House Passes Historic FOIA Bill, Obama Expected to Sign

Today the House of Representatives passed the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, which passed the Senate in March; President Obama indicated through a spokesman he will sign the measure. [Update: President Obama signed it into law on June 30.] The legislation is the second major transparency bill of the Obama administration — the other is the DATA Act, a federal spending transparency bill. The legislation will become law before July 4th, 2016, the 50th anniversary of the enactment of the original Freedom of Information Act.

The FOIA bill has four major provisions. First, it writes into law a presumption of openness, so future Dick Cheney’s cannot use implausible excuses to withhold information. Second, the bill establishes a 25-year sunset on the administration’s ability to invoke the “deliberative process” privilege to withhold information. Third, it strengthens the FOIA ombudsman. Finally, it pushes FOIA into the digital age through the creation of an online portal. Continue reading “House Passes Historic FOIA Bill, Obama Expected to Sign” →

House Beats Back Effort to Weaken Office of Congressional Ethics, But It Was Ugly

On Friday rank-and-file members of the House of Representatives beat back a last-minute amendment by Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM) to reduce proposed funding for the Office of Congressional Ethics by nearly 9 percent. In the end 137 representatives voted in favor of the cut and 270 opposed, with Republicans more-or-less evenly split and nearly all Democrats opposed. This came only after a voice vote where the chair declared the measure to cut funds had passed [see transcript]; only a roll call vote, which forces members to individually declare where they stand, resulted in most members voting no.

The Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) is an independent watchdog established by the House of Representatives in the wake of several scandals, including the Jack Abramoff lobbying corruption scandal and the Rep. Foley House page sexual misconduct scandal, that helped bring Democrats to power in 2007. Its purpose is to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by members of the House of Representatives and it is empowered to start investigations on its own initiative or on a tip from anyone. When OCE determines that wrongdoing may have occurred, it refers the matter to the House Ethics Committee, which is supposed to investigate. Continue reading “House Beats Back Effort to Weaken Office of Congressional Ethics, But It Was Ugly” →

House of Reps’ Spending Info Is Now Online as Data

Yesterday the House of Representatives began publishing its spending data online as a spreadsheet (and continued publishing it online as a PDF file).

As Josh Tauberer explains in Open Government Data: The Book, the compilation of spending data, known as the Statements of Disbursements, includes “how much congressmen and their staffs are paid, what kinds of expenses they have, and who they are paying for those services.” While it does not contain all the nitty-gritty details, the Disbursements data can tell you a lot about the health and activities of Congress.

Yesterday’s publication includes the full dataset for the first quarter of 2016 in a 17.8 MB CSV file, and a smaller 502 KB summary file in CSV format. The information is also published as a PDF, which it has been since November 2009. Continue reading “House of Reps’ Spending Info Is Now Online as Data” →

Making Congress Slightly More Capable: Appropriators OK COLAs for House Personal Office Staff

In a heartening development for anyone who cares about Congress as an institution, today the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee agreed by voice vote to an amendment offered by Rep. Farr (D-CA) to increase funding for member personal offices by 1.5%. This modest increase will help provide funds that can be used to give staff a long-deserved cost of living adjustment.

Here is the bill considered by the committee and the committee report. The text of the amendment is not yet available. We submitted testimony to the committee with a number of recommendations for action. Continue reading “Making Congress Slightly More Capable: Appropriators OK COLAs for House Personal Office Staff” →

House Appropriators Turn Back Public Access to CRS Reports, but Not Without a Fight

Today the House of Representatives’ Appropriations Committee debated two amendments that would make Congressional Research Service reports more equitably available to the public. The effort to release the reports was led by Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) and Rep. Scott Rigell (R-VA).

