Every CRS Report | Hacker News Reader

Every CRS Report

everycrsreport.com

39 pointssmacktoward9 comments

If you haven't read them, CRS reports can be very useful: In-depth research, succinctly and clearly written up, on a wide variety of topics. If you need to learn about a topic in public policy, even one related to IT, they are an excellent starting place.

> Congress's think tank

I wouldn't call them that. Think tanks create innovative new policy ideas. CRS's job seems to be to present the known facts and options on an issue.

Nonpartisan too which is nice.

Nice! I'm glad to see work being done in this area.

From the About page:

> Now, in partnership with a Republican and Democratic member of Congress, we are making these reports available to everyone for free online.

How fragile is this relationship? What can be done to ensure openness like this can continue and be increased?

> We also show how much a report has changed over time (whenever CRS publishes an update), provide RSS feeds

Cool. I see there are different versions available. Are there currently diff visualizations?

Hey! The best thing to do is tell your members of Congress to support the Equal Access to CRS Reports Act. In the House of Representatives it's HR 4702 and in the Senate it's S 2639. The more they hear from you, the more likely they'll be to publish the reports themselves. (You could also ask them to provide the reports to EveryCRSReport.com... the more the merrier).

We didn't build diff visualizations for the site. Not because I didn't want to-- it was in the specs -- but because we didn't have the funds for all the bells and whistles. The code is on GitHub if you want to hack on it and build a new module. Or donations will go to maintaining the site and expanding functionality.

Just referenced in the 538 blogging of the debate! Congrats, Joshua Tauberer!

http://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/third-presidential-deba...

In a similar vein, GAO reports are usually very well researched and written up:

http://www.gao.gov/browse/topic

That is awesome! I hope this was an output of the Digital Service, this is the kind of thing that really helps citizens understand their government.

Alas, no. This is a civil society effort.

CRS... Can't Remember Shit / Congressional Research Service

Tomayto / Tomahto

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