Committee Webcast Archives Review: I See Progress
Josh Tauberer
investigating what congressional committees make available to the public
on their websites. I've recently become interested in committee markup
meetings, and I was curious to see how often webcasts of markup meetings
are available on committee websites.
In a survey of House and Senate standing committee websites this week, I
found the following. Note that I counted hearings separately from markup
sessions and business meetings.
Hearing Webcasts: The vast majority (31 of 35) of committees make
archives of video webcasts of hearings regularly available on their
websites, in what appeared to be a very timely way. The videos are
pretty poor quality by today's standards, but it's still very useful.
The exceptions were Senate Foreign Relations, House Agriculture, House
Appropriations, House Rules, and House Ways and Means which lacked video
archives. House Agriculture makes it up by providing transcripts...
after several months; the other four committees provide no electronic
record of hearings.
It appeared that most also have live webcasts of most hearings, but I
couldn't tell just from looking at the websites once.
Hearing Transcripts: Transcripts were surprisingly hard to come by.
Senate Armed Services, Senate Rules, Senate Veterans' Affairs, and House
Energy and Commerce seemed to be the only committees that provided
transcripts regularly. (That's 4 of 35 committees.) Considering the
importance of transcripts for disability accessibility and machine
processing (e.g. search), this is too bad.
Hearing Prepared Testimony & Statements: PDFs and other document formats
were used to post prepared statements and testimony --- this almost
makes up for not having transcripts. Four committees lacked even this,
and of those none were among the committees that posted transcripts.
House Appropriations and House Rules posted neither video, nor
transcripts, nor prepared statements. The other two at least posted videos.
For hearings, by and large there is an electronic record available, and
if you can find a record you can find video.
I counted markup sessions and business meetings separately from
hearings. Electronic records were far less common for these meetings.
Markups: About half of the committees posted archival videos for these
business meetings. Of those that didn't, one posted transcripts. That
leaves 18 out of 35 posting no electronic record of these meetings. The
notable committee here is House Judiciary, which posts both transcripts
and video of business meetings.
A similar survey for Senate committees was done just about a year ago by
someone else on this list who might want to remain anonymous on this
point (I'm not sure). In comparison to that survey, more Senate
committees are posting hearing archival video now, which is great. Less
than half were regularly posting archival audio/video then, and now the
vast majority are posting video. As for markups, just two of 16 Senate
committees were posting recordings of markups regularly then, with a few
more posting them irregularly, and some transcripts. So it is nice to
see that Senate committees are moving more of this information online as
well.
One note, some committees display a note at the starts of their videos:
"The use of duplications of broadcast coverage of the Committee on
Transportation is governed by the rules of the House. Use for political
or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited." I hope no one takes
that message seriously, and I wonder what legal basis this message has.
I don't believe I am subject to the rules of the House.
This topic goes a long way back, and normally I'd include links, but I
think I'll just leave this email as the state of today.
--
- Josh Tauberer
- CivicImpulse / GovTrack.us
http://razor.occams.info | www.govtrack.us | civicimpulse.com
"Members of both sides are reminded not to use guests of the
House as props."
Patrice McDermott
Patrice McDermott
OpenTheGovernment.org
J.H. Snider
Hi Josh,
I went to the House Commerce Committee website and tried to download the video record of its last two hearings: the hearings for October 22 (Video Competition in a Digital Age) and the hearing for September 22 (A National Interoperable Broadband Network for Public Safety: Recent Developments). In both cases I got the message: “The webpage cannot be found.” I had no problem accessing the streaming videos, and I have no reason to believe that this is other than a minor technical glitch.
The last time I checked several years ago House Commerce Committee transcripts were running at least a year late and sometimes several years late. The public record included in the transcripts also may not include follow-up correspondence on the public record between witnesses and the committee.
In 1994 I wrote a master’s thesis on video access to public meetings, and in 1999 an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, “Senate Hypocrisy Over "Hot" Testimony,” on how Congress inhibits public access to their public meeting video archives. I agree that there has been great improvement in the accessibility of committee hearings. However, I’d suggest changing the reference point from absolute to relative progress. Specifically, why is it that small towns such as Winooski, Vermont (population 6,429) or Takoma Park, Maryland (17,701) provide much better access to public meeting records than the U.S. Congress representing more than 300 million people?
