Organizational realignments are often the reactionary responses to scandal (Credit Mobilier, Watergate), political struggle (the Cannon mutiny, Committee Chairs and civil rights), or changing technological expectations (1993 Committee on the Organization of Congress).

Congressional reform efforts are often contentious, political, and limited in participation, jurisdiction, and duration, which shouldn’t be a surprise, given the importance of legislatures’ independence generally.  Congress’s tendency to adapt in fits and spurts does lead to what can seem to be a shortsightedness, or deficit of attention (perhaps not a deficit, but a sporadic intermittent quality) which is filled in by the knowledge of long serving members and staff, legislative support agencies, lobbyists, and non-profits.  In short, the infrastructure of political knowledge and influence.  Some perennial challenges demand specialized knowledge and sustained attention, even if they require frequent legislative attention, as do the subjects of full committees or subcommittees.  For a full background on congressional advisory commissions, check out this CRS report, RS22725.

The Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress is one of these special congressional bodies, made up of political appointees, administrators, archivists, historians, and academic figures. They’re been meeting since 1991 to coordinate between the various agencies with a hand in the preservation of congressional records, under the authorization of Public Law 101-509.

Having grown out of a series of conferences, events, and speeches throughout the late seventies and eighties, the committee seems to have come of age just as the Internet was becoming congressionally relevant, making the commission an important counterpart to other agencies with technological jurisdiction, such as the Committee on House Administration, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, GPO, LOC, the CAO, Architect of the Capitol, or the Senate Rules Committee.  While their function is largely the advisory oversight and planning of Congress’s archival activities, the distinction between preserved archive and public database is only a matter of digitizating records and creating public access.  (“Only” may be an unfortunate phrase here, the National Archives and Records Administration’s yearly budget is in the hundreds of millions of dollars.)  While archiving may have been something that used to be directed at future generations or researchers, the Internet is transforming the struggles for effective archiving into the struggle for meaningful public access.  Among other things, an archive is the physical aspect of what should also be a public database.

This public database is being built.  The National Archives is building the Electronic Records Archives as discussed in today’s meeting by the Director of the Center for Legislative Archives, Richard Hunt.

Much of today’s meeting focused on different agencies’ reports on their outreach strategies for convincing members to take archiving their records seriously, by designating a repository for their records upon their retirement, adopting good documents management practices, or even by hiring an archivist (which was also a concern in their 1992 report.)  One committee chair reportedly responded to an attempt at archiving guidance by asking “what, am I dying or something?”

The Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate also reported on their recent endeavors, especially on the fifty percent increase in committee hearings during the first session of the 110th Congress, and on the challenges of implementing the requirements of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, which they endearingly referred to as “HLOGA” (pronounced huh-low-guh).

The main lesson of the morning for me was that disclosure and public information access are wrapped up with issues of records management and archiving. We’re working through the same administrative, political, and technological circumstances, on largely the same sets of information, and we have a great opportunity in the well coordinated work of the Advisory Committee, and the surprising receptiveness of its members.

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.

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 suggestion is that the archiving happen with greater frequency, perhaps coordinated in order to capture the greatest amount of material possible, and for those responsible for the Web Harvest to coordinate with the CAO, systems administrators, and vendors to be sure that the digital records management practices used in organizing member sites encourages easy crawling and archiving by NARA and CLA.

The House has a document laying out best practices for documents management for House offices; I wonder if the digital materials management should be expanded to include digital materials availability, perhaps including standards like sitemapping, in order to ensure the preservation of member sites?

My other suggestion is to increase the exposure of the captured sites, perhaps encouraging links from the bioguides, or current member sites, and to ensure that the collection itself is crawlable through search engine indexing practices.

I found Appendix A particularly interesting (page 24), laying out their guidelines for partnerships with businesses and non-profits who will be taking on some of the immense digitizing. The guidelines deal heavily with public access, intellectual property, metadata, and document certification issues, many of which I have only basic familiarity.

I assume that others will have opinions on how they’re proceeding, given the likely enormity of the project and the sheer importance of its subject matter. That they’re welcoming public input is heartening:

NARA takes its stewardship responsibility very seriously. We recognize that we are entrusted with the care of America’s documentary evidence, and that these materials are an invaluable public resource. We are seeking written comment on this draft through a Federal Register notice and announcement on our website, and will hold a public forum during the comment period. We will revise this plan as appropriate to incorporate public comment. The approved plan will be posted on our website at www.archives.gov.