House Launches Transparency Portal by Daniel Schuman.
From the post:
Making good on part of the House of Representative’s commitment to increase congressional transparency, today the House Clerk’s office launched http://docs.house.gov/, a one stop website where the public can access all House bills, amendments, resolutions for floor consideration, and conference reports in XML, as well as information on floor proceedings and more. Information will ultimately be published online in real time and archived for perpetuity.
The Clerk is hosting the site, and the information will primarily come from the leadership, the Committee on House Administration, the Rules Committee, and the Clerk’s office. The project has been driven by House Republican leaders as part of an push for transparency. Important milestones include the adoption of the new House Rules in January 2011 that gave the Committee on House Administration the power to establish standards for publishing documents online, an April 2011 letter from the Speaker and Majority Leader to the Clerk calling for better public access to House information, a Committee on House Administration hearing in June 2011 on modernizing information delivery in the House, a December 2011 public meeting on public access to congressional information, and finally the late December adoption of online publication standards.
Some immediate steps to take:
- Contact the House Clerk’s office to express your appreciation for their efforts.
- If you are a US citizen, contact your representatives to express your support for this effort and looking forward to more transparency.
- Write to your local TV/radio/newspaper to point out this important resource and express your interest. (Keep it real non-technical. Transparency = Good.)
- Write to your local school board/school, etc., to suggest they could use this as a classroom resource. (Offer to help as well.)
- Make use of the data and credit your source.
- Urge others to do the foregoing steps.
I have doubts about the transparency efforts but also think we should give credit where credit is due. A lot of people have worked very hard to make this much transparency possible so let’s make the best use of it we can.
[…] posting House Launches Transparency Portal I started to think about all the identity issues that such a resource raises. None of them new but […]
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