--Jim
J.H. Snider, MBA, Ph.D.
iSolon.org
Web: www.isolon.org
-----Original Message-----
From: openhous...@googlegroups.com [mailto:openhous...@googlegroups.com]
On Behalf Of Josh Tauberer
Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 1:26 PM
To: openhous...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [openhouseproject] Committee Webcast Archives Review: I See Progress
One of the continuing themes of the OHP and OSP projects has been
aphid
formats available by each committee. It's wiki, feel free to
extend/correct/revise/redact.
-aphid
Josh Tauberer
> Thanks, Josh. This is really useful. Do you have it posted in a blog that we could point folks to?
I do now:
http://razor.occams.info/blog/2009/11/10/committee-webcast-archives/
with Jim and Aphid's comments in there as well.
On 11/10/2009 02:39 PM, J.H. Snider wrote:
> I went to the House Commerce Committee website and tried to download
> the video record of its last two hearings
Yeah, I figured there would be a few bad links. I checked many of the
links for recent hearings/meetings but not all of them.
On 11/10/2009 02:49 PM, aphid wrote:
> http://metavid.org/wiki/Committee_Video_Status is a survey of video
> formats available by each committee. It's wiki, feel free to
> extend/correct/revise/redact.
Oops, I guess I duplicated some effort. Thanks for pointing it out. I
noted it in the blog post and will see if I have anything in my
spreadsheet to add.
Josh
Patrice McDermott
Patrice McDermott, Director
OpenTheGovernment.org
1742 Connecticut Ave NW, 3rd floor
Washington, DC 20009
202.332.OPEN (6736)
www.openthegovernment.org
From: Josh Tauberer [mailto:taub...@govtrack.us]
To: openhous...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:42:14 -0500
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Committee Webcast Archives Review: I See Progress
Josh Tauberer
> formats available by each committee. It's wiki, feel free to
> extend/correct/revise/redact.
Senate Foreign Relations hearings. The links to video are not obvious.
That means all Senate standing committees have video archives. (Four
House committees do not.)
Also I wanted to copy something Aphid wrote on the wiki page for
everyone's benefit:
> With the exception of distinct 'direct download' links on the House
> Energy Committee page, committees' technology choices stand in the
> way of reuse or archival. Saving streams from the various proprietary
> protocols used by committees requires specialized tools which may
> violate DMCA. Given the public domain status of these videos, formats
> and technologies which encourage -- rather than defeat -- archival
> and reuse by citizen/users should be adopted.
To reiterate some of that: it may be illegal to make copies of some of
these videos under the DMCA law because the videos are provided in
particular proprietary formats. That is so even if the committee says it
is ok to copy it.
That plus the quasi-legal restrictions on how House video may be used,
these videos may meet only a weak notion of public access. The ability
to view but not share is pretty insulting.
I am encouraged by the rate at which committees have been making more
use of web video. But what can committees do going forward?
* For the sake of archives and use by professional journalists, provide
a stream that is high-quality (it probably exists but just isn't public).
* Similarly, provide the streams at least additionally in a format that
does not make it a violation of federal law to copy (again, it's a
problem regardless of whether the committee says "go ahead").
* Remove any additional assertions (e.g. House Rules) on how
congressional video may be used. Either it is public or it is not. It is
an affront to free speech if Congress thinks government records, of all
things, should be off-limits to any part of public discourse.
* Partner with experts in the public --- e.g. Aphid and Carl Malamud ---
on establishing goals for congressional video.
- Josh Tauberer
- CivicImpulse / GovTrack.us
http://razor.occams.info | www.govtrack.us | civicimpulse.com
"Members of both sides are reminded not to use guests of the
House as props."
>
J.H. Snider
It might be interesting to note some exceptions to the restriction on political use of video. For example, the National Association of Broadcasters, one of the most powerful lobbies in DC, has routinely been allowed to videotape committee hearings relevant to its political agenda. It then takes snippets of those hearings and periodically rebroadcasts them to its grassroots activists (local station lobbyists) throughout the country. This is one of those special interest perks--and double standards--that are generally too petty for anyone to pay attention to.
--Jim
J.H. Snider, MBA, Ph.D.
iSolon.org
Web: www.isolon.org
-----Original Message-----
From: openhous...@googlegroups.com [mailto:openhous...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Josh Tauberer
To: openhous...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Committee Webcast Archives Review: I See Progress