Government Transparency Shouldn’t Stop with the Budget

Government transparency debates often focus on the availability and accessibility of information pertaining to government spending. But what about transparency in the very ideas and information that underpin legislative action? The reports of the publicly funded Congressional Research Service (CRS) aren't easily available to members of the public, and that's doing a disservice both to the taxpayers who support the work and the democracy the CRS seeks to inform.

Tom Van Heeke

Policy Analyst

Government transparency debates often focus on the availability and accessibility of information pertaining to government spending. Working alongside our partners at U.S. PIRG Education Fund, Frontier Group publishes an annual scorecard of how state governments, in particular, are faring in providing online access to data on government expenditures, contracts with private vendors, economic development subsidies, and tax expenditures. 

But what about transparency in the very ideas and information that underpin legislative action? The U.S. federal government doesn’t just spend tax dollars on social programs or keeping the lights on in your senator’s office; it operates a publicly funded think tank for Congress known as the Congressional Research Service (CRS). For $100 million per year (PDF), the CRS arms legislators and staffers with nonpartisan policy and legal analysis – written in plain language for the non-expert – that inform congressional debates and, ultimately, major public policy choices. As The Washington Post explained the other day, it also fails to make its reports easily available to the public. An interested citizen must either pay a company for a reproduction of a document, or formally request a copy from their congressman, bureaucratic barriers to access for a wealth of information that could support stronger public participation in the political process. 

Open government is not its own raison d’être. Whether it is openness in spending data or openness in congressionally commissioned research, transparency matters because of what it makes possible: citizenship in the fullest sense of the word. The same principles and rationales we have outlined throughout our public-spending-focused good government work here at Frontier Group apply to the research conducted by the CRS. Its reports should be electronically catalogued and easily accessed – for free – by the voters who make it all possible in the first place. A more informed citizenry can better participate in the debates and decisions that affect us all. 

Authors

Tom Van Heeke

Policy Analyst