Hill Op-ed Series
Gabriela Schneider
The Hill published another installment of the OHP op-ed series yesterday.
Apologies for not getting this to you sooner.
Best,
Gabriela
Gabriela Schneider
Communications Director
The Sunlight Foundation
1818 N Street NW, Suite 410
Washington, DC 20036
202/742-1520
gschn...@sunlightfoundation.com
www.sunlightfoundation.com
http://thehill.com/op-eds/inexplicable-anomaly-2007-05-15.html
Inexplicable anomaly
By Leslie Harris and Matt Stoller
May 15, 2007
One special talent of Congress is to sternly slam the barn door closed after
the animals have already wandered off. We can see this in the debate over
whether to ³open up² Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports to the
public when there are already fee-based services selling the reports, and
free but incomplete collections at various websites.
Frankly, it¹s difficult to believe that Congress thinks it can control
whether CRS reports are made available to the public over the Internet. A
decade ago, CRS was among a dwindling handful of government entities that
had yet to embrace the democratizing power of the Web. Now, in 2007, CRS¹s
practices are an inexplicable anomaly that grows more glaring with each
passing year.
At a cost of $100 million a year, CRS generates some of the most informative
research available on the key policy issues facing lawmakers. Although the
CRS produces a range of products, some of which are confidential and
intended only for one member, many of the reports are unclassified and
distributed freely throughout Congress. But while those reports play a
pivotal role in the policymaking process, they have never been made
systematically available to taxpayers.
Not surprisingly, many business models have cropped up in recent years to
fill the vacuum left by Congress. Companies like Penny Hill Press and
LexisNexis manage to obtain the reports and provide copies for a fee. As a
result, well-heeled lobbyists can search CRS reports readily, while ordinary
Americans cannot.
To fix this inequity, all Congress has to do is update an archaic policy
that never made much sense, and now seems even sillier. CRS already
maintains a website that provides lawmakers a fully searchable database of
non-confidential CRS reports. Making that service available to the public
would be simple and inexpensive.
The objections offered by defenders of the CRS status quo aren¹t convincing.
Years ago, the principal objection to making CRS reports available to the
public had to do with the expense of publishing the reports. The Internet
has rendered that argument moot.
The other objection comes from lawmakers who complain that making CRS
reports available to the public could change the way they use the service.
What undercuts this argument is that CRS reports are already widely
available through commercial channels. If lawmakers were inclined to curtail
their use of the CRS to prevent greater scrutiny of their policymaking
activities, they probably would have done so already.
Public demand for these reports is already high, despite Congress¹s best
efforts to downplay their very existence. In 2005, the Center for Democracy
& Technology launched OpenCRS.com, a website that provides a free,
searchable database of CRS reports that have been collected by various
archivists. Visitors have already downloaded more than 3.5 million CRS
reports.
Congress is fortunate to already have strong leadership on this issue.
Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the Senate and Rep.
Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) in the House have been tireless advocates for
making CRS reports publicly available. It¹s long past time for their more
reticent colleagues to drop their objections and make these reports
available to the public.
Harris is the executive director of the Center for Democracy & Technology.
Stoller writes on the progressive blog MyDD.com and is the president of the
political action committee BlogPAC, which seeks to fund bloggers and
progressive activists. Stoller and CDT wrote the ³Congressional Research
Service² chapter for the Open House Project.
Steven Clift
Or make it illegal to sell access to these reports and instead require that they be given away for free by any site that hosts them?
As long as Congress allows anyone to obtain and release these reports with relative exclusivity for access to all reports, they cannot ethically justify that they are serving Congress specifically. In reality they are first serving lobbyists and well-funded interest groups who can afford to and likely access more unclassified CRS material than Congressional staff do themselves. This cannot stand in a representative democracy.
Why not draft something in the form of an amendment(s) that can be available for the first germane opportunity to offer it? Something serious and something that hits the point home. Perhaps something people can sign e-petition style as well.
Steven Clift
Someone still holding on to some yellow CRS packets and reports from internships long ago.
Ari Schwartz
open government principles.
Federal government documents are not copyrighted. They are open for
the public to use. If an organization or company wants to take
non-classified government information (including CRS reports) and add
_real_ value to it and sell it, they should be able to. By limiting
the ability of individuals to use the information, we would be
arguing against open access.
The arguments against opening CRS to the public are completely
specious (see my blog post from yesterday
<http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/05/15/crs-offers-defense-of-closed-policy/>),
we shouldn't have to alter government information policy because of
these baseless concerns.
Ari
PS -- Steve - Next time you are in DC, I expect that you'll bring us
your reports so that we scan them in and add them to OpenCRS.com!!!
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Ari Schwartz
Deputy Director
Center for Democracy and Technology
1634 I Street NW, Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20006
202 637 9800
fax 202 637 0968
a...@cdt.org
http://www.cdt.org
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