On September 30, 2025, the Library of Congress held a Congress.gov Public Forum that was available in-person and online via Zoom. 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.
The lineup of speakers was as follows:
- 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, such as the addition of House Roll Call Votes.
- Jay Sweany, Assistant Law Librarian of Congress for Collections at the Law Library, then provided an update on the digital collections available on the Law Library’s website, and the accessibility of Congress.gov resources.
- Karen Donfried, Director of the Congressional Research Service (CRS), introduced Amy Swantner, Emily Frazier, and Jeanne Dennis to discuss recent enhancements to law texts and the updates to the Constitution Annotated website. This update was followed by a question-and-answer segment, moderated by Andrew.
- Kevin McCumber, Clerk of the House of Representatives, and Jackie Barber, Secretary of the Senate, provided remarks regarding the expansion of adding House Roll Call Votes to the API of Congress.gov.
- Following their remarks, Andrew introduced Andrew Reiter, a legislative data specialist for the Library of Congress; Arin Shapiro, the United States Senate Webmaster; and Kirsten Gullickson, Director of Systems Analysis and Quality Assurance at the Office of the Clerk for the United States House of Representatives. Andrew R. provided a live demonstration of how to use House Roll Call Votes on Congress.gov, highlighting the available Congress.gov API resources. Andrew then introduced Arin to speak about the Days in Session/Convene and Adjourn Information and Legislative Clocks Digital Delivery (LCDD) data feeds. This update was followed by a question-and-answer segment, moderated by Andrew.
- Kirsten Gullickson discussed an update to the Congressional Data Task Force and introduced Mike Tennenbaum and Minsoo Kim, both of whom are senior data scientists at the Government Accountability Office’s Innovation Lab. They spoke on how the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is using the Congress.gov data.
- Congressional Data Task Force members, Lisa LaPlant, Government Publishing Office Program Manager; John Pollock, Director of the Legislative Information System Project Office for the United States Senate; and Kimberly Ferguson, Head of Legislative Information Systems Management at the Library of Congress, provided presentations to highlight structured data and USLM, followed by a question-and-answer session.
- 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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