Demand Progress and Cause of Action filed a petition urging the government to enforce a Bush-era executive order to make earmarks transparent. While the House and the Senate recently prohibited the insertion of earmarks — directed spending toward a particular project — into legislative documents, members of Congress, often at the behest of special pleaders, use letters, emails, phone calls, and personal visits to pressure agency staff to make funding decisions in favor of favorite businesses or pet projects.
The executive order does not prohibit these communications, but it would drag them into the daylight. An investigation by Cause of Action, described in the petition, shows how the Obama administration allowed the order to fall into desuetude. We believe spending decisions should be made on the merits and in the sunshine.
The executive order, should the administration choose to issue regulations through the Office of Management and Budget to enforce it, is simple. It requires departments and agencies to make available to the public all written and oral communications concerning earmarks, and all discretionary funds when the agency is pressured to give favorable treatment to an entity. It also affirms that agencies may not allocate discretionary funds in response to congressional requests unless the determination is made on merit and the request is publicly-available.
This falls in line with the administration’s early ethics-related efforts. The economic stimulus and financial bailout both contained novel provisions that added clever, new approaches to curbing undue influence. Indeed, the administration made efforts to revive the executive order, only to eventually desist.
We believe that earmark requests, no matter the form, should be transparent to the public.That means the public should see who made the request, the nature of the request, and the reasoning behind it. This sunshine should deter inappropriate special pleading and close a significant loophole whereby special interests exert undue influence.
A final note. There are a few prominent people who seem to long for the era of secret earmarks, backroom deals, and so on. They believe that a little honest graft and backroom smoke is what kept the political system running. This is nonsense. I challenge anyone to read this interview with Lyndon Johnson’s bag man, Bobby Baker, conducted by the Senate historian, and remain enamored with yesteryear trading of sex for votes, literal buying of votes with bags of unmarked bills distributed on the Senate floor, and the like.
The truth is there is plenty of room for members of Congress to have quiet conversations. There are plenty of opportunities for members of Congress to trade favors and work things out. But some activities should be beyond the pale, and others should be visible to the American people. We have a right to see how, and why, the government spends our tax dollars. This executive order will help do that.
GPO and the Library of Congress Should Collaborate with the Public
At a meeting in April, the Government Publishing Office announced its collaboration with the Library of Congress to digitize all bound volumes of the Congressional Record from 1873–1998. The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress.
The digitization project is pursuant to a 2010 Joint Committee on Printing letter. GPO explained at the April meeting that it had digitized all of the volumes and the “[Library Services and Content Management business unit] was in the acquisitions process for the next step of reviewing the digital content and creating descriptive metadata.”
GPO and the Library should release the digitized volumes now. Even without metadata, the Congressional Record could be searched and put to other uses. Other digitization projects concerning documents held by the Library have taken years while descriptive metadata was created. By contrast, a volunteer-led effort to create descriptive metadata for the Statutes of Large took a matter of months and cost the government nothing.
The National Archives has undertaken similar kinds of projects to what I am proposing. The Archive’s Innovation Hub provides a space for the public to transcribe documents, tag documents, and scan documents and holdings. More information is available at the Citizen Archivist Dashboard.
It is possible the Library/GPO could view this as violating a rule against the public giving gifts to the agency. However, so long as the information is shared publicly with everyone — which is the point of metadata — it would not be a gift to anyone. Similar logic likely underpins the House’s recent decision on the use of Open Source, the White House’s Open Data policy, and the Archive’s collaborative efforts with the public.
I am sure there are benefits to an internal, government-only process … but why hold up public access? We can do both. A collaborative effort around metadata would provide an opportunity for GPO and the Library to engage with the public and to work to make important public documents publicly available. At a minimum, releasing the documents to the public would allow the everyone to collaborate on this effort outside of any limitations on the Library or GPO, perhaps to the immense public benefit of everyone.
Select Recommendations from the 9/11 Commission Report
On the fourteen anniversary of 9/11, we must remember not just the day, but the lessons we must — but still have failed — to learn. Here are select recommendations from the 9/11 Commission Report.
Limited, Transparent Government
The burden of proof for retaining a particular governmental power should be on the executive, to explain (a) that the power actually materially enhances security and (b) that there is adequate supervision of the executive’s use of the powers to ensure protection of civil liberties. If the power is granted, there must be adequate guidelines and oversight to properly confine its use.
