CDT’s OpenCRS project received an interesting report this week. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) recently updated the report on … CRS itself. The report avoids all mention of the controversy over the fact that CRS’ public reports are made available on a Web site to Congressional staff, but this Web site is not made publicly available on the Internet. Therefore it also avoids any mention of OpenCRS.

However, it does provide a fascinating history of the organization, including this tidbit:

In 1914, Senator Robert LaFollette and Representative John M. Nelson, both of Wisconsin, promoted the inclusion in the legislative, executive, and judicial appropriations act of a provision directing the establishment of a special reference unit within the Library.

That’s right…. the famed Senator “Battlin’ Bob” was one of the originators of the concept that became CRS. Thanks to the anonymous donor who sent us this report!

You can join the cause and help us keep OpenCRS up-to-date by going to the site and seeing what reports we need and then requesting that they email it to you in electronic format.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 22nd, 2006 at 4:29 pm and is filed under CDT, Open Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.