Help make CRS reports open to all

Seventeen partners in the OpenTheGovernment.org coalition and otherssent letters on Wednesday, March 28, to Speaker of the House NancyPelosi, and to the members of the House Administration Committee andthe Senate Rules Committee urging action to ensure no-fee online publicaccess to all CRS (Congressional Research Service) reports.  Thepublic deserves free, fast online access to CRS reports that costtaxpayers $100 million annually, the Center for Democracy &Technology (CDT) and OpenTheGovernment.org said in letters to HouseSpeaker Pelosi and other Hill leaders. CRS reports have “never beenmade available in a consistent way to members of the public,” theletters said. Lawmakers can give reports to constituents on request –a “slow, unreliable process,” and of little use since the publicdoesn’t know what CRS publishes, groups said. CRS recently tightenedcurbs on how researchers share public information and who has access toinformation, they said. It would be a “trivial expense” for the Libraryof Congress to increase capacity and add public access to thepassword-protected CRS database Congress uses. Private companies sellthe reports, and CDT’s OpenCRS.com collects reports from members ofCongress. They have been downloaded 3.5 million times — but onlymaking all reports searchable online will “sate those demands and helpproduce a better-informed electorate,” the letters said. Signatoriesincluded the American Library Association., the Electronic FrontierFoundation and the National Security Archive.

http://www.openthegovernment.org/

Ed:  CRS reports enable voters and scholars to examine and evaluate claims about, e.g, the long term costs/benefits of tax cuts, the true truth about deficits and government debt, and how well particular agencies are doing their jobs.  Get more info about making taxpayer-funded research avalable to taxpayers at  opencrs.com