• • •
As the President determines the guidelines for information sharing among government agencies and by those agencies with the private sector, he should safeguard the privacy of individuals about whom information is shared.
• • •
Finally, to combat the secrecy and complexity we have described, the overall amounts of money being appropriated for national intelligence and to its component agencies should no longer be kept secret. Congress should pass a separate appropriations act for intelligence, defending the broad allocation of how these tens of billions of dollars have been assigned among the varieties of intelligence work.
Just Policies
The U.S. government must define what the message is, what it stands for. We should offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors.
• • •
A comprehensive U.S. strategy to counter terrorism should include economic policies that encourage development, more open societies, and opportunities for people to improve the lives of their families and to enhance prospects for their children’s future.
• • •
The United States should engage its friends to develop a common coalition approach toward the detention and humane treatment of captured terrorists. New principles might draw upon Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions on the law of armed conflict.
System of Checks and Balances
Congressional oversight for intelligence — and counterterrorism — is now dysfunctional. Congress should address this problem.
Today 40 Organizations Wrote to Congress
to Let Them Know
We live in the information age, but all information is not equal when it comes to policymaking. Our public debates are dominated by talking heads and special interests and heralded by news reports that are brief, superficial, and unrevealing.
We need better access to thoughtful
discussions of important issues.
The Congressional Research Service provides nonpartisan policy research and analysis to congress. As part of its duties, CRS produces many research products, including 3,500 non-confidential reports annually. While many reports eventually become available to the general public, the process privileges some people over others. Often times only those with insider expertise know how or where to find the reports. Companies that collect the reports often charge high fees for access. And many people rely on superseded reports, unaware that CRS has issued an updated version.
Companies that collect the reports often charge high fees for access. And many people rely on superseded reports, unaware that CRS has issued an updated version. Access should not depend on insider knowledge or substantial financial resources.
Widespread access to CRS reports is a public good.
CRS reports inform the public about important issues congress may be considering. In part, that is why congress frequently publishes reports on congressional websites, in committee documents, and provides them in response to constituent requests. CRS reports play a role in public debate. For example, over the last decade CRS reports were cited in 190 federal court opinions and in 45 New York Times articles.
Wider, fairer dissemination would provide
even greater value for the $100 million
the American people spend annually to fund CRS.
In fact, comparable reports to congress prepared by other legislative agencies routinely are published online.
To be clear, not all CRS products should be available to the public. Members of congress must feel comfortable asking for advice. Consequently, research and analysis provided directly to an office at the request of a member or committee must be kept confidential unless the office decides to release it. By contrast, CRS reports are written with the near certain knowledge they eventually will become available to the general public.
It is time for Congress to make sure all non-confidential CRS reports are published online.
Starting in 2011 and every two years afterward, the White House has drawn up an open government national action plan that is intended to contain specific, measurable open government commitments. The planning process is an outgrowth of the administration’s open government initiative, which kicked off in 2009 when agencies were first required to create open government plans, but takes place on an international scale. More than 65 countries are creating plans as part of the open government partnership.
Create a proactive disclosure playbook, which provides guidance to agencies on how to identify datasets and other information ready for immediate online publication.
Follow through on the commitment to create a standard set of agency regulations governing the FOIA process.
Improve public disclosure of agency reports to Congress.
Examine how Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act often impedes online publication of FOIA requests.
Lobbying and Influence
Use modern methods to collect and publish data about foreign lobbyists.
Significantly improve disclosure around lobbying efforts aimed at OIRA, which oversees major agency rulemakings.
Financial Transparency
Public agency Congressional Budget Justifications, which describe agency plans in plain language at a high level of detail, on the White House’s budget page in modern formats.
Improve disclosure of funding information for the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy, which coordinates FOIA policy.
Gather better data on which FOIA fees are collected.
Rule of Law
Proactive disclosure of more opinions by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which often are de facto law for agencies.
Government Operations
Create a machine-readable organization chart for the federal government.
Improve how the government creates and collects data through forms.
Provide better information on USAJobs, the federal employment website, including greater detail about telework and the actual employment location.
Create a free alternative to DUNs.
Access to Information
Public Disclosure Playbook — Issue Guidelines on Proactive Disclosure
Just as OMB created a public participation playbook, it should create a public disclosure playbook containing recommendations on processes agencies should follow to determine how to better proactive disclosure information. Agencies should be consulted on setting up the process. To help prioritize, agencies should look at requests made through the Freedom of Information Act, via other request-based systems (i.e., specialized forms for a particular dataset or document), and information regularly disclosed by public affairs and congressional relations offices.
