An assortment of Net activists, conservative and liberal groups, good-government organizations, journalists, and other media types is asking Congress to once and for all make some of its most specialized and valuable public information available online.
Under the leadership of the Congressional Accountability Project, organizations as diverse as Common Cause, the American Conservative Union, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Center for Defense Information have banded together to urge House and Senate leaders to put Congressional Research Service reports online.
The service "produces some of the best research in the federal government," the group said in a letter last week to Senate Rules Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Virginia) and House Oversight Committee chief Bill Thomas (R-California). "We believe that taxpayers ought to be able to read the research that we pay for."
Citing House Speaker Newt Gingrich's 1994 vows to "require that all documents and all conference reports and all committee reports be filed electronically" and to put ordinary citizens on the same footing as "the highest paid Washington lobbyist," the letter asks Warner and Thomas to institute rules putting the service's product online.
Thus far, accountability project director Gary Ruskin said, Warner has "blown off" the letter and Thomas has yet to respond. In a letter earlier this week, Warner said it would be premature to act until a "task force" - Senator Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi) and Representative Vern Ehlers (R-Michigan) - report on the matter.
The publicly funded service acts on congressional members' requests for in-depth studies on any issue. The resulting reports - about 1,000 a year - have a high reputation for depth and accuracy. But they are not readily available outside Congress: Individual members' offices take public requests for the studies, which the accountability project says can take weeks or months to be delivered. More rapid access is available to those willing to subscribe to the service or buy copies of individual reports.
But both options are carrying a substantial price. For instance, the letter cites a vendor who charges an annual subscription rate of US$190 per year, plus $2.75 for each report ordered, and an additional 2.5 cents per page. The service charges nonsubscribers $47 for up to five reports. Other vendors charge fees into the thousands of dollars for a complete year's set of reports on microfilm.
