The report provides a convenient description of some of the legislation that requires disclosure from the House, and also has a section listing all of the Public Disclosure Documents for which the Clerk of the House is responsible. They include: Lobbying Registrations and Reports, Financial Disclosure Reports, Federal Election Campaign Reports, Franked Materials (Mass Mailings), Gift and Travel Filings, Foreign Travel Reports and Expenditures, and Legal Expense Funds.

For more background on the document, see this post, and for updates, I’m keeping notes on this page, from which future updates will likely be pulled.

-John  (start review)

foreword:
compiled by the Task Force on the Documentation of Congress of the Society of American Archivists Congressional Archivists Roundtable, coming from 1989’s “Understanding Congress: A Bicentennial Research Conference”.  “the fragmented nature of congressional primary source documentation” is partly responsible for the lack of scholarly writing on the legislative branch.  Report is a “study of the archival sources that document the operations of Congress.”

Preface:
“Because the documentation of Congress, in particular, most directly reveals the will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives, it is especially crucial to preserve evidence and information about the legislative process and make it accessible to the public.”  (gives great detail on problems with public access: “fragmented and geographically scattered; collections are often voluminous, of complex arrangement, inadequately indexed, and in poor physical condition; contents of many collections are uneven, with unexplained gaps in information; and repositories that receive these collections frequently lack the resources to provide state-of-the-art arrangement, description, and archival preservation.”  Project undertaken by the Task Force on Congressional Documentation of the Society of American Archivists’ Congressional Archivists Roundtable (that’s correctly transcribed).  “many of its suggestions will take years to be carried out; others can be effected immediately.”  “Among the most pressing needs are actions to improve the documentation of legislation, representation, congressional leadership, political activities, and programs of congressional support agencies.  Other recommendations are aimed at better documenting Congress’ relations and interaction with media, the executive and the judicial branches, lobbyists, and think tanks.  Finally, steps are suggested to improve documentation of the administration of Congress’ to fill gaps in the historical record through structured, coordinated oral history interview programs; and to improve the preservation of congressional sources.

Intro:
Report organized into congressional “functions”, “documentation”, and “recommendations”.  (apparently there’s a 1978 report from the National Study Commission on the Records and Documents of Federal Officials, which “recommended that office files and personal papers of members of Congress be legally designated as federal records with guaranteed public access after fifteen years” (this wasn’t implemented, but that report would be useful to find).  This report led to a 2 day conference, where they decided to publish a handbook on member records management.  1985 then saw a 2 day conference on documenting Congress, put on by the “Dirksen Congressional Center and the national Historical Publications and Records Commission” (another great report to find)  This conference led to the creation of the Congressional Archivists Roundtable of the Society of American Archivists (which, in turn, led to the current day 2008 Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress (link).  (The Congressional Archivists Roundtable appears to be defunct, perhaps being defunded in the mid 90’s?)  “the “importance” [of congressional material] had not led to a determined effort to systematically appraise and preserve a documentary record of Congress.” (page vi)  Problems archivists face: “the information explosion, the computer and telecommunications revolutions, insufficient resources for archival work as government and repository budgets tighten, and the lack of clearly defined long-term strategies and action plans to accomplish overall documentary objectives.”  The response to this is a strategy, which matches the organization of this document (functions, documentation, and recommendations).    The report then lists participants.

Page ix lists contents, listing the major topics to be examined: Institutional Setting, the Legislative Process, Representation, Political Activities, External Relations, Administration and Support, Research Use of Congressional Collections, Appendices, and Notes.

Summary Report and Recommendations
Repeats problem.  “Historical records do not simply materialize.”  They’re trying to balance the needs of three authorities: members and officials of Congress “individually responsible for the on-site management of the information that is collected and maintained in their offices”, NARA’s CLA, and the “literally hundreds of archival repositories across the country [that] preserve and provide access to the personal papers that are deposited in them by the members”.  This listing seems to me to be a result of their institutional setting, my take on the jurisdictions at work in congressional information access can be found here.

Major Findings:
1. “Congressional committees are relatively, although not uniformly, well documented, [but] there is great variation in the documentary quality of individual members’ collections”  This conclusion strikes me as a result of writing in the mid 1990s, when paying meaningful attention to legislative affairs through the Internet was rather impossible.  There was little difference then between “well documented” and “publicly available (online)”, where now that difference is quite clear.  What is “well documented”, like committee hearing transcripts, or the upcoming schedules for committee hearings, in the archival sense, can also be useless for those hoping to actually watch Congress in action, even in time for upcoming elections, which is a much lower bar than the near-real time awareness lobbyists need in order to be legislatively relevant.  Thus the report’s focus on member records, which were managed in a much less standard manner then.

2. The need for a “coordinated retention plan that meets the long-term needs of Congress” as applied to congressional support agencies.  The GAO was doing well, the (now defunct) Office of Technology Assessment and Government Printing Office had partial programs, and the CRS and CBO had none.  Again, no real mention of OTA and GAO providing public documentation while CRS does not.  Our expectations of finding things online has led to a new set of expectations.  (well, that and the expectation of equal access to publicly funded documents, since CRS reports are sold through private companies.)

3. Executive Branch and Judicial Branches are doing a rather good job, but are relevant here nevertheless.

4. Other sources they feel have been thitherto overlooked: nat’l, congressional, and individual campaign committees, political party organizations; and congressional member organizations and caucuses.  (still true, 16 years later)

5. Member documentary repositories are hard to use, recommend better practices here.

6. Member materials will be better processed if offices hire and train archivists, and keep up with documents processing.