Categories of information to consider for proactive release include: commercial (business-related), current events (relevant to journalists), ethics (relevant to government watchdogs, such as lobbying, ethics waivers, etc.), agency operations, and datasets (paper versions are disclosed to the public but the underlying dataset must be FOIA’d). More detailed recommendations are available here.
Better Disclosure of Agency Reports to Congress
Federal agencies are required to provide thousands of reports to Congress. Many of those reports are required to be published online; many other are available through FOIA. However, there is no central location for these reports — whether by agency or across the government. Each agency should have a dedicated webpage where all reports are published chronologically in a searchable, sortable, downloadable format. In addition. OMB should gather all executive branch reports and publish them on one central website — ideally the White House budget page. This will facilitate information discovery about executive branch activities, encourage the sharing of best practices, aid the creation of dashboards, and lead to a reduction in redundant reports.
Unified FOIA Regulations
In the Second National Action Plan, the United States committed to developing common FOIA regulations and practices for federal agencies. While some initial work was done last year, the Justice Department-led effort of creating a set of common FOIA regulations and practices appears to have stalled. A coalition of organizations released draft recommendations on what those regulations should look like. DOJ’s Office of Information Policy should restart the process and issue the common regulations.
FOIA and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act
There is significant confusion around the extent to which Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act prohibits agencies from posting information online. A memorandum or other document that details how the law is intended to work should be released to the public. In addition, DOJ should investigate the extent to which Section 508 is preventing the online publication of documents, what steps are necessary to remove roadblocks, and how agencies may collaborate with the public to meet the needs of full disclosure as well as the legal requirements.
Lobbying and Influence
Modernize Foreign Agents Registration Act Data Collections and Reporting
During the campaign, candidate Obama pledged to “create a centralized Internet database of lobbying reports … in a searchable, sortable, downloadable format.” While persons who lobby on behalf of domestic entities have their information published in this way, reporting practices for lobbyists for foreign entities have not been similarly modernized. The FARA database still permits registrants to submit paper documents and it publishes those documents as PDFs. This is in tension with the President’s call for transparency and obscures the useful information contained in the reports. Transparency advocates spend an inordinate amount of effort trying to transform these paper files into a searchable, sortable, downloadable database.
As part of its third Open Government Plan, the Department of Justice committed “to review the FARA website and electronic filing system, while soliciting reasonable and concrete suggestions and feedback from the public, and will work to make feasible and appropriate modifications to the database. Throughout this process, the Department will specifically investigate collecting and publishing registration information as structured data in a machine-readable format.”
It is time to require collection and publication of registration information as structured data. The Department of Justice should require all filings be made in an electronic format where the information can easily flow into a machine-processable digital format. In turn, that information should be released to the public in bulk as structured data so that the data it contains may be searched and sorted. To the extent the Justice Department has already transformed the information contained in the filings into an electronic database, that information should be published as well. Until filings are required in electronic formats, the Justice Department should publish data from all future FARA filings in bulk in a searchable, sortable, downloadable format. (We know it is possible.)
OIRA Lobbying Transparency
OIRA plays a central role in reviewing regulations. Executive Order 12866 and Disclosure Memo-B (2001) instantiate requirements to show how OIRA has affected a rulemaking and how OIRA has been lobbied by those seeking to alter the course of its deliberations. Multiple GAO and CRS reports, however, indicate that OIRA has not fully complied with its transparency requirements.
Defining the transparency requirements applicable to the agencies and OIRA in Executive Order 12866 in such a way that they include not only the formal review period, but also the informal review period when OIRA says it can have its most important impact on agencies’ rules.
Reexamining OIRA’s current policy that only documents exchanged by OIRA branch chiefs and above need to be disclosed because most of the documents that are exchanged while rules are under review at OIRA are exchanged between agency staff and OIRA desk officers.
Establishing procedures whereby either OIRA or the agencies disclose the reason why rules are withdrawn from OIRA review.
Defining the types of “substantive” changes during the OIRA review process that agencies should disclose as including not only changes made to the regulatory text but also other, non-editorial changes that could ultimately affect the rules’ application (for example, explanations supporting the choice of one alternative over another and solicitations of comments on the estimated benefits and costs of regulatory options).
Instructing agencies to put information about changes made in a rule after submission for OIRA’s review and those made at OIRA’s suggestion or recommendation in the agencies’ public rulemaking dockets, and to do so within a reasonable period after the rules have been published.
