Web Site Makes US Gov't. Reports Available

Web Site Makes Gov't. Reports Available

By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer Mon Jun 27,12:17 AM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050627/ap_on_hi_te/congressional_research;_ylt=Avcfgv9l4wzmeQtRhPcLqtQjtBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

[excerpt]

WASHINGTON - A new Web site aims to make widely available to the
public certain government reports about topics from terrorism to
Social Security that congressional researchers prepare and distribute
now only to lawmakers.

The site — http://www.opencrs.com — links more than a half-dozen
existing collections of nearly 8,000 reports from the Congressional
Research Service and centrally indexes them so visitors can find
reports containing specific terms or phrases.

It also encourages visitors to ask their lawmakers to send them any
reports not yet publicly available — and gives detailed instructions
to do this — so these can be added to the collection. None of the
reports is classified or otherwise restricted.

The site, being announced Monday, is operated by the Center for
Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based civil liberties group.
The project is a response to years of rumbling and wrangling by
open-government advocates over a lack of direct accessibility to
reports from the policy research arm of Congress.

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On the Net:

Congressional Research Service: http://www.loc.gov/crsinfo

Federation of American Scientists: http://www.fas.org

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