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 report gives detailed criticism and praise for individual congressional Web sites, each year, and praise from CMF is well respected on the Hill.

After returning earlier this week from a trip to London to meet with mysociety.org, I’m starting to catch up on everything we’ve been up to.

Whips and Structured Data: For one, I’ve reached out to leadership on both sides to hopefully start a discussion about using whip publications as a resource for indexing votes to party positions for research purposes.  The parties have a clear interest in having their position be easily determined (even long after the fact), and structured data seems to be the best solution.

There are probably two levels of data coordination here: the first is to publish whip packs as RSS (which neither side is doing at the moment)–this makes the content accesible without needing to screenscrape.  Second, the party positions for each bill should be indexed to each bill.  I’m not sure whether there is a single format for this purpose (I suspect one of Josh Tauberer’s conventions may be the de facto standard?), but indexing would make the task of linking legislation back to the party line much easier.  (I should add that we’re lucky to have public whip notices at all, this information is unavailable in the UK.)  Here’s an illustration of someone trying to derive the party line by poster Democratic Luntz at daily kos (part of a labor-intensive series), which also ties into the usefullness of structured data in posting votes information.

Preservation: Next, I’ve been on a mission to research the Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress.  This group meets occasionally, and features membership like the Secretary of the Senate, the Clerk of the House, the House Archivist, and others.  This seems to me to be the best example of cross-departmental cooperation, which is reassuring given how important it is to access such fundamentally important information.

They frequently reference a document from 1992, written in participation with a community of archivists, on documenting Congress.  The document is S.Pub 102-20, which I’ve spent a great deal of time trying to access for the last few weeks.  Research librarians at the LOC first suggested that S.Pub wasn’t actually a class of document, and were later able to send me a detailed citation.  A visit to the LOC then led me on a search through the main reading room, the microform room, and then to a delayed visit to the law library.  Everyone was really helpful and knowledgable, I must say, but I do have to remark that I’m amused that a document about making congressional information public can be so difficult to find, even for the LOC.  Is cross departmental cooperation so unusual?

In any case, I’ve finally gotten to read S.Pub 102-20, and it’s really the holy grail of congressional information surveys, delivering 120 pages of detailed analysis and recommendations, remarking on the nascent internet and the state of documents availability for every aspect of Congress, a survey I wish I had had a year ago.  I’ll be scanning the document from microfilm over the next few weeks, and will post it whenever I’m able to.  (If anyone has access to it in a more accessible format, I’d be very grateful.)

This work fits in closely with the idea that information availability is more than an abstract idea about good government, but really a necessary condition for meaningful deliberation; the societal equivalent of an operational memory, whose function is impaired by a technology that develops before archiving practices can keep up.

I’ve got several more things to write about, but that’s probably more than enough for one email.  More soon.

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.

First, Minority Leader John Boehner has a twitter badge up on his Republican Leader website. This allows him to post status updates on his whereabouts to a very specific degree. While it appears to only have been updated once (in reference to the House vote counting dustup), he should be applauded for engaging with technology that has such immense potential for facilitating public disclosure. (The only other search results for “site:www.house.gov twitter” are for George Miller and the Republican Study Committee.)
Second, via Speaker Pelosi’s blog The Gavel, Rep. George Miller (Chair of the Committee on Education and Labor) has posted a map of workplace deaths in the US, apparently mapping ten percent of workplace deaths from 2007. As google maps and other mashups get easier to manipulate and embed, we should expect to see this sort of data presentation crop up more often.

Imagine if all federal agencies had APIs that encouraged this sort of creative statistical presentation, and all members of Congress had the staff and desire to start making more of what they do meaningfully public.

Today, George Miller announced a new campaign, called “Ask George,” calling on citizens to send videos, through video sharing sites like YouTube, to Miller’s office regarding the War in Iraq. Miller’s office describes “Ask George” as a “distributed, virtual town hall”. Miller also suggests that participants in this conversation “tag” their videos “askgeorge” so that his office can go and find the questions. This way, Miller is the one going out to seek the conversation rather than the citizen or constituent who is usually the one seeking out the congressman.

This is exactly the type of activity that allows members to communicate more effectively with their constituents, and Americans in general, about the issues that matter. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) asks people to send YouTubed questions for him to answer, to which he responds in kind. Miller’s use of YouTube to engage in a conversation with citizens goes a step further though. He has worked with Splash Cast to create a Facebook application for the “Ask George” campaign and will be hosting an “Ask George” Facebook page for citizens to discuss with the congressman, and amongst each other, the War in Iraq.

This is by all accounts the first time that a member of Congress, in their official capacity, has gone to a social networking site to connect with citizens. The innovative use of social networking and video sharing sites by Miller’s office is astounding considering the restrictions that members are told they have to abide by. It’s time for more members of Congress to start communicating and connecting to people online as George Miller is. The barriers created by congressional Web use rules will cease to exist if members and their staff simply ignore them.

George Miller is one member of Congress leading the way in using Web 2.0 technologies to connect with constituents and citizens. This only enhances his ability to do his job. It’s time for more members to lead with him.