His office also submitted a second paragraph which I’ll get to below.

Rob Pierson in Honda’s office writes on the OHP mail list:

I’ve mentioned on the list some of the steps my boss (Congressman Honda) has been taking, with counsel from many folks on this list, to guide Congressional policies on the path towards effectively leveraging technology to open up access to the public. There are actually quite a few other staffers who also follow this list, and we’ve certainly learned quite a bit from the conversations posted here, so I wanted to throw out a quick note of appreciation to everyone who has been contributing to the discussions.

With guidance from the conversations on this list (and the OHP report), Congressman Honda recently submitted the following sections into the House Legislative Branch Appropriations Report. The following (or possibly very similar versions) were included in the Leg Branch Subcommittee markup of the bill:

*Public Access to Legislative Data (as submitted)*

The Committee believes that the public should have improved access to legislative information through more advanced search capabilities such as those available through the Library of Congress’ Legislative
Information System. The Committee also supports enhancing public access to legislative documents, bill status, summary information, and other legislative data, through more direct methods such as bulk data downloads and other means of no-charge digital access to legislative databases. The Committee requests that the Library and Government Printing Office report on the progress towards these goals within 90 days of enactment of this Act.

Note that the GPO has also been stuck in there. More more on that, see this post.

The second paragraph that Honda’s office submitted John noted was parallel to the final chapter of our report, Coordinating Web Standards. (Hmm, I principally wrote that chapter too….)

*Congressional Technology Coordination (as submitted)*

The Committee recognizes the need for the House of Representatives to develop a strategic and coordinated plan that will prepare for the future technology needs of the institution. A 2006 report commissioned by the Chief Administrative Officer and the Committee on House Administration, entitled /Strategic Technology Road Map for the Ten Year Vision of Technology in the House of Representatives/ provided a suggested structure for an IT evaluation and decision-making process.
No later than 90 days after the enactment of this Act, the Committee requests that the Chief Administrative Officer, the Clerk, and the Sergeant at Arms report to the Committee of their efforts to develop House-wide data-sharing standards; implement standard legislative document formats; address the increasing resource challenges of Member offices; and identify disparate systems throughout the institution, which prevent it from taking advantage of economies of scale.

This is of course fantastic news for anyone that supports transparency, which is, well, everyone in their right mind, I think. So thanks to Congressman Honda for taking the initiative on this!

(Other links: last year’s leg branch appropriations blog post, my first or one of my first posts here about structured data)

The committee rules, as they stand, contradict the new requirements of S1, specifically section 513, which requires public committee proceedings to be posted online within 21 days of the hearing.  I expect that other committees will have to deal with this issue, and the Finance Committee should be applauded for taking the provisions of S1 seriously, and recognizing that their rules will need to be updated to accommodate its requirements.

Committees, as they adapt to new expectations for online information access, should also recognize that these stipulations are only a (very necessary) first step.  Meaningfully access to committee proceedings is only possible through real-time disclosure and digital records management.  This would enable citizens to follow along with hearings that pertain to their interests or expertise as they happen, and also give members of Congress and their staff new tools to help them do their jobs more effectively.  (Multiple committee hearings, floor votes, interviews, staff meetings and who knows what all happen at the same time, the least we can do is make sure members of Congress can find out what happens in the meetings of the committees on which they serve.)

This disclosure, as outlined in the Open House Project report (committee section), must first be timely.  Committee staff have expressed real concerns about posting official transcripts in time, and one solution to that concern may be to post unofficial versions of transcripts first.  In any case, making public access a priority should enable best practices to quickly emerge, and I’m confident in the committees ability to post proceedings quickly.  Senator Salazar was confident of this fact as well, as he remarked when introducing the amendment to the Senate bill: “I should also add that the amendment will create no serious burden for the committtees”. (link)

OMBWatch also mentions in their note that multiple formats for proceedings are vastly preferred to the one-of-the-above approach that S1 requires.  Not only does this make it easier to watch, digest, quote, or share, but this also will make the committees more likely compliant with the section 508 accessibility standards, giving citizens, staff, and members with disabilities access to records of proceedings.  (Patrice McDermott of OpenTheGovernment.org has also vocally supported robust committee disclosure requirements.)

