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."

Comments

Report on the Patriot Act

[Woogiemonger]

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 /.

Read this newsletter!

[Saint Aardvark]

If you've not already subscribed to the Secrecy Newsletter from the Federation of American Scientists, or added their RSS feed to your reader, do it now! It's an incredibly fascinating -- and exasperating -- daily report on government secrecy around the world.

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:

"CRS HAS NO PUBLIC MISSION"

Why aren't non-confidential Congressional Research Service reports automatically made available to the public? At first glance, the policy appears to reflect institutional arrogance or reflexive secrecy on the part of CRS and the Congress. But there is more to it than that, congressional officials say.

CRS repeatedly stresses that it works for Congress, and only for Congress.

"CRS assists every Member and committee," said Director Daniel P. Mulhollan in May 23 testimony before the House Appropriations Committee. "All of our work is confidential and focuses solely, directly, and specifically on the needs of the congressional community. CRS has no public mission." By insisting on this point, CRS is distinguishing itself from the larger and higher-profile Government Accountability Office. More subtly, CRS is repudiating any comparison with the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), which was dismantled by Congressional Republicans in 1995, an event that is seared in the consciousness of CRS officials.

What CRS is saying is that it has no institutional agenda of its own aside from support to members of Congress, and that, unlike OTA, it takes no position on disputed policy matters.

CRS believes that its uniqueness as a congressional support agency, which constitutes its central claim to continued funding, would only be diluted by direct interactions with public consumers.

"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.

"CRS has received clear indication from its oversight committees that no change in the current policy is authorized," Director Mulhollan wrote yesterday.

"It is important to recognize that while the restriction on public access to CRS products is frequently characterized as CRS 'resistance,' the reality is that the policy is a congressional one," he noted.

In any case, "As CRS obtains no copyright in its products, little can be done to discourage the trend toward further public availability of CRS products brought about without the permission of a Member or committee."

A 1999 CRS memorandum outlined several reasons why it believed direct public access to CRS products would have unfavorable legal and institutional consequences.

See "Congressional Policy Concerning the Distribution of CRS Written Products," March 9, 1999:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/policy.html

How Much Do Government Wonks Make?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

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.

I read a useful report from this service last week

[rhess460]

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/

Well, duh...

[ankhcraft]

"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.