Open CRS

• Open CRS

GO TO

02 May 2011OpenCRS gathers most available leaked research produced by the US Congressional Research Service, which unlike the Australian Parliamentary Library service, is not provided to the public in any formal or systematic way.

American taxpayers spend over $100 million a year to fund the Congressional Research Service, a "think tank" that provides reports to members of Congress on a variety of topics relevant to current political events. Yet, these reports are not made available to the public in a way that they can be easily obtained. Open CRS provides citizens access to CRS Reports that are already in the public domain.

CRS Reports do not become public until a member of Congress releases the report. A number of libraries and non-profit organizations have sought to collect as many of the released reports as possible. Open CRS is a centralized utility that brings together these reports.

Unfortunately, there is no systematic way to obtain all CRS reports. Because of this, not all reports appear on the Open CRS web site. Open CRS believes that it would be far preferable for Congress to make available to the public all CRS Reports.