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Open CRS: Free Government Research Reports
securitas writes "Ted Bridis of the Associated Press reports that more than 8000 Congressional Research Service reports produced exclusively for legislators are now available to the public for free. The Center for Democracy & Technology's Open CRS project is a Web-based central clearinghouse that features several collections of government reports. The research service has '... a staff of more than 700 and a nearly $100 million budget ...' but 'CRS Reports do not become public until a member of Congress releases the report.' The Open CRS project wants your help in obtaining and adding reports to the database."
Not like anything important won't get black inked anyway though.
nah, you might catch something
PHP is the solution of choice for relaying mysql errors to web users.
"Ted Bridis of the Associated Press reports that more than 8000 Congressional Research Service reports produced exclusively for legislators are now available to the public for free."
Shouldn't that read something more like "Ted Bridis of the Associated Press reports that more than 8000 Congressional Research Service reports produced exclusively for legislators are now available to the public, who already paid for it, and whose children will keep paying thanks to reckless spending and cavalier taxation, at no additional charge"?
That complaint aside, kudos to the people who helped liberate some of the knowledge (and probably some of the fluff) that tax dollars have paid for.
Ahem.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
As Benjamin Franklin once said, "He who would give up a chance to fuck the government deserves no more chances to fuck."
Or something.
Just for a heads up, a couple of the reports cover details on the Patriot Act including provisions that expire at the end of this year. Figured it was a topic of interest on /.
If the government were truly representative of the People, you wouldn't have trouble with openness. As it stands, though, the People care more about their Big Macs and SUVs than voting.
This project is doomed to stagnate. The People are satisfied with their little flag bumper stickers and patriotic country music. They have little interest in the minutiae of government.
And who blames them? That's the reason we have representatives in the first place.
100,000,000 / 700 = 142,857.14
that's just for the staff costs... now take out their paper expenses, mail, telephone services, and all the other office stuff that comes with it. I've heard that paper costs an arm and a leg in some places, so I wouldn't put it past these people. Some of the top people probably do get paid a lot, but a majority probably wouldn't make more than the average person after all the expenses of running the place.
I understand the taxpayers already spent 100 million on this, likely a lot more, but are they really worth anything at all? Isn't it just going to cost the taxpayers more to make 8000 or more reports available for free? Do these reports have any real value at all, or are they just noise and opnions?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Plus, Steven Aftergood has been publishing CRS reports for a while now. Here's what he has to say on why the CRS won't release 'em in the first place:
Carousel is a lie!
Well at least we'll know how the legislators are being informed about what comes up.
Google for the "GS" scale. Most government employees are anywhere from GS-5 to GS-9. Executives are around GS-13 to GS-15. It's not that much.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I think there is some good content, for example:
U.S. Housing Prices: Is There a Bubble?
May 16, 2003
http://www.opencrs.com/document/RL31918/
This is a great step for authenticity, Lord only knows how many bad/misrepresented/outright made up reports have graced the committees' of our government.
Hopefully this quasi peer review will help eliminate erroneous research.
There is truth in humor.
Surely you mean that the people get the government that the majority deserves. I don't think we can say that any of the people voting for Gore or McCain in 2000 or Kerry in 2004 deserve the current U.S. administration.
So what is the giving-a-fuck minority to do when they are overwhelmed in numbers by Joe Sixpack?
There's an inherent problem that lies in politically-sponsored research. Having "research" done on political ideas is a tactic that politions (e.g. Reagan) use to justify their point. If there is a group with sufficient grounds to cause any *possible* roadblock, the politician will have a committee research the issue, and then he is able to freely push his agenda once more because he has "disproven" the group. The bias may be so great that the work is worthless to all but the politicians themselves.
"Over time, CRS products might come to be written with a large public audience in mind and could no longer be focused solely on congressional needs," CRS Director Mulhollan said in a written statement yesterday. And the current congressional leadership apparently agrees.
I worked as a contractor at Congressional Research Services for a bit over a year, so let me put in my two cents.
