Posted by: Taylor Gulatsi
The following is a guest post from Andrew Reiter, a legislative data specialist in the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress. Andrew previously blogged about an Update on the Congress.gov API, Modernizing Congressional Data – Treaty Documents on Congress.gov, and Modernizing Congressional Data – Senate Legislation and Amendments on Congress.gov.
In the fifth installment of our series on modernizing the legislative data exchange behind Congress.gov, we look at the project’s final phase – modernizing the data structure and delivery method for House of Representatives bills and amendments.
Senate and House legislative data must be made available to Congress and the public in accordance with two laws passed by Congress in the mid-1990s:
- 2 U.S.C. 180 – Legislative information retrieval system; and
- 2 U.S.C. 181 – Program for exchange of information among legislative branch agencies.
As with all things technology-based, the congressionally mandated retrieval system that is now known as Congress.gov has evolved over time. Most of the changes have been made at the request of congressional staff, who need more features and functions to do their work more efficiently.
The efforts to modernize the data structure and delivery method have primarily been behind the scenes, but have resulted in immediate improvements for the end-user experience, as well as laying the groundwork for future enhancements. In addition, more standardized data resulting from the modernization efforts have allowed us to use more automation to help monitor for data discrepancies.
Each day, Congress.gov receives a series of bill and amendment metadata files from the House of Representatives. The first delivery, in the wee hours of the morning, provides the metadata framework for each bill or amendment introduced or acted upon the previous day, including unique identifiers, titles, sponsor and cosponsor data, actions, and committee-level activity. Subsequent deliveries include executive actions on bills, which provide nearly “real time” updates when bills are presented to the president for signature.
A future enhancement in the pipeline is to show more “Legislative Interest” relationships in Congress.gov. “Legislative interest” is a common House practice where committee chairs publish letters in the Congressional Record acknowledging that they have made a cooperative agreement about a bill that was referred to one committee but in which another committee has jurisdictional interest. The letters on page H1450 of the March 27, 2023, Congressional Record are an example of “legislative interest” letters.
Modernization efforts, as well as enhancements, are implemented through close collaboration between the Library of Congress and the House of Representatives. We conducted months of planning followed by additional extensive testing, including incorporating unique scenarios, such as committee hearings held on bills before the bills were referred to the committee. The end result has achieved the goal of improved data exchange and processing with no diminished end-user experience.
To learn about enhancements as they roll out to the Congress.gov website, subscribe to Congress.gov notifications from our Get Email Alerts and Updates page.
