David A. Fahrenthold has published Congressional Data May Soon Be Easier to Use Online, Washington Post, June 8, 2012.
The article describes recent efforts to petition Congress to make U.S. federal legislative data — specifically the data underlying the THOMAS legislative information system — publicly available free of charge in bulk XML. Those efforts are popularly known as the freeTHOMAS movement (hashtag #freeTHOMAS).
The article contains quotations from Dr. Joshua Tauberer of Govtrack, Tom Bruce of the Legal Information Institute, and Daniel Schuman of the Sunlight Foundation.
For more information about freeTHOMAS, please see Schuman: Major Transparency Milestone in Bulk Access Statement; the new post by David Moore of Participatory Politics Foundation entitled Next Steps in #freeTHOMAS Campaign; and Open Congress’s THOMAS bulk data access wiki.
Tags: #freeTHOMAS, Bulk access to legislative data, Bulk XML access to legislative data, Daniel Schuman, Joshua Tauberer, Legal open government data, Legislative information systems, Open government data, Open legislative data, Public access to legal information, Public access to legislative information, THOMAS, Tom Bruce
