Open Data: U.S. House Will Make Legislative Docs More Accessible To Public

From the Sunlight Foundation Blog:
by Dan Schuman

This morning, the House of Representatives took a tremendous step into the 21st century when the Committee on House Administration unanimously adopted “Standards for the Electronic Posting of House and Committee Documents & Data.”
Taking effect on January 1, 2012, the resolution instructs the Clerk of the House to maintain a single website where the public can access all House bills, amendments, and resolutions for floor consideration in XML. In addition, committees will be encouraged to post their documents on that site in XML whenever possible — and searchable PDFs when not — with the expectation that mandatory publication requirements in XML will soon be imposed. The House will also store video of hearings and markups, and work to implement standards “that require documents to be electronically published in open data formats that are machine readable,” thereby enabling transparency and public review.

Read the Complete Blog Post & Access Document: Standards for the Electronic Posting of House and Committee Documents & Data
From techPresident:
by Sarah Lai Stirland

“With the adoption of these standards, for the first time, all House bills, resolutions and legislative documents will be available in XML in one centralized location,” said Rep. Dan Lungren, (R-Calif.), in a Friday press statement. Lungren is the chairman of the Committee on House Administration.
“Providing easy access to legislative information increases constituent feedback and ultimately improves the legislative process,” he said.
The documents will all be accessible at a centralized web site maintained by the House Clerk. “Open formats” are defined as formats that are “widely available” and that allow indexing. The documents will be formatted in XML schema maintained at http://xml.house.gov.

See Also: Official Statement from Committee on House Administration

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