Constituent Services Data Task Force

The Constituent Services Data Task Force is responsible for overseeing the congressional constituent correspondence data preservation and access program, including but not limited to a partnership with the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), continued development of the CSS/CMS data curation tool, and ongoing community engagement with both archivists and researchers.

The Task Force is building on the Congressional Papers Section report, “Archiving Constituent Services Data of the U.S. Congress,” and the LYRASIS supported America Contacts Congress project at West Virginia University Libraries.

The Task Force plans to complete the following tasks by June 2020.

Governance

The Task Force will develop a proposal and seek Executive Committee and membership approval to:

• Fully transfer governance of the program to the ACSC;
• Define which aspects of the program will be governed by an ACSC committee;
• Provide for ACSC financial support of and membership benefits for the data program;
• And establish methods for community input and feedback.

ICPSR Data Access Partnership

The Task Force will work closely with representatives from ICPSR and ACSC member organizations to:

• Establish a pilot project for data deposits to ICPSR*;
• Provide guidance to member organizations on data deposit agreements;
• Evaluate potential for an ICPSR thematic data collection for congressional correspondence data;
• And create a plan to support research in congressional correspondence data.

Data Access Tool Development

The Task Force will collaborate with developers at West Virginia University Libraries and others to:

• Determine resource requirements to create the Minimum Viable Product for curatorial functions;
• Recommend a model or combination of models for development and ongoing maintenance of the tool (open source, software as a service, membership supported);
• And identify, if possible, a broader user audience for the tool in the archival community in order to support sustainability

*If your organization is interested in the ICPSR pilot project, please complete this brief survey. While your organization will work directly with ICPSR to create an agreement, the Task Force is interested to learn about the agreements and the benefits and challenges of this project.