Today Demand Progress Education Fund and the Project on Government Oversight are pleased to publish a primer on congressional staff clearances. It is the result of several years worth of research. Security clearances govern access to classified information. While members of Congress are entitled to access classified information by virtue of the constitutional offices they […]
The passage of the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill for FY 2020 back in December started the clock on a number of projects and reports inside the legislative branch. We took a look at the requests, broke them down by office, and summarized the deadlines, which are drawn from the House committee report, the Senate committee […]
America is an Outlier on Parental Leave Policies America is far behind the rest of the world when it comes to providing employees with paid parental leave. The United States is one of two developed nations that does not provide its workers with any form of paid parental leave, the other being Papua New Guinea. […]
Time is always tight on the Hill for staffers. They work long hours, holidays, and sometimes even through major life events. Between the countless emails, bill markups and committee meetings, dozens of office and caucus events, constituent and advocacy conferences, and making sure that lawmakers don’t miss votes, it can be hard to make time […]
Chaplains, doctors, historians and architects are part of the unseen Legislative Branch. While most know about the House and the Senate, did you know the US Capitol Police takes up more than 10% of the Legislative Branch budget ($456 Million in FY 2019) and has 2300 employees? This article starts a series highlighting the various […]
Last week internal and external Congressional stakeholders came together for the seventh annual Legislative Data and Transparency Conference. We’ve recapped them all. The bipartisan conference was incredibly well run, and did a fantastic job convening internal and external congressional groups to promote engaging and well-executed events (detailed in the image below). You can check out […]
Drafting legislation in Congress can be a daunting process. Typically, staffers provide an outline of the desired bill to the Office of Legislative Counsel (OLC), and an OLC attorney drafts the legislation. This often is an iterative process, with OLC asking questions and congressional staff updating their ideas. This process can create problems for staff […]
The Bulk Data Task Force (BDTF) is essentially the justice league of legislative data. The task force convenes each quarter, bringing together the people in charge of managing Legislative Branch data—like the House Clerk, Secretary of the Senate, GPO, and Library of Congress—as well as outside stakeholders. Together the group works to make legislative data […]
Congress requested a number of improvements to how the legislative branch functions as part of the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2019 (and, in one instance, for FY 2018). What happened? We reviewed the status of requested leg branch projects in the following chart and then provided an issue-by-issue analysis. We expect to […]
The seventh annual Legislative Data and Transparency Conference has been announced! On Thursday October 17th, agencies, data users, and transparency advocates will come together to discuss Congress’s efforts to make legislative information available to the public as data. The conference covers what’s working well, what’s not, and provides an opportunity to hear from and meet […]
by Daniel Schuman and Zach Graves Last week, bipartisan bicameral legislation was introduced by Reps. Mark Takano (D-CA) and Bill Foster (D-IL), and Sens. Maizie Hirono (D-HI) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), aimed at strengthening Congress’s ability to understand science and technology policy issues. (H.R. 4426, S. 2509) We welcome these developments and are encouraged to […]
TRENDS IN SENATE COMMITTEE FUNDING How do Senate committees get their funding and how has funding changed over the last 25 years? We crunched the numbers for you and here are the highlights: Senate Committee spending is at an 18 year low It’s good to be an appropriator; the committee gets the lion’s share of […]