CDT POLICY POST Volume 9, Number 5, February 1, 2003

A Briefing On Public Policy Issues Affecting Civil Liberties Online
from
The Center For Democracy and Technology

(1) Senators Re-introduce Resolution To Put More Congressional Info Online

(2) Congressional Research Service Reports Still The Most Wanted

(1) Senators Re-introduce Resolution To Put More Congressional Info Online

Congress, having passed a major e-government act for the Executive Branch and the courts last year, is still lagging in its own use of the Internet to make information available to citizens. Legislation being introduced today could change that.

Led by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), a bi-partisan group of Senators are today introducing a resolution to put Congressional Research Service reports and lobbying disclosure records online.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS), housed in the Library of Congress, uses taxpayer dollars to produce reports on public policy issues ranging from foreign affairs to agriculture to health care. CRS reports represent some of the best policy research conducted by the federal government. All of the reports are posted online, but access is available only to Congressional offices through an intranet system. Citizens can order paper copies of the reports through their Member of Congress, but only by mail. Moreover, the general public cannot search through past reports, and a comprehensive index of the reports is not available online, so citizens basically have to guess when they ask for something.

CRS reports would be useful to researchers, students, librarians, government employees, and ordinary citizens. The McCain-Leahy resolution would put almost 3000 of these reports on the Internet.

The resolution mirrors one introduced two years ago, but stands a better chance of success now. Two years ago, the proposal drew early opposition from the Senate Rules Committee, which has jurisdiction over the matter, and key members were focused on other important issues such as voting reform and campaign finance. Those issues were resolved in the last Congress and thus no longer stand in the way of this proposal. Most importantly, perhaps, the new Chair of the Rules Committee, Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), co-sponsored the resolution in the last Congress and is expected to support it again.

For more info on e-gov: http://www.cdt.org/righttoknow/

As soon as the bill has a number, we will link to it under "e-gov" at http://www.cdt.org/legislation/

(2) Congressional Research Service Reports Still The Most Wanted

Forcing citizens to obtain CRS reports by mail rather than online is one example of Congress' continuing failure to take full advantage of the democratic potential of the Internet.

In August 1999, after consulting watchdog groups, reporters, librarians, and government employees, CDT and OMB Watch issued a report identifying the "Ten Most Wanted Government Documents" -- useful taxpayer-financed information that wasn't available online. http://www.cdt.org/righttoknow/10mostwanted/

While much of the information that was identified in 1999 has since gone up online, important Congressional information is still not available on the Internet. In the CDT/OMB Watch survey, CRS reports were the #1 most wanted set of documents government-wide. Two other important sets of Congressional information -- the full text of all Congressional hearings and a searchable database of Congressional votes -- also are still not online.

A new report by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) reconfirms the findings from the CDT/OMB Watch report of 4 years ago. Key points in the new POGO report include:

CRS's products and its Website, funded with taxpayer dollars, are not readily available to the public. Furthermore, as a Congressional entity, CRS is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. CRS does not answer direct public inquiries.
Former Members of Congress, many of whom become lobbyists, can request current CRS publications and limited reference assistance. Therefore, entities such as corporations and universities, which can afford these lobbyists, have access to current CRS publications that public interest groups and the general American public do not.
CRS has already created a Website at http://www.crs.gov that could be made readily available, so cost is not an impediment to openness.

In addition to urging that CRS products be made readily available to the general public, POGO recommends that the Library of Congress should expand the public THOMAS website to include other information related to the legislative process.

The full POGO report is available at: http://www.pogo.org

Detailed information about online civil liberties issues may be found at http://www.cdt.org/.

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