World e-Parliament Conference 2016
#eParliament
28-30 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.

Building Commitment to
Openness Leadership Support
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.

Building Commitment to
Openness Leadership Support
 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 Openness
Challenges
 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 Openness
Technical 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.

Building Commitment to Openness
Technical Standards
 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.

Building Commitment to Openness
Technical Standards
 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 Openness
Projects
• 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 Openness
Projects (Cont’d)

Building Commitment to Openness
Projects (Cont’d)
While not an official record, video helps to tell the story
of the House and its committees:
2010: House Proceedings Video – HouseLive.gov
2012: Committee Video – centralized strategy for
webcasting committee video proceedings and provides
consistent public access and archiving on
Congress.gov.

Building Commitment to Openness
Projects (Cont’d)

Building Commitment to Openness
Projects (Cont’d)
 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

Building Commitment to Openness
Projects (Cont’d)

Building Commitment to Openness
Projects (Cont’d)
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 Openness
Projects (Cont’d)

Building Commitment to Openness
Future 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 Openness
Bulk 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