Encouraging agencies to use “best practice” methods of documentation that clearly describe those changes.
We welcome OIRA’s recent effort to electronically publish information about lobbying activities. We hope OIRA will move to make this information available in bulk, or at a minimum, through an API.
We also agree with some recommendations made in a Center for Progressive Reform report, issued after reviewing all OIRA meetings between October 2001 and June 2011. In particular:
That a rule proposed by an agency, both prior and after OIRA review, should be publicly posted and in such a format as to permit a determination of what has changed.
If OIRA asks for a 30-day extension, its request and the agency head’s approval should be in writing and made public as soon as they are released.
When OIRA examines non-economically significant rules, it should explain in writing how the proposal fits under the exceptions set forth in EO 12,866 and post that information online.
Financial Transparency
Congressional Budget Justifications
Every year each agency releases a congressional budget justification. This contains useful information about how the agency intends to make use of its funding. Under OMB Circular A-11 22.6(c), each agency is required to make its justification available to the public (including posted on the Internet) within two weeks after transmittal to Congress.
All these budget justifications should be centrally housed on OMB’s website along with all the other budget materials. It is often difficult to find agency congressional justifications on their websites. Moreover, many people are unaware of the existence of the justifications in the first place. Even GPO, apparently, is unaware of the justifications (see this), as it does not gather them along with its publication of other budget materials.
Budget justifications should be published in a format in addition to PDF, such as TXT or DOC. PDF format makes it virtually impossible for computers to make use of the underlying information. For example, if you wanted to compare this year’s justification against last year’s by tracking the changes, you would be unable to do so when dealing with a PDF. OMB already publishes data in alternative formats to facilitate public use (specifically XML and CSV), and it makes sense to publish text in a format that can be analyzed as well.
FOIA Spending at DOJ
The Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice responsible for coordinating government-wide FOIA policy as well as addressing DOJ-specific FOIA matters. Unfortunately, it is not possible to know how much money (and resources) OIP is putting towards its government-wide efforts versus internal-facing efforts. In each Congressional Budget Justification, OIP should report the amount of money spent processing FOIA requests for the seven senior management offices within DOJ; the amount of money spent on adjudicating administrative appeals for all units in DOJ; and the amount spent on FOIA policy and compliance.
Tracking FOIA Fees
As part of its annual report on FOIA, the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy should request agencies report on the amount of FOIA fees collected broken down by the basis on which the fees are collected.
Rule of Law
Office of Legal Counsel Opinions
In an Executive Order, President Obama wrote that “agencies should take affirmative steps to make information available to the public” and should “adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure.” His first nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel, Dawn Johnsen, joined by many others who served in the Justice Department, called on OLC to “publicly disclose its written legal opinions in a timely manner, absent strong reasons for delay or nondisclosure.” The Office itself, in its “best practices” memo, declares that “the Office operates under the presumption that it should make its significant opinions fully and promptly available to the public,” including considering “disclosing documents even if they technically fall within the scope of a FOIA exemption.” We have found, however, that many reports are not available to the public.
The Department of Justice should update its policy to require disclosure of all opinions by default, except in certain limited circumstances. A determination to withhold publication should be made at the highest levels within the DOJ and be based upon clearly articulated rules. To the extent a document is withheld in full or in substantial part, a detailed unclassified summary of the opinion should be made available to the public in a timely way that conveys the essence of the opinion. In addition, the OLC should publish and contemporaneously update a complete list of all final opinions, indicating the title, author, subject, and date issued.
Government Operations
Machine Readable Organization Chart
The structure of the government is confusing and complex. While the “United States Government Manual” provides information about the structure of government, there is no machine readable organizational chart that allows one to uniquely identify programs and offices within the government. This information, however, would be useful to those who wish to track the functions of government programmatically.
Form Reform
OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is charged with enforcing the Paperwork Reduction Act, including how agencies promulgate forms. Current agency practice permits and often encourages the use of paper-forms to gather and channel requests for information. This leads to re-keying of data, significant data quality issues, inadvertent disclosure of private information, and significant delays in public access to data. OMB should lead an effort to reform how the government uses forms.
Forms should be electronic and allow for the easy flow of data into databases. (This is consonant with OMB’s new data policy that directs that information should be collected electronically by default.) Information should be validated upon input and automatically checked for errors. To the maximum extent possible, unique entity identifiers should be employed, particularly those that are consistent across databases. Forced-choice mechanisms and limited data fields should be employed to restrict the kinds of information that can be input. Data should be automatically segregated as to what is and is not disclosable, so that no further review is necessary for data tagged as disclosable.