Of course they agree, because it's an obvious truth. When does a author not consider their audience when writing a document? How hard would it be to try not to consider your audience when writing a piece? Furthermore, how cumbersome do you think it would be, administratively, to effectively convince one's employees not to worry about what hundreds of millions of people think about your writing, and just focus on a few hundred? Here's a better idea: Don't worry about any of the above, because CRS's job is to inform congressman and their staffers on the issues so that they may legislative effectively.
In my stay at CRS, I learned a good amount about a part of our government which was previously entirely unknown to me. CRS does very good work for our congressman, and I was proud to build good software for CRS employees' and congressman to use alike.
Also, it's worth noting that 99.999% of what you'll find in CRS reports are gleaned from sourced that any Joe Q. Public could find anywhere. It's condensed into a format that lets congressman read a lot of facts at once, without having to go read 20-30 books/magazines/publications to glean the same content.
OpenCRS is probably as public as this stuff is ever going to get. This way, CRS still doesn't have to deal w/ the public. They can keep their target audience narrow and their coverage broad.
...
That's an awful lot of words for,
"No*"
*unless there is one
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Cranio-Rectal Syndrome.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
This new glut of public information gave me an idea. Something similar to Distributed Proofreaders but for scrutinising government documents. Volunteer readers would look at a few scanned pages, marking the ones that would be of broad interest, and then the most interesting get compiled into a list.
If only there were 25 hours in a day.
...does it mean the reports are GPL'ed? We should ask Stallman to check this!
Circumcision is child abuse.
no, this isn't going to cost the taxpayers more to make these reports available for free. opencrs is apparently being funded by CDT- http://www.cdt.org/. all the additional costs incurred by the taxpayers is from any negligible costs for congressional staffers to disseminate these reports.
The chance to read thousands of pages of undigested government reports? I can't wait! Maybe just as soon as I've finished reading all my phone books.
Maybe not fuck it, but I'm all for reducing the size of it. Our government is becoming more powerful each day and our civil liberties are being taken away left and right. Recent rulings showed that they now have the power of taking away your homes! As a U.S. citizen it is pretty sad to see our liberties being flushed down the toilet by beauracrats that are too ignorant to even read the bills that they pass.
People need to wake up and say no to this tyranny!
Sorry, sorry, I had to.
There are numerous program policy and accountability agencies at the state level that create similar reports for lawmakers (and the public alike). OPPAGA, the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, is one such example. I worked there for three years, and can safely say these folks are the most smart, objective folks around when it comes to issues that matter to state government. Almost all of their reports are available online in PDF format.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
why should it be a surprise than an organization that serves them would not seek to serve us?
Congress has long left the public interest behind, its probably been a good 50 years since they were accountable or felt accountable to the people. They have their own retirement programs so it not be surprising they have created other government groups just to service themselves.
Now, one way to start fixing this is to make the public aware of it. The problem to overcome is the lack of interest the public has.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
when they get old
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
There is a lot of good stuff here - related to what is discussed daily on /. reports on communications issues, privacy, profiling, copyright, DRM, DCMA (DCMA for dummies) and so on.
These topics have been raised (and thus researched and documented) for the process of governing your country - I'd show a bit of interest in the content - especially as these are probably some of the only reports which get used in the process before laws get created (getting the relevant peeople aware of these issues).
"Recent rulings showed that they now have the power of taking away your homes!"
The gov't has always had this power (well, at least since the 5th Amendment was ratified in December 1791). The gov't may take private property for "public use," so long as it pays "just compensation." The debate this year was around the Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. New London, upholding the actions of a local gov't which used its eminent domain powers to transfer property from one private holder to another, as part of a local redevelopment project.
Maybe some do, but that's not the point. There are a LOT of reports there, and almost certainly not all of them are relased. Especially for some of the older stuff, why would a member of congress bother to release a report unless someone asked for it? People can ask members of congress for the reports, they release them, and then openCRS also grabs a copy.
...no two people are not on fire.
