We write in support of expanded public access to Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports. Longstanding congressional policy allows members and committees to use their websites to disseminate CRS products to the public, although CRS itself may not engage in direct public dissemination. This results in a disheartening inequity. Insiders with Capitol Hill connections can easily obtain CRS reports from any of the 20,000 congressional staffers and well-resourced groups can pay for access from subscription services. However, members of the public can access only a small subset of CRS reports that are posted on an assortment of not-for-profit websites on an intermittent basis. Now is the time for a systematic solution that provides timely, comprehensive free public access to and preservation of non-confidential reports, while protecting confidential communications between CRS and members and committees of Congress.
CRS reports—not to be confused with confidential CRS memoranda and other products—play a critical role in our legislative process by informing lawmakers and staff about the important issues of the day. The public should have the same access to information. In 2014, CRS completed over 1,000 new reports and updated over 2,500 existing products. (CRS also produced nearly 3,000 confidential memoranda.)
Our interest in free public access to non-confidential CRS reports illustrates the esteem in which the agency is held. CRS reports are regularly requested by members of the public and are frequently cited by the courts and the media. For example, over the last decade, CRS reports were cited in 190 federal court opinions, including 64 at the appellate level. Over the same time period, CRS reports were cited 67 times in The Washington Post and 45 times in The New York Times. CRS reports often are published in the record of legislative proceedings.
Taxpayers provide more than $100 million annually in support of CRS, and yet members of the public often must look to private companies for consistent access. Some citizens are priced out of these services, resulting in inequitable access to information about government activity that is produced at public expense.
In fact, while CRS generates a list of all the reports it has issued over the previous year, it silently redacts that information from the public-facing version of its annual report, making it difficult for the public to even know the scope of CRS products they could obtain from Congress. A Google search returned over 27,000 reports, including 4,260 hosted on .gov domains, but there is no way to know if those documents are up-to-date, what might be missing or when they might disappear from view.
Comprehensive free public access to non-confidential CRS reports would place the reports in line with publications by other legislative support agencies in the United States and around the globe. The Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Budget Office, the Law Library of Congress, and 85 percent of G-20 countries whose parliaments have subject-matter experts routinely make reports available to the public.
We hasten to emphasize that we are not calling for public access to CRS products that should be kept confidential or are distributed only to a small network on Capitol Hill. Memoranda produced at the request of a member or committee and provided to an office in direct response to a request should remain confidential unless the office itself chooses to release the report. By comparison, we believe no such protection should attach to reports typically published on CRS’ internal website or otherwise widely disseminated.
We value the work of CRS and in no way wish to impede its ability to serve Congress. CRS reports already undergo multiple levels of administrative review to ensure they are accurate, nonpartisan, balanced and well-written. Authors of every CRS product are aware of the likelihood that reports will become publicly available.
We do not make a specific recommendation on who should comprehensively publish nonconfidential CRS reports online, although the approaches outlined in H. Res. 34 (114th Congress) and S. Res. 118 (111th Congress) are reasonable. The Clerk of the House, the Secretary of the Senate, the Government Publishing Office (GPO), the Library of Congress and libraries in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) are all reasonable places for the public to gain access to these documents. Even bulk publication on GPO’s website would be a major step forward.
We ask only that all non-confidential reports be published as they are released, updated or withdrawn; that they be published in their full, final form; that they are freely downloadable individually and in bulk; and that they be accompanied by an index or metadata that includes the report ID, the date issued/updated, the report name, a hyperlink to the report, the division that produced the report, and possibly the report author(s) as well.
In the attached appendix we briefly address concerns often raised by CRS regarding public access to reports. In doing so, we note that many committees, including the Senate Rules Committee, have published CRS reports on their websites. Also, that many CRS reports are available through third parties. We urge you to give great weight to the significant public benefit that would result from comprehensive, timely access.
We welcome the opportunity to further discuss implementing systematic public access to nonconfidential CRS reports. Please contact Daniel Schuman, Demand Progress policy director, at daniel@demandprogress.org, or Kevin Kosar, R Street Institute senior fellow and governance director, at kkosar@rstreet.org. Thank you for your thoughtful consideration of this matter.
American Association of Law Libraries
American Civil Liberties Union
American Library Association
Association of Research Libraries
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
California State University San Marcos
Cause of Action
Center for Democracy and Technology
Center for Effective Government
Center for Media and Democracy
Center for Responsive Politics
Citizens Against Government Waste
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
Congressional Data Coalition
Data Transparency Coalition
Defending Dissent Foundation
Demand Progress
Engine
Essential Information
Federation of American Scientists
FreedomWorks
Free Government Information
Government Accountability Project
Middlebury College Library
Minnesota Coalition On Government Information
National Coalition for History
National Security Archive
National Security Counselors
National Taxpayers Union
NewFields Research Library
Niskanen Center
OpenTheGovernment.org
Project on Government Oversight
Public Citizen
R Street Institute
Sunlight Foundation
Taxpayers for Common Sense
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University
Union of Concerned Scientists
Western Illinois University Libraries