Giving the Public Access to Congress' 'Brain'

May 21, 2009— -- The Obama administration has committed to making government more transparent by making more information available online.

It has reversed an executive order that encouraged too much secrecy, and ordered a top-to-bottom, 120-day review of how the use of new technologies can help the government engage with the public.

But at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, openness is slower to catch on.

Critically, Congress has yet to end an outdated policy that prevents ordinary Americans from having easy access to the findings of the Congressional Research Service (CRS), otherwise known as "the brains" of our legislative body.

CRS is funded by taxpayers to the tune of about $100 million a year and generates in-depth reports on critical matters of public policy ranging from forestry to national defense. These reports play a key role in the legislative process, providing the factual support for much of what eventually becomes policy.

Concerned about the future of the country's big banks? CRS just finished a report on options for dealing with insolvency of major banks.

Tired of being stopped at the airport for special screening? CRS recently released a report on the issues posed by airport-passenger screening.

Each of these reports is full of the insightful writing, top-notch analysis, and backed with unclassified, unimpeachable research. Yet few people outside the halls of Congress will ever benefit from these timely reports because of indefensible policies that keep them out of the public's hands.

If relatively few people outside of Capitol Hill have even heard of CRS, it is partly because CRS goes to lengths to make itself unknowable.

An Internet search for CRS turns up a "jobs" page and a brief history of the service, but no official way to obtain CRS reports. That's because CRS has no public-facing function to distribute the reports.

The organization works directly for Congress, as an arm of the Library of Congress, and provides its reports exclusively to lawmakers and staff.