day 2: openness: building commitment to openness, mr. robert reeves, deputy clerk, house of...

World e-Parliament Conference 2016#eParliament28-30 June 2016 // Chamber of Deputies of Chile // Valparaiso

House of Representatives United States of America

Building Commitment to Openness

Robert Reeves

Deputy Clerk

Building Commitment to Openness Leadership Support

In 2011, the rules of the US House of Representatives for the 112th Congress called for greater transparency and accessibility to

legislative documents.

The intention of the change was to place electronic distribution on par with traditional

printing.


On June 1, 2012 House Report 112-511 that accompanied H.R. 5882 Legislative Branch

Appropriations Act of 2013 directed the establishment of the House Bulk Data Task

Force to examine increased dissemination of congressional information via bulk data download by non-governmental groups

supporting openness and transparency in the legislative process.


The Bulk Data Task Force is a partnership of representatives from the various Legislative Branch Agencies such as:– House of Representatives, Senate, – Library of Congress, Government Publishing

Office, Government Accounting Office that work in a cooperative manner to coordinate and

accomplish openness and transparency goals.

Civil society organizations also participate.

Building Commitment to OpennessChallenges

Culture – only tell them what you want them to know.

If we make one document available they will want everything.

Who is going to do the technical work? Who has the time? Who is going to pay for it?

Digital signatures.

Civil Society Groups.

Building Commitment to OpennessTechnical Standards

The House uses data standards as a part of its IT strategy.

The standard use of XML was implemented in 1997 by the US House and US Senate.


Moving away from our own XML structure where possible.

U.S. Code now available in the XML schema called USLM (United States Legislative Markup). It was designed to be consistent with the XML Akoma Ntoso standard to the extent practicable.

In 2013, when USLM was designed, some structures of the U.S. Code were not handled by the Akoma Ntoso standard.


Akoma Ntoso is an international open document standard for parliamentary, legislative and judicial documents currently going through the OASIS standardization process.

It was initially developed by the United Nations in the context of a program aimed at supporting Parliaments to adopt modern information technologies.

Building Commitment to OpennessProjects

• 2001 drafting bills and resolutions in XML• 2003 House votes in XML on the web• 2004 posting XML files on the web• 2011 House floor proceedings in XML• 2012 / 2013 docs.house.gov• 2013 Bills in XML in bulk (USLM)• 2013 US Code in XML• 2014 Bill Summaries in XML in bulk• 2014 Member data in XML• 2014 Data Challenges• 2015 Bill Status in bulk.

Building Commitment to OpennessProjects (Cont’d)


While not an official record, video helps to tell the story of the House and its committees:

2010: House Proceedings Video – HouseLive.gov2012: Committee Video – centralized strategy for

webcasting committee video proceedings and provides consistent public access and archiving on

Congress.gov.


Redesign of the THOMAS system by the Library of Congress.

Combining the functions of the internal Legislative Information System (LIS) with THOMAS the public system.

One system for everyone (Members, staff, and the public) at Congress.gov


February 3, 2016- GPO launched the redesigned govinfo website in beta. govinfo functionality enhances the way stakeholders can interact with the site, strengthening GPO’s position as the central location for access to Federal government information.

In addition to a redesigned, mobile-friendly website with a modern look and feel, govinfo offers key enhancements including: •improved navigation based on extensive user feedback and usability testing,•additional options for browsing content collections and for sharing pages on social media, •implementation of a new open-source search engine, and •enhanced functionality that links related documents together, making it easier for users to navigate quickly to relevant content; related documents connect information together within the various legislative and rulemaking processes without the need for users to do separate searches.

Building Commitment to OpennessFuture Projects

Redesign of the Clerk’s website, focusing on House Chamber activities, using API’s to access and provide.

Public release of the House Telephone Directory.

“More documents in USLM” on Tuesday, 6/21 at the Legislative and Data Transparency Conference held at the US Capitol, Speaker Ryan announced the start of Phase I of a new project to convert documents not currently in USLM, to USLM.

Building Commitment to OpennessBulk Data Task Force Revisited

Four years later, we have had success with projects that have been completed.

We have established a relationship and dialogue with civil society / PMO groups.

We have altered the culture. Participants now come to meetings with project / transparency ideas and willingly collaborate with internal and external customers.

Building Commitment to Openness

Thank you

day 2: openness: building commitment to openness, mr. robert reeves, deputy clerk, house of...

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