U.S. GPO releases House bills in bulk XML

Today the U.S. Government Printing Office has begun making U.S. House of Representatives’ legislative bills available for bulk download in XML, at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLS

Currently, only bills from the current Congress are included.

The user guide provides more details about the data.

Click here for the GPO press release.

Click here for the Speaker’s office press release.

Release of the bills in bulk XML is a key goal of the #freeTHOMAS movement and a longstanding goal of the open government data community.

The House bills are the second major Congressional data set to be released in bulk XML this month; the first was the House floor proceedings in bulk XML.

Here are links to selected posts about the availability of this new legislative data set:

• Daniel Schuman: Access to Legislation Gets Better, Promise of More to Come
• Joshua Tauberer: On the new bulk bill XML from GPO
• Nick Judd: House Republicans Release More Data Catnip for Developers
• Alex Howard: Open data of U.S. House legislation now available in bulk format

Please see the comments to this post for links to additional resources about this issue.

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