Group launches Open House Project

Publication: The Hill

Kelly McCormack
February 16, 2007

Last fall, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) vowed to make the workings of Congress more transparent. Now, one group is creating an Internet forum to make that goal a reality. The Open House Project, funded by the Sunlight Foundation, last week launched a website designed to bring more details of the House of Representatives' operations to a broad audience online. "With the new congressional mandate to open Congress, it's time for citizens to help open the process," a statement available on the site read. "One of the problems is that, well, no one person really knows how to make it happen. It's a big job. The Open House Project is a temporary working group designed to make recommendations to Congress on easy ways to begin the process." Hot topics at www.theopenhouseproject.com Wednesday included tracking changes within bills and creating a text version of legislation. Bloggers and others were also invited to discuss archiving old website content, standardizing the formats of websites, enhancing usability and making committee transcripts available as soon as possible in forums with titles such as "Cracking open a big bottle of Congress" and "Mash-ups for government transparency." In late March, discussion threads will be compiled in a report and presented to Pelosi, according to Matt Stoller, a blogger and political organizer who writes for the My Direct Democracy blog (www.myDD.com) and is leading the project with John Wonderlich, the coordinator of the Congressional Committees Project at www.DailyKos.com, and Robert Bluey, director of the Center for Media and Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation. "We're hoping to identify pieces of infrastructure that will dramatically improve public access," Stoller said. "We're a working group representing itself online. What we're trying to do is bring back feedback. Anyone can participate." Stoller said he had talked to lawmakers about the project and has been hearing from staffers, who say they are monitoring its progress. The site is "getting a lot of hits from the House as well," Stoller said. There have been "1,000 visitors so far. It's a niche website, targeted at a small group of people [and] focusing on congressional management and the online community." The site's stated goals: to produce a series of recommendations by late March that will address how Congress can become more open to the public; to cultivate discussion with members, Hill staffers and "institutional stakeholders"; to create a more open legislative branch; and to foster a public discussion on a more open Congress. Stoller said that the Speaker, the House Administration Committee, committee chairmen, the Library of Congress and House Information Resources will all play a role in changing to the way Congress uses the Internet. "We're trying to find the least intrusive ways to open up the House, the low-hanging fruit where the Internet and congressional procedures come together," the statement on the site said. Also on the site is a quotation from Pelosi lauding the advent of such a discussion forum: "The Internet is an incredible vehicle for transparency, honest leadership and open environment. I am encouraged on how the House can be as open and accessible to citizens as possible." The Sunlight Foundation, a group dedicated to enabling Americans to learn more about their elected officials' actions via the Internet, said that the site will bring about logical changes to the legislative process. "This is truly an exciting effort, with great potential to further greater common-sense reform in the House," the executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, Ellen Miller, said in a press release. "We are seeking to bring together the 'best and brightest' from the public and private sectors, who best understand how Congress can implement some fairly easy ideas that will greatly expand transparency and openness."