Speaker Boehner, Rep Cantor want House to use open data formats

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) wrote to the clerk of the House calling for the chamber's legislative data to be made available in machine-readable formats such as XML. "We believe that this legislative data, using standardized machine-readable formats, should be publicly available on House websites," the pair wrote to House Clerk Karen Haas. "Ultimately, legislative data is the property of the American public. It is our hope that these reforms will continue to rebuild the trust between Congress and the people we serve." The shift toward standardized, machine-readable data formats has been under way within the government for a few years now, but progress has been slow.