In addition, OMB should employ multiple techniques to improve the quality of information submitted. Extensive user testing (including A/B testing) should be performed and monitored on an ongoing basis to ensure forms are as easy to understand and complete as possible. Behavioral economics should be employed to maximize the effect of data collection, including through the development of model forms. Furthermore, to the extent possible, data should be pre-populated to reduce the amount of time required to enter information.
Federal Jobs: Telework and Location Information
The federal jobs website USAJOBS provides information about employment opportunities. It does not provide some important information.
First, for each job, the location of the job (or the nearest intersection) should be published along with the vacancy announcement. Current practice is to publish the address of the main office. Publishing the job location will allow job seekers to determine whether the commute is for them.
Second, for each job, the nature of telework availability should be published. While USAJOBS already indicates whether telework is possible for a position, it does not say the frequency of telework. This can be an important factor for any job seeker.
Finally, OPM issues an annual report on telework in government. It contains 100 pages of data that unfortunately are printed in a PDF. The underlying data should also be published in a spreadsheet format (like CSV). The report is entitled “Status of Telework in the Federal Government” and can be found here.
Create an alternative to DUNs
DUNs, the Data Universal Numbering System owned by Dun & Bradstreet, is a copyrighted, proprietary system used by the government and others to uniquely identify businesses. We believe the government must move to a non-proprietary, open system. This will save tremendous amounts of money, avoid lock-in to a particular company, and allow innovative use of this data. Our friends at the Data Transparnecy Coalition explain this issue in detail here.
Last week, the Obama administration announced a new approach for FOIA: responses to requests will be published online immediately. This six month pilot program washes away agency practices of publishing FOIA responses online only after three requests for the same documents. While a seemingly trivial distinction, it has the real world effect of forcing agencies to publish responses online immediately, bypassing agency worst-practices of avoiding publication entirely by refusing to count requests.
Seven agencies will participate in the pilot: Environmental Protection Agency, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and components of the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, and National Archives and Records Administration.
Throughout the process, the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy requests feedback from the public at releasetoall@usdoj.gov. This new disclosure approach is sensible, and complements recommendations I have made elsewhere on proactive disclosure of information of interest to the public. It also fits nicely with FOIA legislation pending in the House and Senate.
I must take issue with some of our journalist friends who have complained about the pilot program. They’d prefer a head start to receive and analyze documents and not get access at the same time as the hoi polloi. They forget the purpose of the FOIA, as described by the Supreme Court in 1973, is for “people to know what their government is up to.” (emphasis added)
Representatives of the news media already receive a special benefit under the law: fee waivers for record searches and reduced duplication costs. But the law does not provide for delayed public release. In any event, a “head start” is unworkable in practice — what if two or more requests for the same information is pending ? must an agency to keep special track of journalists? — and many others could make the case for special access.
In recent years there has been a lot of talk about opengov at the state, local and international levels, but when it comes to the federal government people just shake their heads and mutter. That is unfortunate, because a lot is happening at the federal level.
Here are five areas where the federal government is making major strides.
5. Innovative uses of technology
When you think of how the government uses technology, innovation often is not the word that comes to mind. More often it’s thought of as clunky, slow, out-of-date, insecure and expensive. But the executive branch has taken a step towards addressing these issues by creating 18F.
18F bills itself as “building the 21st century digital government.” It is an inside-government consultancy that builds technology for government on a cost-recovery basis. Housed at the General Services Administration, 18F addresses the twin problems of outside contractors who build cruddy tools that cost a ton of money as well as underfunded government developers who must use inadequate tools in unfriendly environments. Private sector developers are brought into government in the equivalent of a technology startup to help agencies build new tools and change the way they engage with technology. Most importantly, they work to change the culture around government information technology.
18F connects to opengov because many of its projects are opengov-related and the tools it builds are developed in the open. Projects include cleaning up Federal Election Commission data, a consolidated FOIA request hub, making federal spending transparent and rethinking the portal MyUSA. 18F is changing the way government uses technology, which often results in better, faster disclosure of government information.
