Access to information is a key ingredient to a functioning democracy.  Something I was unaware of was that many reports (not just classified reports) produced by Congress are unavailable to the public.  The information in these reports is routinely used by politicians in speeches and congressional testimony.  How can we repond to politicians statements if we don’t have access to the same information they do?  Well, now we can.  The folks over at the Center for Democracy and Technology have just made it easier to get a hold of these reports by creating a website that provides access to thousands of congressional reports.

AP 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 — 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.

I’m sure that the information found at this site is going to provide plenty of inspiration for the members of the progressive blogosphere.  Enjoy.