Yea,PrintFu needs to jump all over this!
Eminent domain powers are not granted by the 5th Amendment ... it's a restriction on the extent of those powers. My understanding is that the "necessary and proper" clause of Article I, Section 8 is the Constitutional basis permitting "takings". The 5th Amendment provides that IF the federal government exercises eminent domain, then it MUST provide you "just compensation"; previously, takings did not require compensation of any kind. The 14th Amendment extends those protections against state and local governments.
Not a lawyer blah blah blah...
The Freedom of Information Act is one of the better laws the US has. All information produced by the USG belongs to its citizens (who paid for it), FOIA dictates that it must be shared unless a fairly narrow set of criteria is met.
Unfortunately, FOIA does not apply to the legislative branch, as Congress apparently saw fit to exempt themselves from it. I could entertain an argument that FOIA is not appropriate for Congress, however, it is difficult to recouncile the values codified in FOIA with not making CRS reports available to the public.
Where's Newt when you need him? THOMAS is considered his baby, information freedom needs an upgrade.
this has the same acronym as the condition Can't Remember Sh*t which is something I often think most members of congress are afflicted with, but then so many don't read these research reports and their staffers are given to spinning the overview to their bosses to suit their bosses' point of view (frequently that Cranio-Rectal Syndrome mentioned already which is also funny).
/. articles. "Congress recently generated a report on AMD and other non-Intel processors with regard to national security..." or some such...
Now, instead of the ratio of external readers to congressmen being 10 to 1, it will be more like 1,000 to 1 which is sad given that the population is over 260,000,000 and paying for these things. I'm sure though that there will be some people now scanning through these for possible
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
"the National Commission on Terrorism (NTC), a congressionally mandated bi-partisan body, issued a report providing a blueprint for U.S. counterterrorism policy with both policy and legislative recommendations. The report could be significant in shaping the direction of U.S. policy and the debate in Congress. It generally argues for a more aggressive U.S. strategy in combating terrorism. Critics, however, argue that NTC conclusions and recommendations ignore competing U.S. goals and interests; i.e that a proactive strategy might lead to the curbing of individual rights and liberties, damage important commercial interests, and widen disagreements between the U.S. and its allies over using the "stick" as opposed to the "carrot" approach in dealing with states that actively support or countenance terrorism."
This was dated February 6, 2001, 8 months before the Patriot Act (the aforementioned report was issued June 6, 2000).
http://www.opencrs.com/document/RS20598/
RL30274
Medical Use of Marijuana: Policy and Regulatory Issues
March 01, 2002
Look up this article. You will find it's a historical listing of women in the congress. Also the pdf download is corrupted. I wonder if they are hiding anything.
By negligible costs for congressional staffers I assume you mean like the negligible one huundred million the congressional staffers were paid to create them in the first place.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
700 people and nearly 100 million dollars?! That's pretty hefty, per-head. Do they write with James Bond typewriters?
What they write with is either black ink, to hide things, or invisible ink, again to hide things.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The Executive Branch produces all kinds of information with millions of people watching thanks to FOIA.
The current admin, Bush's, is all to happy keeping secrets. Especially when it comes to whistleblowers. Take Sibel Edmonds , she worked as an FBI translator until they fired her because she was making too much noise. After she testified to congress after 911 the Bush admin slapped a classified rating on the info and a gag order on her. When she hired an attorney to sue over being falsely fired she had to get permission from the admin just to tell her lawyer anything. Or take Mary Schneider an INS agent who reported to Attorney General John Ashcroft and the FBI that terrorists linked to bin Laden were living in Central Florida and that they were preparing for an attack before 911. There have also been reports the Bush admin has buried scientific reports that don't fit their beliefs.
FalconShould there be a Law?
umm, no. if you're going to be sarcastic, at least try to be correct. the $100M the article referred to was the CRS budget- they are not congressional staffers. by negligible cost, i'm referring to the staff that all congressmen already have- you request the already completed documents from them, and they do the leg work of getting it to you.