S 549 · 113th Congress 2013–2015, ended

Public Online Information Act of 2013

Fact sheet

Latest action · Mar 13, 2013 Read twice and referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Progress

Where this bill reached, and when. A stage with no date was not reached; one that failed a vote and later carried shows the date it carried.

  1. IntroducedMar 13, 2013
  2. Passed SenateNot reached
  3. Passed HouseNot reached
  4. To the PresidentNot reached
  5. Became lawNot reached

Summary

Public Online Information Act of 2013 - Establishes a Public Online Information Advisory Committee to: (1) coordinate and encourage the government's efforts to make information from all three branches of government available on the Internet, and (2) issue and update nonbinding guidelines on how the government should make public information available.

Directs the government to make public records available on the Internet at no charge, except as imposed by federal law before this Act's enactment. Requires: (1) public records to be permanently available on the Internet; (2) current information technology capabilities to be applied to the means by which records are made available and to the formats in which they are available; (3) public records to be made accessible through programs and equipment that are readily available to the general public; and (4) each agency to publish on the Internet a comprehensive, searchable, machine processable list of all records it makes publicly available.

Delineates the roles of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Administrator of the Office of Electronic Government, and the chief information officers of independent regulatory agencies, including granting narrow case-by-case exceptions to the Internet publication requirement if an agency requests an exception and demonstrates that: (1) there is clear and convincing evidence that the record should not be made available on the Internet, and (2) on balance the harm caused by disclosure significantly outweighs the public's interest in having the record available on the Internet.

Directs the Inspector General of each agency to conduct periodic reviews regarding agency compliance with Internet publication requirements. Sets forth provisions regarding enforcement of public access by private individuals or organizations.

Urges: (1) judicial and legislative agencies to adopt or adapt the Advisory Committee's recommendations, and (2) the Government Printing Office (GPO) to make all of its publications permanently available on the Internet in a multiplicity of formats.

Cosponsors

Members who signed on, in the order they did.

No cosponsors are on file for this measure.

Actions 2

Everything that happened, newest first.

  1. Mar 13, 2013Introduced in Senate
  2. Mar 13, 2013Read twice and referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Related bills 1

Companion bills and other measures the record links to this one.

BillTitleRelationshipLatest action
HR 4312Public Online Information Act of 2014Related billMar 26, 2014

Subjects

Assigned by the Library of Congress. Policy area: Government Operations and Politics.

Text 1

Each version as it was printed, newest first.

  1. Mar 13, 2013Introduced in Senate

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Everything here is as published by Congress: the summary is the Congressional Research Service's, the action wording is the clerks', and the subjects are the Library of Congress's. How far it got is read from the actions themselves, taking the most recent one of each kind, so a bill that failed a vote and later passed is shown as having passed. Records come from this bill on Congress.gov and govinfo.gov.