Finally, our discussion of implementing S1 has led us to realize that new standards for posting public information online lead inevitably to new challenges in digital records management and preservation.  If the committee Web sites become the go to source for committee related information (where before there was no digital source), then who becomes responsible for this digital history?  Committee documents become the property of the National Archives (specifically the Center for Legislative Archives) after each Congress.  As I observed in the previous discussion of this topic, it may end up being easier to get committee documents online than it will be to get them to stay there.  Ideally, I think committees should probably maintain jurisdiction over their documents, and have an easy procedure to link to an archive of previous committee procedures.

Kudos to the Finance Committee (and especially Senator Salazar) for getting the proceedings requirement introduced, and for following up more than year later.

More background discussion can be found here.

Congressional Budget Office (CBO): CBO intro PDF from their website, see also Congressional Budget Act of 1974

General Accountability Office (GAO):

Library of Congress (LOC):

Government Printing Office (GPO)

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

Chief Administrative Officer (of the House) (CAO)

Speaker of the House (link)

Secretary of the Senate (link)

Senate Rules Committee (link)

Senate Sergeant at Arms (link)

Committee on House Administration (CHA)

Joint Committee on Printing (JCP)

Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (HSGA)

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (link)

Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress (link)

Senate Historical Office (link)

Legislative Resource Center (LRC )

Executive Branch

General Services Administration (GSA), (executive branch)

Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

Judicial Branch

Federal Judicial Center (FJC)

Transparency bills that passed in 110th Congress, 1st session:

1. S.1 Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007:

2. S.2488 OPEN Government Act of 2007:

3. OTA funding implemented as part of GAO:

Other developments during 110th Congress, 1st session:

1. C-SPAN changed its copyright policy to allow reproduction on the Web
2. Seven Members of Congress posted daily schedules to their official Web sites
3. Two Members of Congress posted their personal financial disclosures to their official Web sites
4. The number of Members blogging and posting their earmarks increased dramatically
5. Launch of OMB spending and earmark online database
6. Launch of FARA online database
7. Redesign of SOPR lobbyist disclosure online database

Pending for 110th Congress, 2nd session:  (see also here )

1. S.2321 E-Government Reauthorization Act of 2007 (Hearings held in the Senate)
2. Review of Franking Regulations for Member Web sites
3. H.R.1362 Accountability in Contracting Act of 2007 (Passed the House)
4. S. Res. 401 A resolution to provide Internet access to certain Congressional Research Service publications
5. Lieberman’s statement that Senate votes should be in XML, in support of THOMAS upgrades

Two more pieces of transparency reform legislation underway for 2008:
First, the Presidential Library Donation Reform Act of 2007, (HR
1254<http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1254>)
saying <http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-1254>… *”Any
Presidential library fundraising organization shall submit on a quarterly
basis, in accordance with paragraph (2), information with respect to…”
*Second, here’s the Presidential Records Acts Amendments of 2007, (HR
1255<http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1255>)
saying <http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-1255>…
“`(a)(1) When the Archivist determines under this chapter to make available
to the public any Presidential record that has not previously been made
available to the public, the Archivist shall…” and “Executive Order No.
13233, dated November 1, 2001 (66 Fed. Reg. 56025), shall have no force or
effect.” among other things.  (link to executive
order<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011101-12.html>
)
Again, the OHP page<http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/resources/pendingbills>also
has legislation on Congress relevant to the report as well.

The reason this is interesting to me is that we like to capture reality in data. The Library of Congress and GovTrack both systematize (or in computer jargon “normalize”) the bill-becomes-a-law process. At every point in the game, a bill, in our data formats, is either in-progress, enacted, dead, etc. It must be in one of these states. After all, the constitution outlines exactly what states a bill can be in, so any bill *must* be in one of these states.

But if we’re not sure what state a bill is in, what state do we put it in in our data? There’s also the more important question- What do the lawmakers do if they disagree about what state a bill is in? (Actually, I would prefer to phrase it as “what state they are in”, but that’s another story.) Wikipedia describes (what the editors of the page claim is) a current debacle over H.R. 1585: National Defense Authorization Act FY 2008:

In December of 2007, President George W. Bush pushed the pocket veto into murky waters by claiming that he had pocket vetoed H.R. 1585, the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008,” even though the House of Representatives had designated agents to receive presidential messages before adjourning. The bill had been previously passed by veto-proof majorities in both the House and the Senate [JT: and thus a traditional veto would have been futile].

