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Records Management »

Release/index all unclassified Congressional Research Service reports

Why Is This Idea Important?: The Congressional Research Service is a professional cadre of researchers who work in an nonpartisan, project-to-project research capacity for Congress. They often get at the truth of a pressing national issue, and often write brief, but deeply informative reports. Having these reports available for the average citizen to learn more about, understand the context, and watch any relevant hearing/testimony will help the broader American republic to self-educate on issues of the day. Furthermore, it will lessen the demand for lobby groups who traditionally function as gatekeepers or clearinghouses for compelling information in a technical or otherwise complicated debate.

Currently, many reports of the Congressional Research Service remain undisclosed to the public. Work with Congress to release all non-confidential research reports, past to present. Index each paper with OCR and a good search engine (maybe a cool IT modernization project), attach any relevant annotations (when the report was requested, by whom, any relevant hearings/testimonies on the report), and you're set. Cross-linking to C-SPAN's video database would be solid.

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Submitted by Unsubscribed User 2 years ago

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Comments (4)

  1. Edward said:

    I'm not so sure that current reports which are created at the request of a legislator should be released to the public because it would make the CRS political and place the CRS between the legislator and their constituents.

    Open Government shouldn't mean that government services such as the CRS should become a direct point of contact instead of our legislators.

    These reports aren't as important as what our legislator thinks, believes and why they are sponsoring legislation or voting a certain way. It would be better if legislators would release this information to their constituents. There is no current law or regulation that prevents a legislator from releasing CRS reports that they have read.

    2 years ago
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  2. Unsubscribed User said:

    i disagree totally, Edward. While the fundamental purpose of the report will always be to satisfy a Congressional requester, the reports are often far more useful to reearchers and others than the views or beliefs of any partcular Congressperson. A graet number of these repoirts are already publicly available. I hardly think that posting the report after it has been finalized is likely to provide politicians, lobbyists, and others an opporttunity to try to influence their content. If a Congressperson requests a CRS report and then wants to hide it, that's the first report OI want to read. Anyhow, like GAO reports, but less so, CRS staff know who pays them.

    2 years ago
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  3. Unsubscribed User said:

    Edward - perhaps the requester could have two weeks before the report "hits the street." Many CRS reports get out into the public domain as it is, the CRS hasn't been politicized. Citizens shouldn't have to play a game to use the research they are paying for ...

    2 years ago
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  4. Unsubscribed User said:

    I agree, but you can read several of their reports at opencrs.com right now. There is also a commercial service that gets them all somehow.

    2 years ago
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