OpenCRS

(Via MyWay)

A new web site aims to make widely available to the public certain government reports about topics from terrorism to Social Security that congressional researchers prepare and distribute now only to lawmakers. The site, OpenCRS, links more than a half-dozen existing collections of nearly 8,000 reports from the Congressional Research Service and centrally indexes them so visitors can find reports containing specific terms or phrases.

It also encourages visitors to ask their lawmakers to send them any reports not yet publicly available -- and gives detailed instructions to do this -- so these can be added to the collection. None of the reports is classified or otherwise restricted.

The site is operated by the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based civil liberties group. The project is a response to years of rumbling and wrangling by open-government advocates over a lack of direct accessibility to reports from the policy research arm of Congress.

Posted by Tom on June 27, 2005