Making Government Transparent and Accountable
The Sunlight Foundation uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. Underlying all of our efforts is a fundamental belief that increased transparency will improve the public's confidence in government
The Sunlight Foundation Blog
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CRS On Making the Constitution Annotated Available in XML
Last week, the Sunlight Foundation urged the Government Printing Office to publish the legal treatise Constitution Annotated (a.k.a. CONAN) online in XML. CONAN explains the U.S. Constitution section by section, describing in its usual (and legally required) non-partisan fashion how the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution’s provisions. CONAN contains analysis of nearly 8,000 Supreme Court cases.
We contacted the Librarian of Congress, who has statutory responsibility for preparing CONAN, for his opinion on making the treatise available online in XML. (Although it is prepared in XML, GPO publishes CONAN online in plain text and PDF format, sans meta-data. As a result, the structured data is unavailable to those who may want to republish, remix, or otherwise engage with the treatise.)
The Congressional Research Service*, which is part of the Library of Congress and whose staff actually write CONAN, made themselves available to answer our questions, summarized below:
(1) Would CRS agree to making the Constitution Annotated available online in XML every two years, when the document is printed?
(2) Would CRS agree making the Constitution Annotated available online in XML as that document is updated and released on Congress’s intranet? (This would be more frequent than the every-other-year publication schedule.)
Here is CRS’s response:
The Congressional Research Service and the Government Printing Office plan to discuss publication of the Constitution Annotated and possible future enhancements.
It is not entirely clear what this means. What we hope is that this statement indicates movement towards an arrangement whereby CRS frequently provides the XML file to GPO on a regular basis, and GPO makes that file — untouched — available for download on its website. Stay tuned.
Thanks to BoingBoing for the coverage.
* Disclosure: I used to work for CRS.
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220+ Years Later, It’s Time to Publish the Constitution Annotated Online in XML
Today, the Sunlight Foundation called upon the Government Printing Office to publish the legal treatise The Constitution Annotated online in XML format as it is updated. The Constitution Annotated has been written by the Library of Congress for nearly 100 years, and contains analysis of nearly 8,000 U.S. Supreme Court cases.Over the decades, GPO has published print versions of this extraordinary resource every two years, with limited electronic versions available from 1992 edition onward. Although the Library of Congress has drafted the Constitution Annotated in XML for a number of years, that data is no longer present when it is published online by GPO. [Update: To clarify, GPO has never published the XML data. However, CRS currently creates that document in XML format, and has done so for a number of years.] Releasing the treatise in XML would allow for the easy sharing of information between different kinds of computers, applications, and organizations, and provide a roadmap to the underlying data.
In addition to asking for The Constitution Annotated to be published online in XML, we are also asking that as the data is updated and made available to Congressional staff, it also be made available to the general public. For an example of what that could look like, see Cornell University Law School’s transformation of the data.
Today is the 222th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution. In 1787, it was made available to the American people by the most modern technology of the day. We should do no less today, and provide the Constitution (along with commentary) in XML.
The full text of the letter is after the jump. (Continue reading…)
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Carl Malamud for Public Printer
Our friend Carl Malamud, president and CEO of PublicResource.Org, which works for the publication of public domain information from local, state, and federal government agencies, has embarked on a new campaign. He’s “running” for the position of Public Printer of the United States, the head of the Government Printing Office (GPO). Sounds novel, eh, but Carl’s campaign, Yes We Scan, is inspired by Augustus E. Giegengack, a working printer who ran a successful campaign to convinced President Franklin Roosevelt to appoint him as head of the GPO back in 1933. Carl hopes to similarly convince President Obama to appoint him as the public printer. “If I were given the honor to be nominated by the President and the further honor to be confirmed by the Senate, my platform for revitalizing the GPO and rebooting .gov is spelled out in a detailed series of policy papers.”
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Political Web Innovations
The political Web continues to grow as new databases are established every week regularly using new technologies to present important information. I came across three new Web sites, one government and two from nonprofits, today and figured I’d pass them along. The first is the Government Printing Office’s online guide to members of Congress. The GPO’s online guide allows users to search members of Congress by a number of categories, including name, hometown, terms served, and more. The database is fairly rudimentary but it does allow someone to do quick searches for members from a particular state or see how many members have served for 5 terms. This is good step for GPO as it shows that they looking towards using the Web to project information; all they need is to add more search categories and more information for the member profiles. More links to more information makes the data more useful.
Second, we have a great collection and presentation of government RSS feeds from Legistorm. Legistorm’s "The Score" is a one-stop shop for up-to-the-minute government information hosting RSS feeds of the floor of the House, reports from the GAO, CBO, Executive Orders, and Statements of Administration Policy, and headlines from the blog Political Wire. The Score also shows the schedule for the House and Senate floors and the schedule for House and Senate committee hearings. For the lighter side of things they also post top political cartoons of the day. It looks a lot like a preset, government information-only Netvibes page. If you’re watching Congress this is a pretty sweet view.Third, and somewhat of topic, is the new database on carbon emissions Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) from the Center for Global Development. I bring this one up because it is a massive database, containing information on 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies worldwide, that is using the Web to provide information to citizens concerned about carbon emissions in useful ways. The site allows for searches in variety of categories. I just typed in my zip code and went to the page for Pepco Holdings, Inc., my power company. The individual page for the power company is a striking way at conveying information, using data charts, Google Maps, and allowing comments (particularly useful for individuals who are directly effected by polluting power plants in their area). While not everyone in America is concerned about finding the latest GAO report they are concerned about the air they breathe and the responsibility of the companies providing energy to their homes. The presentation in the CARMA database goes above and beyond that which I normally see. I would of course love to see this information mashed-up with lobbying records, government contracts and grants, member voting records from these districts, etc…
Conveying information that any American can understand and care about on a gut level, whether it’s carbon emissions or polluted water ways, and matching that to information that makes the powerful accountable for their actions (voting behavior or power of influence through lobbying and campaign contributions) will allow power to decentralize back to citizens and voters. The ProgrammableWeb government page that Ellen just wrote about is a great beginning step to making all government and company information mixable and matchable to suit the needs of each American. As the political Web innovates, politicians will have to become more accountable for their actions.
