Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

October 19, 2016

Every Congressional Research Service Report – 8,000+ and growing!

Filed under: CRS,Library,Researchers — Patrick Durusau @ 8:20 pm

EveryCRSReport.com

From the homepage:

We’re publishing reports by Congress’s think tank, the Congressional Research Service, which provides valuable insight and non-partisan analysis of issues of public debate. These reports are already available to the well-connected — we’re making them available to everyone for free.

From the about page:

Congressional Research Service reports are the best way for anyone to quickly get up to speed on major political issues without having to worry about spin — from the same source Congress uses.

CRS is Congress’ think tank, and its reports are relied upon by academics, businesses, judges, policy advocates, students, librarians, journalists, and policymakers for accurate and timely analysis of important policy issues. The reports are not classified and do not contain individualized advice to any specific member of Congress. (More: What is a CRS report?)

Until today, CRS reports were generally available only to the well-connected.

Now, in partnership with a Republican and Democratic member of Congress, we are making these reports available to everyone for free online.

A coalition of public interest groups, journalists, academics, students, some Members of Congress, and former CRS employees have been advocating for greater access to CRS reports for over twenty years. Two bills in Congress to make these reports widely available already have 10 sponsors (S. 2639 and H.R. 4702, 114th Congress) and we urge Congress to finish the job.

This website shows Congress one vision of how it could be done.


What does EveryCRSReport.com include?

EveryCRSReport.com includes 8,255 CRS reports. The number changes regularly.

It’s every CRS report that’s available on Congress’s internal website.

We redact the phone number, email address, and names of virtually all the analysts from the reports. We add disclaimer language regarding copyright and the role CRS reports are intended to play. That’s it.

If you’re looking for older reports, our good friends at CRSReports.com may have them.

We also show how much a report has changed over time (whenever CRS publishes an update), provide RSS feeds, and we hope to add more features in the future. Help us make that possible.

To receive an email alert for all new reports and new reports in a particular topic area, use the RSS icon next to the topic area titles and a third-party service, like IFTTT, to monitor the RSS feed for new additions.

This is major joyful news for policy wonks and researchers everywhere.

A must bookmark and contribute to support site!

My joy was alloyed by the notice:

We redact the phone number, email address, and names of virtually all the analysts from the reports. We add disclaimer language regarding copyright and the role CRS reports are intended to play. That’s it.

The privileged, who get the CRS reports anyway, have that information?

What is the value in withholding it from the public?

Support the project but let’s put the public on an even footing with the privileged shall we?

August 6, 2016

Congressional Research Service Fiscal 2015 – Full Report List

Filed under: CRS,Government,Government Data,Open Access — Patrick Durusau @ 4:25 pm

Congressional Research Service Fiscal 2015

The Director’s Message:

From international conflicts and humanitarian crises, to immigration, transportation, and secondary education, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) helped every congressional office and committee navigate the wide range of complex and controversial issues that confronted Congress in FY2015.

We kicked off the year strongly, preparing for the newly elected Members of the 114th Congress with the tenth biannual CRS Seminar for New Members, and wrapped up 2015 supporting the transition to a new Speaker and the crafting of the omnibus appropriations bill. In between, CRS experts answered over 62,000 individual requests; hosted over 7,400 Congressional participants at seminars, briefings and trainings; provided over 3,600 new or refreshed products; and summarized over 8,000 pieces of legislation.

While the CRS mission remains the same, Congress and the environment in which it works are continually evolving. To ensure that the Service is well positioned to anticipate and meet the information and research needs of a 21st-century Congress, we launched a comprehensive strategic planning effort that has identified the most critical priorities, goals, and objectives that will enable us to most efficiently and effectively serve Congress as CRS moves into its second century.

Responding to the increasingly rapid pace of congressional business, and taking advantage of new technologies, we continued to explore new and innovative ways to deliver authoritative information and timely analysis to Congress. For example, we introduced shorter report formats and added infographics to our website CRS.gov to better serve congressional needs.

It is an honor and privilege to work for the U.S. Congress. With great dedication, our staff creatively supports Members, staff and committees as they help shape and direct the legislative process and our nation’s future. Our accomplishments in fiscal 2015 reflect that dedication.

All true but also true that the funders of all those wonderful efforts, taxpayers, have spotty and/or erratic access to those research goodies.

Perhaps that will change in the not too distant future.

But until then, perhaps a list of all the new CRS products in 2015, which runs from page 47 to page 124 may be of interest.

Not all entries are unique as they may appear under different categories.

Sadly the only navigation you are offered is by chunky categories like “Health” and “Law and Justice.”

Hmmm, perhaps that can be fixed, at least to some degree.

Watch for more CRS news this coming week.

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