Booker, McCaskill Request Senate Rules Committee Overhaul Tech Policy for Offices
Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., asked the leadership of the Rules Committee to update technology policies. “We recommend simplifying and streamlining the process for new technology product vendors to become approved for use by Senate offices,” they…
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said in a letter sent Wednesday. “Instead of adapting rules for email that were originally written for mail newsletters, we recommend writing entirely new guidelines to fit the unique uses of email as a communications tool.” The Senate should allow lawmakers to track social media analytics, said Booker and McCaskill, both members of the Commerce Committee and both active on social media. The Senate should also “continue with progress on new standards to publish more Senate data in bulk” and create “a Senate equivalent to Docs.House.gov, which keeps a running snapshot of the legislative action on the House floor and in Committees,” they said. Written testimony and transcripts should be available in XML instead of a PDF format, they said. XML would be a “standardized, machine-readable bulk” format, “an important step for making information on our work in the Senate accessible to the public,” they said. Contract vendors should operate under simplified rules, they advised. “Senate offices could save thousands of taxpayer dollars every year and keep constituent data secure and private by utilizing cloud-based virtual servers,” they also said.