U.S. House members Mike Quigley (D-IL) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD) have introduced legislation that would "require the Public Printer to establish and maintain a website accessible to the public that allows the public to obtain electronic copies of all congressionally mandated reports in one place." The bill, H.R. 1974, is endorsed by SLA. (See: Public Policy Connections, 16 May 2011).
The Sunlight Foundation's Daniel Schuman outlines the differences between this bill and a similar one introduced in the 111th Congress in his blog post Improving Public Oversight of Government: The Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act.
The public benefit of the bill's "in one place" requirement is perhaps illustrated best by the guide Sources for Finding Mandated Reports to Congress by U.S. Federal Agencies, made available online by the Law Librarians Society of Washington, DC (LLSDC.org). The guide lists over 20 public and commercial sources for such reports and indexes to help in finding them.
Comments