitution:

I’ve alluded a couple of times to the Constitution Annotated, but I’d like to elaborate slightly more on this document, and why it’s worthy of our attention.

The world of legal research is very complex, with different bodies of information being vital to the arrangement of court cases and legislative research, touching on case history, legislative intent, regulatory processes, and differing jurisdictions, precedents, and interpretations.  Within this sphere, just as much as in the world of legislative information, when information isn’t readily available to the public, for-pay services grow to fill this need.  While this has been both necessary and good, there is also a clear public good to securing access to a digital public repository of legal and legislative information.  In other words, more people should take advantage of advanced legal research than can afford to.

The Constitution Annotated is a sort of bridge between the legal and legislative research worlds, since it provides the foundation for both of them.  It is also a great example of a vital technical document.  CRS employees take the Constitution and append explanations and context to every section, based on the most recent supreme court interpretations.  There’s no better place to start looking in order to get a (mostly) current view, from a team of experts, of how the Constitution functions in contemporary life.

CONAN (as it’s referred to) has immense potential to become a digitally vital document, and adding searchability, links for cross-referencing, and versioning would all be possible by making the XML data at its core public.  Third parties with an interest in adding value would likely be happy to create links, searches, and further context.  (See Cornell’s Legal Information Institute, for example, which is already providing a basic set of these value-added features, as they’re able to based on the format the GPO is publishing in.)

I’ll likely be writing more about this soon.

GSA Newsletter:

Finally, I’d like to point again (as Steven Clift recently did), to the General Services Administration’s recent newsletter “How E-Government is Changing Society and Strengthening Democracy” (available near the top of this page).

I know of no better survey of current e-government and digital democracy survey, showing what enterprising citizens and government employees are doing with the Internet.  (I wrote about the Open House Project in the newsletter too.)

Sorry this is so long, but there’s a great deal going on, and I’m trying to keep up with keeping what I’m doing as public as possible.