Technology and Congress - they're doing better than you might think. During my first week at CMF, I attended the Legislative Data Transparency Conference (LDTC) on June 27, 2017 hosted by the Committee on House Administration...and it blew my mind.

As a computer scientist, I've worked with multiple high-tech businesses over the years, but I assumed Congress would not be one of them. Like many other citizens, I assumed Congress was a decade behind the rest of the world, still using fax machines and legacy software to handle their information. I assumed technology upgrades would be perpetually slow with a lot of pushback from traditional figures within Congress. Most of these assumptions weren't far-fetched. The last I heard, Congress was (and still is) trying to implement fully machine readable formatting into their documentation. Why would I expect an institution that doesn't have all their documents properly digitized to be keeping up with the latest technology trends of the rest of the world? Well my assumptions were wrong...way wrong. The second I heard the Office of the Clerk say they had a Git Hub page with opensource access to their data, my jaw dropped. This was not the Congress I had envisioned. Clearly I had been missing out on something big.

LDTC presented just a small taste of what technology has been upgraded over the past year. I was impressed by the major changes that have been implemented to various bodies within Congress, such as brand new versions of Congressional websites such as Clerk.house.gov, Senate.gov, and Congress.gov. The transition to new and improved websites is absolutely necessary in order to keep up with the growing demand of both constituents and staffers. Andrew Weber from the Library of Congress talked about the recent upgrade from Thomas.gov, an older online legislative information system, to the new Congress.gov. The new website has an average use per day that is four times more than last year. In addition, the website recently surpassed more than 1 million page views in a single day. Congress has recognized the growing demand for legislative information and responded with improved access and better sites able to meet the needs of both the House and U.S. citizens.

LDTC showed some amazing progress to integrate new technologies, but we still have a long way to go. Representative Will Hurd (TX-23) spoke about the need for better information, stating "We don't even know what questions to ask because we don't have the right data." As LDTC showed, better data access is coming, and it will be the foundation for congressional decision-making. During the conference, Daniel Schuman of Demand Progress talked about how just six years ago, Congress was "stuck in Thomas land" in terms of how Congress and citizens were getting access to data. There was a lot of congressional information that was still hard to obtain and any conversations about upgrading technology would be shut down. Well I am proud to say that Congress is stuck in Thomas land no more. Congress may have been living in the technological past just a few years earlier, but the push for change inside and outside Congress has set them on a fast track for progress, and seeing that progress unfold at LDTC was incredible to watch. I look forward to seeing what other surprises Congress has in store during my tenure here at CMF. 

Samantha McDonald is a summer research assistant at CMF. She is also a PhD student at the University of California, Irvine studying the effects of information and communications technology on the relationships between policymakers and citizens.