4. Open courts
Unfortunately, federal courts are awful about opengov. But I did not want to let the opportunity to praise some great work being done on the federal civil society side, notably Courtlistener, Oyez, ScotusBlogand Cornell’s Legal Information Institute. Respectively, they provide alerts for and deep content regarding federal court decisions; publish audio and transcripts of Supreme Court decisions from 1955 forward; provide real-time reporting and context for current Supreme Court activities; and provide access to many Supreme Court opinions.
3. Improved efforts to provide access to executive branch information
Over the last six years, both Congress and the executive branch have made serious efforts in proactively and responsively releasing information to the public, at least in some (non-national security) arenas.
The most notable effort has been in legislation to fix the Freedom of Information Act. Significant FOIA legislation passed the House and Senatelast Congress, but in slightly different forms so it has yet to be signed into law. The Obama administration, most notably the Department of Justice and financial regulatory agencies, fought against much-needed efforts to improve FOIA because it dared codify a presumption of openness and would require the public’s interest be weighed when evaluating whether to release information the executive branch deemed privileged. The legislation slowly is moving towards passage this Congress.
Other notable efforts ongoing on the FOIA front include the establishment of a FOIA advisory committee, an effort to unify FOIA regulations across all agencies and the construction of a central online FOIA request portal.
On the proactive disclosure side, the Obama administration conducted a survey of all the datasets it held, and — after a FOIA lawsuit — has agreed to release the inventory to the public. It also continues to publish a log of many of the visitors to the White House. And the administration is engaging in a biannual open government planning process, where many agencies publish a plan for releasing information to the public and follow through on some of their commitments; there’s also an international process around domestic transparency commitments. The Data.gov website, which publishes some federal datasets, also is of some value.
Congress has considered (and in a few instances passed) other notable legislation, including the DATA Act discussed below. Also on the docket is a bill — the Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act — that would require all agency reports to Congress be published online. The Presidential Library Donations Reform Act, which requires disclosure of donations to presidential libraries, is poised for consideration by the full House and Senate. There are other smart bills being drafted and considered as well.
2. Publishing federal spending information
Last Congress, the DATA Act was signed into law. This bipartisan measure would make much federal spending information available to the public, and would have gone further if not for strong oppositionfrom the Office of Management and Budget. The regulation governing the law currently is jointly being written by OMB and Treasury. By incorporating unique identifiers, following federal spending at a great level of detail and pushing information into a central repository, the DATA Act holds out the promise of transforming our understanding of federal spending. New legislation to extend the DATA Act also has been introduced.
Federal responding requirements like the DATA Act can be transformative. Whatever the merits of the2009 economic stimulus bill, the transparency requirements around the $787 billion legislation have had surprising results: “spending transparency became institutionalized in some states.” In some cases, the availability of Recovery Act data marked the first time officials were able to monitor performance trends for federal contracts, grants and loans across all state agencies. If properly implemented, the DATA Act can have similar follow-on benefits.
1. Open legislative information
By far the most remarkable transformation has been in public access to legislative information. The work to make congressional information available to the public in a structured data format and in bulk has been transformative, and the House literally has changed the way it operates to make this happen. We are here only because of a bipartisan commitment by House leadership who have labored without great acclaim against high bureaucratic barriers to modernize congressional operations.
There’s too much to point out all of the changes, but here are the highlights.
The House put in its rules a requirement that legislative information be maximally available to the public online.
It created a bulk data task force that continues to meet to discuss how to better release data to the public, bringing all internal stakeholders together for the first time and engaging with the public as well.
There are quarterly public meetings at which inside stakeholders meet with the public to discuss projects and ideas, follow up on commitments, and address public feedback.
This is no less than a revolution in how Congress makes information available to the public. In turn, it has empowered a huge federal civic technology community that transforms the new data and tools into new ways to communicate with Congress, analyze information and make government more efficient and effective. Literally millions of people each month are directly or indirectly accessing federal legislative information because of this process. The Senate is not as far down the path as the House, and the Library of Congress is notable for its foot-dragging, but we have seen real, tangible, important progress.
Concluding thoughts
What makes all this progress even remarkable is that advocates for opengov at the federal level, especially when it comes to legislative information, have received much less attention recently than advocates at other levels of government. A lot is happening at the federal level, and if we keep working at it the possibilities are endless.
In the last few years “Open Government” has emerged as a social movement that reframes the public’s relationship to government. While the concept of Open Government is not new — the federal Freedom of Information Act is a well-known example — the digital revolution has prompted new actors to publish and reuse government information for civic purposes.
