On September 18, 2024, the Library of Congress held a Congress.gov Public Forum that was available in-person and online. This Forum provided attendees with an update on the enhancements that have been made to the site over the past year and served as a listening session to learn more about how the Library can better serve your legislative information needs.
- Jim Karamanis, director of IT Design and Development for the Office of the Chief Information Officer, provided a welcome.
- Aslihan Bulut, the Law Librarian of Congress, provided opening remarks.
- Andrew Weber, the Congress.gov product owner, moderated the event.
- Robert Brammer, the chief of the Office of External Relations and a Congress.gov subject matter expert for the Law Library of Congress, then provided a summary of recent enhancements to the site and announced the winners of the Library of Congress Friends’ Choice Civics Video Game Challenge. This presentation was followed by a question and answer segment.
- Kimberly Ferguson, the head of Legislative Information Systems Management for the Library of Congress, kicked off a panel discussion on legislative data interoperability that included Arin Shapiro, Senate webmaster, Office of the Secretary of the Senate; Kirsten Gullickson, coordinator, Congressional Data Task Force and director, Analysis, Quality Assurance, and Product Support, Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives; and Lisa LaPlant, program manager for the Government Publishing Office. This panel discussion was followed by a question and answer segment.
- Cassidy Charles, a legislative data analyst for the Library of Congress, discussed the appropriations-tracking resources available on Congress.gov. This presentation was followed by a question and answer segment.
- Abbie Potter, a senior innovation specialist at Library of Congress Labs, discussed the use of artificial intelligence at the Library of Congress.
- Stephen Dwyer, director, Office of the Chief Administrative Officer at the U.S. House of Representatives and Addie Adeniji, deputy chief information security officer, Office of the Chief Administrative Officer at the U.S. House of Representatives, provided a panel discussion on the use of artificial intelligence at the U.S. House of Representatives.
- Jeanne Dennis, senior counsel, Legal Programs and Initiatives, of the American Law Division of the Congressional Research Service, discussed the recent enhancements to the Constitution Annotated and announced the new podcast, “Our Constitution.”
- Andrew Reiter, a legislative data specialist at the Library of Congress, discussed the latest updates to the Congress.gov API.
- Grant Scrits, a Congress.gov API user, demonstrated REPSCOUT. After this presentation, we hosted an open discussion with the audience, both in-person and remote.
- Judith Conklin, the chief information officer for the Library of Congress, provided closing remarks.
You can watch the recording of the Forum below.
If you have any additional feedback on enhancements you would like to see made to Congress.gov, please click here.
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