1.4: Meeting Records
Other Information:
There is a lot of work to do before meeting records can be called transparent. The Congressional Record is the authoritative
record of what transpires on the House and Senate floors, but nothing similar reveals the content of committee meetings. Those
meeting records are produced after much delay -- sometimes an incredibly long delay -- by the committees themselves. These
records are obscure, and they are not being published in ways that make things easy for computers to find and comprehend.
In addition, the Congressional Record doesn't have the machine-discoverable publication or machine-readable structure that
it could and should. Giving unique, consistent IDs in the Record to members of Congress, to bills, and other regular subjects
of this publication would go a long way to improving it. The same would improve transcripts of committee meetings. Another
form of meeting record exists: videos. These have yet to be standardized, organized, and published in a reliable and uniform
way, but the HouseLive site (http://houselive.gov/) is a significant step in the right direction. It will be of greater use
when it can integrate with other records of Congress. Real-time flagging of members and key subjects of debate in the video
stream would be a great improvement in transparency. Setting video and video meta-data standards for use by both Houses of
Congress, by committees, and by subcommittees would improve things dramatically. House video is a bright spot in a very dark
field, but both will shine brighter in time. When the surrounding information environment has improved to educate the public
about goings-on in Congress in real time, the demand for and usefulness of video will increase.
Stakeholder(s):
Indicator(s):
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