Today 33 organizations called on the House of Representatives to strengthen its oversight of the intelligence community. Concurrently, a bipartisan quartet of organizations made in-depth recommendations on how the House should update its intelligence oversight rules. The letter and white paper are the culmination of nearly two years of work. Their release comes on the heels of the […]
Today the House of Representatives published its spending information as structured data (a CSV) in addition to printing three volumes of tables. This is the second time it has done so. (I wrote about it the last time it happened and why it is important for accountability.) Okay, Senate, it’s your turn. Publish your semi-annual spending statement as data. — Written by […]
Earlier today I tweeted a request for evidence that members of the House Appropriations Committee used to be granted staff designees — staffers paid by the committee that are chosen by and serve the individual members of the committee — but that the designees are being phased out. The following is evidence of that practice.
Yesterday, House Minority Whip Steny Hower (D-MD) gave an interesting speech on renewing the American people’s faith in government. He ticked off four major areas for reform: campaign finance reform, voting rights, redistricting reform, and government technology. While there’s a lot to digest in his speech, I want to highlight the part that concerns government technology.
Yesterday’s appointment of representative Joaquin Castro (D-TX) to the House Intelligence Committee may push the Committee’s membership out of balance — it no longer has a member who also serves on the Judiciary Committee, as required by the Rules of the House of Representatives. Because of its coordinating role, House Rules require the Committee to include at least one member who […]
Today the House of Representatives’ Committee on House Administration hosted its fifth annual Legislative Data & Transparency Conference in the U.S. Capitol. The Conference brought together staff from House and Senate and legislative support offices, civil society advocates, technologists, overseas legislatures, and featured a speech by House Speaker Paul Ryan. More than 150 people attended, with more […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]