For years, open-government advocates have pushed for Congress to make these unclassified, taxpayer-funded reports freely available to the public, said CDT. CRS already has a searchable Web site, available to every congressional office. Lawmakers have attempted several times to make that site available to the public, but those efforts have repeatedly foundered.
Until Monday, the only way for members of the public to get their hands on CRS reports without paying was to ask their member of Congress and wait, or hope to get lucky on one of the issue-specific Web sites that archive reports on certain topics. And to take either of those steps an individual would first need to be aware that a) the CRS exists at all and b) it drafted a study on an issue they care about. At least two companies sell copies of the reports, but CDT doesn't believe taxpayers should have to fork over more money for a service they already fund.
With no evidence that Congress would act to make the resource available, CDT decided to work with several organizations to create Open CRS. The aim of the site is to make as many of the reports that are already available in the public domain more accessible, by creating search and browsing tools that allow ordinary Internet users to search for the reports from one destination. CDT is also calling on individuals to request more reports from their members of Congress and submit them to Open CRS.
In its first three days alone, said CDT, after receiving only a handful of mentions in the press, Open CRS has had over 70,000 visitors download over 30,000 reports and has received over 300 reports that were not otherwise available online. These statistics show the pent-up demand for this important resource. CDT hopes to expand the number of reports and functionality on the site as time goes on.