Here is the bill considered by the committee and the committee report. We submitted testimony to the committee with a number of recommendations for action and we strongly support public access to CRS reports. Continue reading “House Appropriators Turn Back Public Access to CRS Reports, but Not Without a Fight” →

House Publishes Its Rules, Jefferson’s Manual, & More Online as Structured Data

Today the Government Publishing Office published the House Manual — which contains Rules of the House of Representatives, Jefferson’s Manual, and other important legislative documents — online in a structured data format on GitHub. GPO did so pursuant to direction from the House Rules Committee, which was acting in accordance with the rules package passed at the beginning of the 114th Congress, which declares:

The House shall continue efforts to broaden the availability of legislative documents in machine readable formats in the One Hundred Fourteenth Congress in furtherance of the institutional priority of improving public availability and use of legislative information produced by the House and its committees.

Continue reading →

2016 Legislative Data & Transparency Conference Set for June 21

The Committee on House Administration will host its fifth annual Legislative Data and Transparency Conference on June 21, from 9–4 in the U.S. Capitol.

Free registration is now open. Per the invite:

The #LDTC16 brings individuals from Legislative Branch agencies together with data users and transparency advocates to foster a conversation about the use of legislative data — addressing how agencies use technology well and how they can use it better in the future.

The conferences are an amazing opportunity to engage with internal and external congressional stakeholders on making Congress more transparent and opening up legislative information. Perhaps even more importantly, they have become a place where everyone works together to find a way to make Congress work better and become more effective.

We expect to co-host a happy hour after the conference, location TBD.

What was it like in previous years? Well, here are write-ups from previous conferences:

Cross-posted from the Congressional Data Coalition blog.

— Written by Daniel Schuman

A Guide for Appropriators on Opening Up Congressional Information and Making Congress Work Better

For the fifth year in a row, today members of the Congressional Data Coalition submitted testimony to House Appropriators on ways to open up legislative information. The bipartisan coalition focused on tweaking congressional procedures and releasing datasets that, in the hands of third parties, will strengthen Congress’ capacity to govern.

The testimony took note of notable successes:

We commend the House of Representatives for its ongoing efforts to open up congressional information. We applaud the House of Representatives for publishing online and in a structured data format bill text, status, and summary information — and are pleased the Senate has joined the effort. We commend the ongoing work on the Amendment Impact Program and efforts to modernize how committee hearings are published. We look forward to the release of House Rules and House Statement of Disbursements in structured data formats.

We would also like to recognize the growing Member and Congressional staff public engagement around innovation, civic technology and public data issues. From the 18 Members and dozens of staff participating in last year’s nationwide series of #Hack4Congress civic hacking events to the Second Congressional Hackathon co-sponsored by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, there is a growing level of enthusiastic support inside the institution for building a better Congress with better technology and data. Moreover, the House Ethics Committee’s recent approval of open source software and the launch of the Congressional Open Source Caucus means good things are in store for 2016.

This groundswell of support cuts across all ages, geographic areas and demographics, both inside and outside Congress. We are excited for the House’s 2016 legislative data and transparency conference and appreciate the quarterly public meetings of the Bulk Data Task Force.

And made recommendations on where the House should focus next or what kinds of data should be released:

● Extend and Broaden the Bulk Data Task Force
● Release the Digitized Historical Congressional Record and Publish Future Editions in XML
● Publish all Congress.gov Information in Bulk and in a Structured Data Format
● Include All Public Laws in Congress.gov
● Publish Calendar of Committee Activities in Congress.gov
● Complete and Auditable Bill Text
● CRS Annual Reports and Indices of CRS Reports
● House and Committee Rules
● Publish Bioguide in XML with a Change Log
● Constitution Annotated
● House Office and Support Agency Reports

Signatories included: Center for Data Innovation, Data Coalition, Demand Progress, Free Government Information, GovTrack.Us, New America’s Open Technology Institute, OpenGov Foundation, OpenTheGovernment.Org, R Street Institute, and the Sunlight Foundation.

Read the testimony here. A primer on the work of the Congressional Data Coalition and its testimony over the last half decade is here.

