The Open House Project from The Sunlight Foundation

Recommendation Checklist

The following is a list of the precise recommendations in our report.

Legislation Database—publish legislative data in structured formats

  • “Structured databases” of the status of legislation, the roster of Congress, committee membership, and congressional district ZIP codes should be made available to the public to the extent that such databases already exist privately within the Capitol
  • THOMAS should provide permanent links to all documents, in an obvious way, to enable Web researchers to directly refer to these documents
  • GPO should lower or abolish its fee for downloading the base text of legislation files (the “Daily Billsâ€? product)

    • Preserving Congressional Information—protect congressional information through archiving and distribution

  • Establish standards for web content regarding preservation, including using only open, DRM-free, and operating-system-neutral file formats rather than proprietary or platform-locked formats
  • Reject licensing restrictions on the use and reuse of congressional information and explore the preservation and redistribution of copyrighted materials that are incorporated into government information products
  • Implementing digital hashes or signatures to verify preserved content, and time stamps and versions to track object creation and its relationship to other versions of the same document
  • Deliver content directly to GPO and to FDLP libraries using an appropriate digital deposit technology, and establish a centralized message system for communication among preservationists and between preservationists and the Congress

    • Congressional Committees—recognize committees as a public resource by making committee information available online

  • The House should follow the Senate’s lead and adopt a rule requiring all House committees to post records of their proceedings online. The records should be timely, accurate and archived.
  • Develop standards for committees that cover what committee documents are expected to be posted online, how to better explain their legislative role to citizens, and data standards to allow for the dissemination and aggregation of committee schedules
  • Committees should be required to post their recorded votes, in a structured data format, online

    • Congressional Research Service—share non-partisan research beyond Congress

  • A publicly accessible database of a selection of CRS written products should be created, with suitable policy respecting the needs of Members of Congress to request reports privately, the privacy of report authors, and the treatment of copyrighted materials included in reports.

    • Member Web-Use Restrictions—permit members to take full advantage of internet resources

  • Guidelines governing Members of Congress’s use of Web sites and e-mail should be updated to reflect the current nature of Internet use, allowing for a more free-flowing conversation between constituents and their representatives online

    • Citizen Journalism Access—grant House access to non-traditional journalists

  • The speaker of the House and the Rules Committee should create an Online Media Gallery, a new press gallery, which would be responsible for establishing rules that are pertinent and applicable to its members

    • The Office of the Clerk of the House—serve as a source for digital disclosure information

  • Improve the quality of lobbying and other disclosure rules by offering more guidance
  • Require disclosure reports to be filed electronically, using common identification codes for related databases, publishing all data from disclosure reports in a structured, non-proprietary database, and making data available free of charge and in a timely manner

    • The Congressional Record—maintain the veracity of a historical document

  • While still providing space for extended remarks, procedures should be updated to ensure that the Congressional Record can be used to ascertain what has actually been said on the floor.
  • The Joint Committee on Printing should be directed (and funded) to uphold standards of accuracy, to educate members and staff about updated procedures and to publish the Record in a manner that clearly distinguishes extended remarks from words that were actually spoken.

    • Congressional Video—create open video access to House proceedings

  • All Congressional floor proceedings and committee hearings should be made available to the public over the Internet in video form.
  • Both live and archived video streams should be downloadable, in high- and low-quality format, for reuse and remixing by the public, in open data formats
  • Video metadata, including transcripts, timestamps at regular intervals, and, potentially, additional coding of speakers, segments, and subjects should be included
  • User-friendly video players for live and archived videos should be available on congressional Web sites for web users

    • Coordinating Web Standards—commit to technology reform as an administrative priority

  • Establish a lasting body to promote good use of the Internet in the interests of transparency, and to coordinate web standards within each chamber, and to facilitate the reuse of web standards between the chambers and in other components of the legislative branch
  • Include the public as advisors to this lasting body

    • 3 Comments

    3 responses so far ↓

    • Richard Staggenborg, MD // Sep 30, 2007 at 12:53 pm

      I hope that your efforts will be helpful for those with the time and willingness to try and keep tabs on congressional action on critical issues based on first hand, real time information. If nothing else, it will remove one barrier from the press in pursuing these issues and that is reason enough to support the effort.

    • Marge Phelps // Nov 3, 2007 at 4:14 pm

      Well done! We need to make every viable and reasonable effort to ensure that our government remains one of, for and by the people. Sadly, the dangers of a shadow government are real enough to cause concern.

    • Andrea Sea Namaste // Nov 5, 2007 at 10:24 am

      I applaud your recommendations for an Open House, and hope that my Senators and Representative will support legislation, and I will write them and urge them to support it.

      However, I cannot take the pledge, because there are so many other important issues that I still might vote against my incumbent representatives if they don’t straighten up.

      For example, Feinstein voted to allow warrantless wiretapping, in violation of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution. So even if she supports your Open House legislation, I will still vote against her if she doesn’t rectify her error related to the FISA legislation and defending the Constitution.

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