Whether you work in government, the private sector, the non-profit world, or academia, chances are you've had a hard time finding quality, in-depth information about a given subject before. Sure, Google's a great starting point, but the results of Google searches are often manipulated these days by so-called link consolidation sites - sites that have no information, just a bunch of links to paid services and ads. And since government websites often block Google from crawling deep into their sites for fear of directing people halfway through an entry form, quality information pertaining to government programs can be very hard to find.
Enter the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the nonpartisan public policy research arm
of Congress. This legislative branch agency works exclusively for Members of
Congress, their committees, and their staffs and prepares some fantastic reports on topics varying from energy use to the international space station. The only problem is, they can be difficult to find.
Despite the fact that American taxpayers fork over $100 million a year to pay the CRS to prepare their reports, the agency does not make the reports readily available to anyone but those in Congress. A visit to their website is starkly reminiscent of the barren simplicity of most websites circa 1995. What's more, the site is devoid of any reports database or means of searching for their reports. But the information is available, you just need to know where to look.
Below, we've listed the websites containing the best collections of CRS reports out there. Unfortunately, there's no single place to visit, so you'll have to surf just a bit. However, the reports are a research gold mine and absolutely worth the trouble. Stumbling onto the right report can save you days of aggravating research at a library because the report synthesizes most of the information out there into one resource, providing the information and the references to investigate further.
Without further ado, here are the top destinations for CRS reports:
The
university of North Texas contains the largest supply of CRS reports
that should satiate even the hungriest of minds. Through its website,
users can search for CRS reports by keyword, title, subject, and date.
Unfortunately, summaries of the report are not available, so you'll
have to download the entire PDF file to figure out if a report is
completely relevant - beyond what you can ascertain from the title.
A nonprofit organization whose sole purpose is to FOIA (Freedom of Information Act requests) the hell out of Congress to get you access to as many CRS reports as your greedy eyes will tolerate. A project of the Center for Democracy & Technology, the website offers users a basic tool for searching for CRS reports by topic in what's known as a word cloud - a compilation of keyword search terms where popularity is indicated by font size (see below).
Users of Opencrs.com can also sign up for RSS (really simple syndication) feeds through an RSS reader like iGoogle and be alerted any time a new CRS report is added to the website.
The NCSE boats a collection of 1,944 CRS reports all related to - this may be shocking - science and the environment. The website allows users to search CRS reports by topic, title, report number, keyword, author name, and date. As a bonus, NCSE even provide abstracts of the reports so you don't have to open each massive document to find out whether it's what you're looking for.
The Federation of American Scientists website contains a fairly robust collection of CRS reports organized by topic. Topics deal mostly with:
- International Relations
- Homeland Security
- Middle East
- Military Intelligence
- Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control
- Secrecy and Information Policy
- Space Policy
- Weapons systems
Once a topic is selected, all CRS reports for that topic are displayed
on one page by title and organized by date, making it difficult but not
impossible to find the report you're seeking.
Somewhat surprisingly, the US State Department website hosts a pretty nice collection of CRS reports, listed by title and topic only, about the following subjects:
- Defense and National Security
- Democracy, Civil Society, and Human Rights
- Economics and Trade
- Emergency Preparedness
- Energy
- Environment
- Foreign Policy
- Immigration
- Law
- Law Enforcement and International Narcotics
- Science, Technology, and Health
- Terrorism & Counterterrorism
- U.S. Politics & Government
- U.S. Society and Culture
The U.S. Embassy in Italy's website also contains a large supply of CRS reports focused on trade, international affairs, and global issues like terrorism, arms control, human trafficking, AIDS, energy, and environmental issues. However, all the 200 or so reports are listed on one page by title and cannot be browsed by topic, as on other sites. You have to pour through the entire list, making the website difficult for the user.