[House Prints, 116th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[COMMITTEE PRINT]
116th Congress } { C.P. 116-1
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
1st Session } {
_________________________________________________________________________________
RECOMMENDATIONS TO IMPROVE
TRANSPARENCY IN THE
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
_________
R E P O R T
_________
THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE
MODERNIZATION OF CONGRESS
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
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[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
MAY 23, 2019.--Ordered to be printed
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U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
36-771 WASHINGTON : 2019
SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE MODERNIZATION OF CONGRESS
DEREK KILMER, Washington, Chair
ZOE LOFGREN, California TOM GRAVES, Georgia, Vice Chair
EMMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri ROBERT WOODALL, Georgia
SUZAN DELBENE, Washington SUSAN W. BROOKS, Indiana
MARK POCAN, Wisconsin RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois
MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington
WILLIAM TIMMONS, South Carolina
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COMMITTEE STAFF
ALLIE NEILL, Staff Director
JAKE OLSON, Deputy Staff Director
(II)
C O N T E N T S
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MAY 23, 2019
page
I. PURPOSE AND SUMMARY 1
II. BACKGROUND AND NEED FOR RECOMMENDATIONS 1
III. HEARINGS 2
IV. RECOMMENDATIONS 3
V. COMMITTEE CONSIDERATION AND VOTES 4
(III)
116th Congress } { C.P. 116-1
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
1st Session } {
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RECOMMENDATIONS TO IMPROVE TRANSPARENCY IN
THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
____________________
May 23, 2019.--Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the State of
the Union and ordered to be printed
____________________
Mr. Kilmer, from the Select Committee on the Modernization of
Congress, submitted the following
R E P O R T
I. PURPOSE AND SUMMARY
The Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress has been charged with the
important responsibility of recommending improvements to the U.S. House of
Representatives to ultimately better serve the American people. These initial
recommendations propose to improve transparency and ease public access to
legislative information in the U.S. House of Representatives. While legislative
information is public, it is often not made available in a format that allows the
public to easily review and understand this information. These recommendations
address such transparency and access problems and encourage the continuous
coordination and public posting of new legislative information.
II. BACKGROUND AND NEED FOR RECOMMENDATIONS
Over the past decade, there has been a significant push to make congressional
data more accessible to the American public in an interactive and understandable
way. Transparency increases accountability and ultimately improves the way Congress
serves the people.
The Select Committee identified the following issues to be addressed with
recommendations to improve transparency:
1. The House currently uses four different formats to write and view legislation,
which creates inefficiencies in the process. Maintaining, converting, and
reconverting between multiple formats requires costly custom software, risks
errors, and hinders transparency. Adopting U.S. Legislative Markup (USLM)--one of
the four formats currently used and the recognized standard--throughout the
lawmaking process creates a more coherent system for members and staff; simplifies
drafting; allows for instant comparison of proposed bills to current law; provides
transparency; and, allows for changes made by amendments to be automatically
reflected in bills once they are approved.
2. In 2017, new rules adopted by the House encouraged greater transparency and
access to legislative documents. These rules called for additional tools for
members, staff, and the public to clearly see how proposed legislation could
change our laws throughout the legislative process. This initiative, known as
the Posey Comparative Prints Project, has already completed Phase 1, and is on
track to meet their Phase 2 and Phase 3 deadlines. However, the Select Committee
has identified possible areas of concern including making sure that (1) resources
are available to develop and maintain the application for House-wide use, and (2)
resources are available to train and support staff using the comparative print
application. Ensuring that the Clerk's Office is ready to handle these anticipated
challenges is key to a smooth transition to implementing the comparative print
program, and ensuring the public can easily view and understand proposed changes
to our laws.
3. Filing and finding lobbyist disclosures should be straight-forward and simple.
A Congress-wide unique identifier for lobbyists would eliminate the problem of
misspelled names, or the same person having registrations under different first
names (example: Mike/Michael) causing confusion. By assigning unique identifiers,
the Clerk's Office would clarify and simplify the lobbying registration and
disclosure process, while making the filing process simpler.