So was the bill (pocket) vetoed or not? Is the bill still in-progress? Assuming it was not pocket vetoed, after 10 legislative days without a traditional veto it becomes law, and us citizens would hate to be on that 11th day without either resolution on the pocket veto matter or a traditional veto, because then we as a country will not know whether this bill has become law. (Another question: How might the Supreme Court assert jurisdiction over this question.)

But back to the data. At one point, some time after Dec. 28, someone in the House responsible for updating the bill status information shown on THOMAS entered a new status line:

Dec 28, 2007: Pocket Vetoed by President.

GovTrack picked up on the change and shows that status currently, much to the confusion of several people emailing me about it. Looking back at THOMAS, it seems like someone realized that that was apparently quite a constitutional (if not political) claim and retracted that update, because it not longer says that.

In many cases citizens complain when the government takes things back, hiding information previously made public. That’s definitely not what I am getting at here. THOMAS is forced to show *something*, and when it doubt… well, what can you do but roll back history until we figure out what the next legislative step actually *was*.

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.

It seems to me that it’s worth looking into how a lot of transparency reform and process reform tend to be favored perenially by the political minority. Any transparency reform that affects the prerogatives of the majority will probably be harder to enact than those that just involve basic implementation.

A host of other reforms involve Congress adjusting to evolving technological possibilities, and the expectations that come along with them. XML sets a new standard for content management, and data access expectations increase. People use the Internet as their primary source of information, and members and committees are expected to post more, more often.

Some reforms might require new appropriations, slightly changed authorizing language, and others might take a few hours of staff attention.

It’s probably important to keep in mind, though, that despite the different goals we have in mind for Congress (and public access to it), that Congress tends to adjust cautiously, but at the same time has a long rich history of enhancing its own abillity to process and publicize information, and that these adjustments are very much tied up in the political situations of the day. While partisan politics may make an easy target for constituents frustrated by policy results, it does provide an effective engine for incremental and dialectic progress, as our legislature was designed.

This bill, like most of the 12 others he has introduced this year, takes a classical conservative position, here trying to reduce government spending. The real point of the bill is expressed best in one of its findings clauses:

Whereas a rescissions bill, which would cut Federal spending, should be brought to the House floor at the beginning of every fiscal quarter to give Congress the opportunity to cut and cancel unnecessary, wasteful, and bloated government spending to eliminate the deficit;

But the interesting part for us is:

Whereas the process of cutting spending should be open to the public, by posting this spending cutting bill and its amendments on the Internet, so that Americans can exercise their right to contact their Members of Congress and make their views known

It has a variant of the 48-hours language from his other bill applied specifically to rescission bills.

A map with spending information overlay on a district map is a great start. Since this information was put into a google map (whose functionality has been recently upgraded), the data gets automatically translated into an available “kml” file. (see the upper right portion of the above screenshot.)

This kml file lets you open the information in Google Earth, which really turns things up considerably, especially given how easy it is to enter this kind of information into Google maps. Here’s the whole district (note the finger lakes in the foreground):

Here’s a view across the top of the district:

And this is a view from over lake Erie looking towards Buffalo, NY:

As information sources build on each other, will politically desirable information be something integrated and expected, like traffic signs? Or maybe annoyingly present and self promotional, like consumer product packaging? Who knows. At a minimum though, government’s relevance will become more obvious, and verification will be an easier task, more likely to function as the basis for measured debate and reasonable discourse.

Since we’re already at the point of being able to produce detailed maps with customized content, viewable from any angle, or 35 miles in the air, or hovering over lake michigan, (or even flying in an f-16 flight simulator)–we must be taking some steps in that direction.

This report, released August 14th, is specifically about H.R. 3162.

The other document is a CRS report from August 7th on Medicaid, SCHIP, and FY2008 issues.

Documents from OpenCRS.com, as usual.