Libraries, as a primary source of information about government, should embrace digital open government as a powerful tool to further their access-to-information mission. Citizens, civic organizations and businesses, and governments traditionally have looked to libraries for information about government activities. However, stakeholders increasingly are turning to online entrepreneurs to fill the digital information vacuum where bricks and mortar libraries previously played this role.
It is important to add that open government is not e-government. The concept of open government concerns the public’s ability to access and make use of information relating to governance. E-government, by contrast, concerns the provision of government services through electronic means. For example, filing a tax return electronically is e-government, but obtaining the total amount of money collected by the IRS as revenue is a form of open government.
Oftentimes, and unlike the ways many activists seek to understand government, technologically-oriented open government advocates organize from the ground up, not the top down. They will often use seemingly unconventional means to gather public information, such as “scraping” or reverse-engineering websites to obtain information. It is not uncommon to observe a distinct (and perhaps deserved) lack of patience with the usual procedures for trying to obtain information and the usual formats in which it is provided.
Open government activists likely will embrace librarians that serve as a connector between them and the information that they seek. Librarians, in turn, can lay the groundwork to both fulfill open government activist requests for information and proactively fulfill these requests through online publication of information, breathing new life into civic information often held in musty archives.
Roles Libraries Play
Libraries play a number of roles in the open government space. Here are a few conceptual categories:
Transparency and Hacking — Where libraries facilitate government efforts to be more transparent and citizen efforts to access that information and build new tools with that information. This is the new variety of open government that this guide attempts to describe.
Civic Literacy Education — It is longstanding library practice to educate the community through literacy and educational training. To the extent the subject matter concerns civic-related activities, it is open government.
Access to Government Services (egov) — While egov (service provision) largely is distinct from opengov (making government work better), building new tools or finding new ways to empower citizens to access government services fits within both categories. Libraries may gather information published by governments and repackage it as services tailored for their community.
Information Preservation — Libraries have long played a role in preserving information about government activities, but that often has taken the form of preservation of printed documents. Libraries can move towards preserving government information in digital forms and making that information available online.
One final note: part of what makes libraries unique is that the information is provided to patrons at no cost and with minimal restrictions. The ability to provide everyone with access with information, not just those who can afford it, is an essential characteristic of libraries and should not be overlooked.
Places to Start
The extent to which your library engages with the open government movement will vary significantly based on local circumstances. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.
As one possible starting point, check the Meetup website and reach out to local activists interested in open government. Perhaps invite them to use a library space for the next meeting and even consider kicking and for pizza.
The book “Beyond Transparency” provides excellent examples of how open government has been in implemented at the municipal level all across the country.
The book “Open Government Data” provides an excellent overview of what open government is and what it looks like online.
The recent Bloomberg article “What is code?” provides a plain language explanation of, well, what computer code is. (Opengov is not technology, and vice versa, but this article is a useful point of entry.)
Another starting point is to talk to local officials to get a sense of what their online information publication practices are. Perhaps there are resources at the library that can support these ongoing efforts.
The Free Government Information blog, written by several California-based librarians, provides timely information about the national conversation taking place on open government from a librarian’s perspective.
Finally, some of the organizations listed below may also have ideas or contacts regarding ways to get started.
Who To Talk To
There are a number of resources inside and outside government that should be engaged.
Inside government, possible allies include:
The municipality’s director of information technology, CIO, or CTO
Elected officials who run on a modernization campaign
Other librarians
Government components with public-facing or outreach responsibilities
Computer or information science academics at local colleges.
Other municipalities.
Outside government, there likely are significant local resources as well as state and federal resources. For example:
Open government activists often use the website Meetup to organize regular meetings and making use of government information.
Local journalists
Local IT professionals
Code for America is a nationwide organization whose mission is to embed technologically-sophisticated programmers inside government.
The Sunlight Foundation is a nonprofit organization that supports open government advocacy on the municipal level and also builds sophisticated open source tools for transparency.
The Open Data Institute provides course information and technical assistance with publishing open data.
The OpenGov Foundation is focused on helping states and municipalities make there was available online.
General Assembly provides online and in-person courses on how to write code.
“Given the extreme partisanship and gridlock in Congress, it’s more crucial than ever to have an informed electorate. Putting these reports in the public domain is an important step toward that goal.”
Over the years our coalition has submitted testimony in favor of public access to these reports, most recently in March. In summary, the reports explain current legislative issues in language that everyone can understand, are written by a federal agencies that receives more than $100 million annually, and there is strong public demand for access. A detailed description of the issues at play is available here.