The Report then launches into specific recommendations, lining up with the table of contents, but in summary form.

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.

First, a report summarizing lobbying reform measures:

Significant changes were made by Congress to the current lobbying laws, and to internal House and Senate rules on ethics and procedures, by the passage of S. 1, 110th Congress, and the adoption of H.Res. 6, 110th Congress. In the face of mounting public and congressional concern over allegations and convictions of certain lobbyists and public officials in a burgeoning “lobbying and gift” scandal, and with a recognition of legitimate concerns over undue influence and access of certain special interests to public officials, Congress has adopted stricter rules, regulations, and laws attempting to address these issues. This report examines the changes made to law and congressional rule in S. 1, 110th Congress, and changes adopted to internal House rules earlier in the Congress in H.Res. 6.

The other report is a brand new analysis of Iraq: Iraq: Post-Saddam Governance and Security.:

Operation Iraqi Freedom overthrew Saddam Hussein’s regime, but much of Iraq remains violent because of Sunni Arab resentment and a related insurgency, compounded by Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence that, in the judgment of many, constitutes a “civil war.” Mounting U.S. casualties and financial costs — without dramatic improvements in levels of violence or clear movement toward national political reconciliation among Iraq’s major communities — have intensified a debate within the United States over whether to reduce U.S. involvement without completely accomplishing initial U.S. goals. President Bush announced a new strategy on January 10, 2007 (“New Way Forward”) consisting of deployment of an additional 28,500 U.S. forces (“troop surge”) to help stabilize Baghdad and restive Anbar Province. The strategy is intended to provide security conditions conducive to Iraqi government action on a series of key reconciliation initiatives that are viewed as “benchmarks” of political progress.

While the majority side of the Senate Appropriations committee did include a brief review of their bill (as did their House counterpart), I’d like to give my impressions of the appropriations from the perspective of an advocate for public access and transparency, using the Senate report as a guide. (The Republican websites don’t feature any press releases, which isn’t surprising, given the minority’s smaller staff and budget, comparative lack of clout in controlling committee functioning, and their opportunity to add dissenting views to the report, as I discovered in reading the House report.)

Reading the actual report yields much greater detail about how our federal government views its own functions and prioritizes. Committee reports are carefully structured documents, largely in response to the specific requirements of House Rule XIII, governing the explicit disclosure of legal wording, and the production and availability of reports. Aside from raw statistical details comparing spending to the President’s budget requests (which the Leg. Branch subcommittees managed to stay below), the reports also afford an intimate view into the priorities and inner functions of the government.

The Senate report contains a similar admonishment against legislative branch waste, explaining the creation of an Inspector General for the Office of the Architect of the Capitol. (p. 3, page numbers as numbered on the report).

The report similarly touts the passage of S.1, defending their spending power while asserting the benefits of transparency:

The Committee believes trongly that Congress should make the decisions on how to allocate the people’s money. In order to improve transparency and accountability in the process or approving earmarks (as defined in S. 1) in appropriations measures, each Committee report includes, for each earmark…[the Member's name, the location of the recipient, and the purpose for each earmark.] (p. 4)

The report lists budgets and priorities for offices throughout the Senate, including the Office of Captioning Services, as authorized by Public Law 101-163. I wonder if the likely public domain status of these captions could be leveraged to help provide a text stream to accompany internet based legislative video, to help with section 508 (accessibility) concerns for members posting videos of themselves on their websites?

Budgets for each Senatorial office are posted, ranging from about $2 million to about $4 million, depending on the size of the population of each state and the increased travel expenses associated with more distant states.

Each separate committee and administrative office has a detailed budget; within these estimates one can see that one year of utilities for the Capitol costs about $64.4 million.

The Library of Congress gets about $577 Million, and also gets castigated for apparent poor budgeting (p. 35)…

The Committee continues to be concerned with the Library’s budget development process… The Committee recognizes improvements in the Library’s strategic planning efforts, but believes a better job needs to be done of setting priorities, recognizing budgetary constraints, and linking the budget to performance-based metrics.

The LOC is an essential American institution, controlling and maintaining much of the information and knowledge that permits Congress to function. The Congressional Research Service also gets singled out:

It has come to the Committee’s attention that CRS has been holding annual management retreats at expensive off-site locations… The Committee is also concerned that the Congressional Research Service often acts as if it were an independent agency, separate from the Library of Congress. CRS is in fact part of the Library of Congress, and its policies and procedures should reflect this fact. (p. 39)

Many of the report’s admonishments suggest strange issues or struggles whose origin is unclear to the observer. For example, the restriction of public travel and occupancy of the LOC “to the sidewalks and other paved surfaces” is rescinded (p. 49). I can only imagine what resulted in that particular rules change.

The Office of Technology Assessment come up in the Senate report again as well…

The Committee recommends funding of $750,000 and four full-time equivalent employees to establish a permanent technology assessment function in the Government Accountability Office. The Committee has decided not to establish a separate entity to provide independent technology assessment for the legislative branch owing to budget constraints… (p. 42)

The report goes into further detail about their plans for a revisited OTA (which was disbanded in the Gingrich revolution. Background about the Open House Project and the OTA is available here.

The report also mentions the FDLP program under the Office of Superintendent of Documents, describing the distribution process of government documents. (p. 42)

The amount of detail in appropriations reports is staggering, and Congress does a great service to anyone looking to understand where the government’s money is spent in providing detailed appropriations reports in human readable (non-legal) language.