Many people remember from middle school the movie on how a bill becomes a law, but few civics courses teach about what happens afterward. On Monday, John, Josh, and I sat down with members of the Office of the Law Revision Counsel. Their job, in short, is to consolidate and codify laws passed by Congress [...]

Two recommendations of our report have been moved forward in the FY09 omnibus appropriations bill (H.R. 1105) which cleared the Senate yesterday and the House last month. The first recommendation in our chapter on legislative databases was that the Library of Congress make its bill status database directly available to the public and that the [...]

Congressional Republicans recently released a high production value video on the FISA fight, which prompted a quick response video in return. Political positions and identities are crafted in slicker and more appealing ways, witnessed also in recent discussions of presidentials’ skill at creating a coherent brand. While self-promotion is somewhat essential to [...]

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 [...]

From the Open House Project Google Group discussion, here’s a partial list of recent transparency reform legislation, passed or pending.
Transparency bills that passed in 110th Congress, 1st session:
1. S.1 Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007:

Requires online posting of committee hearing transcripts/audio/video (Senate only)
Expands lobbyist disclosure to require quarterly filing, disclosure of bundled contributions, [...]

A quick post for an important point.
Access to information is often referred to as “necessary for a healthy democracy,” or the “foundation of an informed citizenry.”
I think both of those things are true, but I would assert that notion more strongly.  Broad access to public information is a precondition for sound policy, responsive government, and [...]

I’m reading Politics in Time by Paul Pierson (link), and am struck by how little academic political science seems to affect government policy and political discussion. I find political and social analysis incredibly stimulating, especially given how tiresome I find the current presidential punditizing.
I’m particularly interested in Pierson’s purportedly novel conception of how political [...]

I’m glad to have just found the archive of old Web sites from members of Congress, maintained by the Center for Legislative Archives under the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
The collection seems well organized and easy to peruse, with solid explanations of their methodology and disclaimers about what’s available based on the crawling.
My main [...]

I had the pleasure this morning of speaking at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for a panel on Innovative Advocacy (cohosted by Adfero).
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 [...]

The following is an update of what I’ve been up to recently, in several different areas…
Transcript Pledge and Letter:
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 [...]