— Written by Daniel Schuman

Empowering The House Intelligence Committee to be Smarter

How do you help Members of the House Intelligence Committee makes the best decisions about matters concerning national security? In part, it’s by making sure that they receive the best staff support possible. That’s why a bipartisan coalition of 16 organizations sent a letter Friday in support of a congressional request for high security clearances for staffers. Let me explain….

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (a.k.a. House Intelligence Committee or HPSCI) has its staff hired by the chair and ranking member of the committee. Because of the nature of intelligence committee work, public and outside experts are less able to render assistance than with other committees.

As a result, members of Congress rely more than usual on their staff to provide confidential advice and assistance — and those staff must have the highest levels of clearance to be useful. It is only with top clearances that it becomes possible to ask the probing questions of intelligence briefers and to have fully informed conversations with Members of Congress. While committee staff can be useful, personal office staff play a unique and distinct role as compared to committee staff in fulfilling this need for individualized assistance.

That is why, in part, that each Senator who serve on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (a.k.a. Senate Intelligence Committee or SSCI) hires a staffer who is responsible to that Senator, can obtain the highest level of clearance, and provides support concerning the work of SSCI.

Providing members of HPSCI with personal office staffers with top security clearances creates parity with the Senate and also expands the pool of staff a Member of Congress with intelligence responsibilities can rely upon.

All this can be accomplished through $125,000 in additional funding to the House Sergeant at Arms to allow personal office designees of members who serve on HPSCI to be able to undergo Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information Security (TS/SCI) investigations.

It’s not just us that thinks this would be useful. Eight Members of the House Intelligence Committee, coordinated by Rep. Jackie Speier, requested that appropriators make these funds available to the Sergeant at Arms.

Some may fret that providing 20-odd congressional staffers high clearance may pose security problems, but considering more than 660,000 executive branch employees have top secret clearance and more than 500,000 contractors have top secret clearance, I suspect the real danger comes from a lack of oversight, not an empowered Congress.

— Written by Daniel Schuman

House to Address Spending Improprieties and Improve Reporting

Tomorrow, the Committee on House Administration will hold a markup on a resolution that governs member spending. As Politico explains, the “sweeping changes” to how Members of Congress spend money was prompted by stories on former Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL), who reportedly misspent public money redecorating his office, filing inappropriate requests for travel reimbursements, and other misdeeds. Shock is under federal investigation.

The House formed a special task force, composed of Reps. Rodney Davis (R-IL) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), to tighten up reporting and disclosure rules. Demand Progress and representatives from other organizations were consulted by the task force as it considered recommendations.

If enacted, the resolution would:

Travel

Allow private/charter flights only when no commercial is alternative.
Prohibit private/charter flights between D.C. and anywhere else, without prior written authorization.
Permit private/charter flights between non-D.C. locations, but require written approval if the cost for the entire itinerary exceeds $7,500.
Set maximum reimbursement rates for privately-owned and privately-leased vehicles. Limit reimbursement to vehicles owned by the Member or employee.

Office

Require prior written approval for decorating expenses or furniture that exceeds $5,000 per item.

Reporting and Compliance

Instruct CAO to submit a proposal by Nov. 21 to publish House expenditure reports as digital spreadsheets, replacing the current PDF scan of tabular data. (This is a big deal for watchdogs!)
Instruct CAO to submit a proposal to retire “travel subsistence” as a catch-all reporting code, hopefully to be replaced with finer-grained reporting.
Require CAO to report on its internal controls and training regarding voucher reimbursements by Nov. 21.

We are particularly excited that the Committee will consider — and hopefully approve — the publication of House Expenditure Reports in an electronic format. Instead of publishing hundreds of pages of tables as a giant PDF, the House would now publish that information as a digital spreadsheet. (Of course, the House’s decision a few years back to publish the information online at all, even as a PDF, was a step forward.) This will allow watchdogs and others to easily review and analyze spending information.

We are still digesting the other proposals, but they are a welcome improvement. We commend the hard work of Reps. Davis and Lofgren and look forward to tomorrow’s meeting.

— Written by Daniel Schuman