This congress, two legislative efforts are underway to make CRS reports public. First, the bipartisan H. Res. 34, introduced by Reps. Leonard Lance (R-NY) and Mike Quigley (D-IL), would make all reports widely distributed in Congress available to the public, except confidential memoranda and advice provided by CRS at the request of a member. Second, Rep. Quigley offered an amendment to an appropriations bill that would have required CRS to make available an index of all of its reports. Similar legislation has been introduced in the Senate in prior years.
The issue of public access can be resolved by either chamber of Congress passing a simple resolution. Indeed, a single member of Congress has the right to publish as many reports as desired on his or her website. Legislative branch appropriators in either chamber or the Committee on House Administration or Senate Rules Committee all have jurisdiction and could move swiftly to release the reports to the public. At a minimum, a hearing would shed light on the underlying issues. (In 2011, I hosted a panel discussion on the future of CRS that discusses public access.)
For two decades, members of Congress have tried to make these reports available to the public on a systematic basis. It’s time to finally make it happen.
Debate is swirling in Washington about the sunset of the USA PATRIOT Act’s section 215, which the administration has twisted to support mass surveillance, but the focus of the conversation reinforces the narrative of national security hardliners. The question should not be whether to reauthorize section 215, which even its author says was never intended to allow mass surveillance. That’s a no-brainer. The question is whether to investigate and root out the pro-surveillance agenda that sprouted after 9/11 and has borne the strange fruit of mass surveillance, secret law, secret courts, and unchecked executive power.
In some ways, this is a tale of seduction and corruption. The Intelligence Community has long held out the allure of secret knowledge and quick fixes to national security problems that has entranced presidents and members of the House and Senate intelligence committees. On the other hand, they claim increased power is the only way to reduce danger to Americans. The record shows, however, that the intelligence community often cannot deliver what it promises and its actions can create the dangers policymakers seek to minimize.
These dangers have only been exacerbated by the blank check given to them by the Bush administration and endorsed by the Obama administration that allows them to operate at and beyond the edge of the law. For example, opinions issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel have blessed all sorts of illegal behavior, including torture, only by twisting the law and Constitution out of shape and making sure anyone who could complain about the opinions—even Congress—was out of the loop or kept out of court. Similarly the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, originally charged with deciding whether to approve wiretap warrants, created an expansive body of secret law that approved mass surveillance and sharing of personal information among members of the Intelligence Community. In a democracy, the law is not supposed to be a secret and these decisions should be up for public debate.
The greatest check on unlawful executive branch behavior, Congress, is out of the loop. Often times, the Executive branch fails to share (or selectively shares) crucial information about—or even the existence of—its activities with its Congressional overseers. Sometimes members of the Executive branch flat out lie. For its part, Congress has weakened its ability to get at the truth and its Intelligence committees largely have abdicated their oversight roles. In fact, some members of Congress who are supposed to hold the Intelligence Community to account have an odd version of Stockholm syndrome where they sympathize more with the eavesdroppers than ordinary Americans. Congress must rethink how it does oversight.
The Executive branch has even taken it upon itself to assert and interpret its Constitutional powers to preclude a check by the other branches in national security matters. Many, including a whistleblower who made his concerns public, believe Executive Order 12333 is used by the administration to engage in mass surveillance. Breathtakingly, the administration in turn says EO 12333 actually is a voluntary limit on the Executive Branch’s constitutional powers, which may be broader, and Executive Order limits can be waived at will by the president. Where does it say this? In a secret Office of Legal Counsel opinion, of course.
We have a troubling set of circumstances. Secrecy is used to buttress secrecy; the constitutional checks-and-balances have become unraveled. And yet we spend time debating how much to pack into legislation addressing section 215, the elimination of which would not even end mass surveillance. Even worse, some members of Congress, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have introduced legislation to leave section 215 alone for the next half decade. We do not impugn the hard work of many members of Congress and congressional staff who have worked feverishly to fix section 215, even the national security die-hards, but the unnaturally narrow debate says volumes about the blinders Congress has placed on itself.
This is why we endorsed a letter, signed by a bipartisan array of 60 non-profit organizations, businesses, and whistleblowers, that calls for comprehensivereform. We need to know what has been done in our names. We must empower Congress to perform its oversight responsibilities and protect whistleblowers when they expose illegality. We must end secret law and open up secret courts. We must end domestic mass surveillance, no matter under what authority it takes place. These are the crucial issues. This is the debate worth having.