Center for Democracy & Technology and CRS Reports

The New York Times has this article today on the efforts of the Center for Democracy & Technology to make public the work of the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a division of the Library of Congress. CRS produces reports for Congress, and these reports are, by law, for the use of Congress only. Several members of Congress have made these reports accessible on their websites and a commercial vendor (Penny Hill Press) has many reports available for a fee. Several senators, among them Patrick Leahy, John McCain, and Joe Lieberman, have introduced legislation to make the reports public, as recently as last week.

The Center for Democracy & Technology created OpenCRS, a website that provides access to the reports along with an index to them.