Leadership Support

In 2011, rules of the United States House of Representatives for the 112th Congress called for greater transparency and accessibility to legislative documents. The intention of the change was to place electronic distribution on par with traditional printing. On June 1, 2012, House Report 112-511 that accompanied H.R. 5882 the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act of 2013 directed the establishment of the Bulk Data Task Force to examine the increased dissemination of Congressional information via bulk data download by non-governmental groups for the purpose of supporting openness and transparency in the legislative process.

The Bulk Data Task Force, now called the Congressional Data Task Force, is a partnership of representatives from Legislative branch organizations such as the Government Publishing Office, House of Representatives, Senate, and the Library of Congress working in a cooperative manner to coordinate and accomplish openness and transparency goals. Civil society organizations frequently meet with and provide feedback to the Task Force.

Name Change

In June 2022, the name of the Bulk Data Task Force was changed to the Congressional Data Task Force.

• Exchange of letters - PDF
• Recommendation by the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress from page 20 of their September 24, 2020 report - PDF

(39) Recommendation: Make permanent the Bulk Data Task Force and rename it the Congressional Data Task Force.

Specifically . . . Congress established the Bulk Data Task Force with a focus on the question of determining whether Congress should make the data behind THOMAS and LIS available to the public as structured data. Ultimately the Task Force recommended, and GPO implemented the publication of bill summary, status, and text information online as structured data. In this sense, the Task Force completed its intended mission. However, in completing its mission, the Task Force brought together many of the technology stakeholders inside the legislative branch as well as members of civil society and continues to hold public meetings on a quarterly basis.

This ongoing collaboration has been positive for the Clerk's Office and for data transparency groups, ultimately leading to technological advances in how legislative data is made public. The Committee recommends the Task Force's mission expand beyond publishing bills and the data attendant to them to allow for consideration of other legislative documents and congressional operations data. The Task Force should be renamed the Congressional Data Task Force to accurately capture the Task Force's expanded mission.