4. Over the last few decades, Congress has increasingly failed to regularly
update the authorization of federal agencies and programs. As a result, the
management of wide expanses of the federal government has shifted to the executive
branch, and many programs and departments operate on autopilot without meaningful
congressional input. Making agency and program reauthorization dates public provides
members, staff, and the public with easy-to-access information about the current
status of executive branch programs and the committees that are responsible for
authorizing those programs.
5. Figuring out how members of a committee or its subcommittees voted on any bill
or issue before the committee or its subcommittees can be difficult. Each committee
sets its own procedures for making this information publicly available. The information
is public, yet it's not easy to access by most Americans. Some subscriber services
collect and provide this information to paying subscribers. But for the average
person--and even for members and staff not on the committee--this information is
difficult and time-consuming to collect. Publishing committee votes in a centralized
location improves transparency and access to this information for the public at-large.
III. HEARINGS
The Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress held a hearing titled, "Opening
up the Process: Recommendations for Making Legislative Information More Transparent". on
May 10, 2019. The Select Committee received testimony from:
* Daniel Schuman, Policy Director, Demand Progress
* Joshua Tauberer, Founder, GovTrack.us
* Robert Reeves, Deputy House Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives
* Frances Lee, Professor, University of Maryland
IV. RECOMMENDATIONS
The Select Committee made the following five recommendations to address the problems
identified (see II. BACKGROUND AND NEED FOR RECOMMENDATIONS). The Select Committee
supports:
1. Adopting one standardized format for drafting, viewing, and publishing legislation
to improve transparency and efficiency throughout the lawmaking process.
Specifically . . . Develop a plan for the adoption of U.S. Legislative Markup (USLM)
throughout the lawmaking process. The plan would incorporate a timeline for use by the
House Legislative Counsel, members' offices, leadership, and committees. Such an
approach would help members, staff, and the American public have access to changes,
visualizations, and analysis of legislative text. Printing and publishing processes
would also be made more efficient.
2. Providing resources to finish legislation comparison project on schedule and
train staff to vastly improve the American public's ability to understand how
amendments change legislation, and the impact of proposed legislation to current law.
Specifically . . . The Clerk's Office is on track to meet their Posey Comparative Print
Project Phase 2 (August 2019) and Phase 3 (3rd quarter 2020) deadlines. The main issues
of concern are making sure that (1) resources are available to develop and maintain the
application for House-wide use, and (2) resources are available to train and support
staff using the comparative print application. Support would include ensuring that the
Clerk's Office is ready to handle these anticipated challenges to implement the
comparative print program.
3. Modernizing the lobbying disclosure system to improve the filing process and more
easily find and track individual disclosures.
Specifically . . . Direct the Clerk of the House and Secretary of the Senate to update
the lobbying disclosure system in general and generate a Congress-wide unique identifier
for lobbyists and disclosing that identifier to the public as structured data as part of
the lobbying disclosure downloads.
4. Developing a centralized, electronic HUB that would list all federal agency and
program reauthorization expiration dates, by committee.
Specifically . . . Congress has increasingly failed to regularly update the authorization
of federal agencies and programs. Centralizing agency and program reauthorization dates
provides members, staff, and the public with easy-to-access information about the current
status of executive branch programs and the committees that are responsible for
authorizing those programs.
5. Developing a centralized, electronic HUB of committee votes that would be accessible
via House.gov and in machine readable format.
Specifically . . . Figuring out how a committee or its subcommittees voted on any bill
or issue before the committee or its subcommittees can be prohibitively difficult. Each
committee sets its own procedures for making this information publicly available. The
information is public, yet it's not easy to access by most Americans. Centralizing
committee vote data in one place enhances transparency and ensures ease of access for
the public.
V. COMMITTEE CONSIDERATION AND VOTES
CONSIDERATION
On May 23, 2019, the Select Committee held a Business Meeting, a quorum being present, and
reported favorably the recommendations herein contained in this report.
VOTES
In compliance with clause 3(b) of rule XIII of the Rules of the House of Representatives, there
were no recorded votes taken on these recommendations. The recommendations herein contained
in this report were adopted by voice vote, two-thirds being in the affirmative. A motion by
Chair Derek Kilmer of Washington to report these recommendations to the House of Representatives
was adopted by voice vote, two-thirds being in the affirmative.
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