Career accomplishments

Career Highlights

Founded the American Governance Institute, spearheaded democracy reform efforts at Demand Progress/Education Fund and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and played a leading advocacy role at the Sunlight Foundation.
Appointed inaugural Chair of the Open Government Federal Advisory Committee (Fall 2024 - Sprint 2025)
Managed a multi-faceted team on significant legislative and advocacy initiatives.
Successfully raised millions of dollars to support research and advocacy, testified before Congress on key issues, and routinely was cited as an expert in the press.
Played a pivotal role in legislative transparency, including establishing the Congressional Data Task Force and ensuring public access to critical legislative data.
Achieved significant reforms to modernize the legislative branch, and in particular increased congressional staff pay by 20%, establishing intern compensation, and built workplace protections, including unionization and diversity initiatives.
Created and led coalitions, including the Transparency Roundtable and Congressional Data Coalition, to advocate for transparency and accountability reforms.
Authored impactful reports and developed innovative tools like BillMap and EveryCRSReport, advancing public access to government information.
Contributed to national security oversight and surveillance reform through policy advocacy and coalition-building.

Legislative Accomplishments

Government Transparency

Instrumental in formulation and enactment of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act), which improved the accuracy of and public access to federal spending information.
Strengthened the Freedom of Information Act through passage of the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 and other measures.
Expanded public access to agency spending plans through enactment of the Congressional Budget Justification Transparency Act of 2021.
Expanded proactive disclosure requirements for Executive branch reports to Congress through enactment of the Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act.
Led efforts resulting in enactment of the Equal Access to Congressional Research Reports to require public access to CRS reports and a follow-up provision requiring the reports be published online as HTML.
Key player in drafting and advocating for the Senate FOIA Improvement Act of 2014 and House FOIA Act
Responsible for scores of enacted provisions in appropriations bills and committee reports as well as provisions and separate orders in the House Rules. Many of the results arose from authoring comprehensive recommendations to modernize the House Rules from the 111th Congress forward; recommendations to modernize the party rules; recommendations for Appropriations on a regular basis with annual recommendations from 2017 forward.
Supported passage of the Congressional Budget Office Modernization Act.
Led decade-long effort to push online publication of the Constitution Annotated.

Modernization of Congressional Operations

Successfully pushed for the creation of a Legislative-branch wide staff directory (Legidex) that contains issue areas for each staffer. Prototype completed in 2024 with roll-out Legislative branch-wide expected in 2025.
Prompted the House of Representatives to create a central repository for committee data, known as a committee portal, which will contain submitted documents, centralized committee vote data, a central committee witness list, and more. Expected to be rolled out in the first half of 2025.
Key player in establishing the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, which is now a House Administration Committee subcommittee, and supported the committee’s work on a wide range of issues. Was able to successfully renew the committee over multiple terms.
Led effort to increase pay for House and Senate personal, committee, and leadership staff by more than 20%.
Led effort to de-couple staff pay cap from members so that staff can have COLAs.
Led the effort to require that House personal, committee, and leadership office interns be paid a living wage and obtain increased funds for Senate interns. Floor for House interns is $45,000 on an annualized basis.
Prompted the establishment of a working group to create a central repository for historic committee videos in a central location with the ultimate purpose of permanently archiving and making available those videos.
Played a supporting role in allowing members to hire a staffer prior to being sworn in to help during the transition from campaign to serving in office.
A lead mover in an effort to allow House personal, committee, leadership, and support staff to unionize, H. Res. 1096 (117th Congress).
Successfully pushed to apply modern labor regulations House-wide as of the 117th Congress.
Key leader in effort to permit the House of Representatives to vote remotely and its committees to deliberate and vote remotely during the COVID emergency, H. Res. 965 (116th Congress).
A key player in establishing a $45,000 pay floor for all House staff.
Major role in pushing for the establishment and funding of the House Office of Diversity and Inclusion in the House Rules for the 117th Congress and, for the first time in more than a decade, require reports in both chambers on staff pay, retention, and diversity. (Some office functions were defunded in 118th Congress, others were moved inside the CAO.)
Worked to protect Congressional staff from harassment, including enactment of the Congressional Accountability Act Enhancement Act of 2020 and changes in House rules.
Key pusher in having senate campaign information available as data.
Co-wrote “Article One: Rebuilding our Congress,” a report co-authored with Craig Holman of Public Citizen.
Boosted funding for House and Senate child care centers.

Modernization of Congressional Technology

Founded the bipartisan Congressional Data Coalition, which works for an open Congress.
Leader in effort to establish the Bulk Data Task Force — now called the Congressional Data Task Force — which brings together all internal and external stakeholders around legislative information to collaborate on improving public and congressional access to data and support the development of new tools. For more than a dozen years the Task Force meets with the public on a quarterly basis and drives innovation forward.
Successfully pushed for the creation of a House Digital Service.
Supported efforts of Congress to hold an annual Congressional Data and Transparency Conference.
Lead civil actor in prompting Congress to require that Congressional Research Service reports be widely publicly available as part of enactment of the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2018, and then for them to be available as HTML and via API in 2025.
Drove the effort to require the Library of Congress publish all hearing and committee schedules online.
Built BillMap, a prototype that allows users to know when legislation that has been incorporated into other legislation; to understand when a bill has been reintroduced from a prior congress; to provide context for legislation that includes sponsors of related bills, relevant CRS reports, administration statements of policy, votes, and so on.
Built EveryCRSReport, which contains nearly 20,000 CRS reports and serves several hundred thousand users each month.
Successfully pushed for the publication of the Statement of Disbursements online first as a PDF and then as a structured data file.
Prompted multiple reports by the Library of Congress on modernizing legislative information.
Prompted the publication of structured data for legislative information held by Congress.gov and the creation of an API.
With colleagues pushed for an increase in funding available for the House Modernization Initiatives account.
Led efforts to require the Library of Congress to meet with the public at least once a year to discuss access to data — with the frequency to increase to twice a year in 2025.
Successfully prodded the House and Senate to each provide significantly improved public access to digitized legislative information.
Coordinated a multi-organizational effort to publish model FOIA regulations.

Government Accountability

Established and funded the House Office of Whistleblower Ombuds, which assists with intake of whistleblower complaints, as part of the House rules for the 117th Congress.
Advanced language to require disclosure of significant opinions issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Led the first for one personal office staffers in every Senate office to be eligible to request TS/SCI clearance.
Wrote the seminal report on the Office of Technology Assessment and advocated for its reestablishment. See “Science, Technology, & Democracy: Building a Modern Congressional Technology Assessment Office,” co-authored with Zach Graves of the Lincoln Network and published by Harvard’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
Authored a multi-organizational report Congressional Oversight of National Security: Reform Agenda.
Prompted the House and Senate to modernize tracking of lobbying by publishing unique identifiers for each lobbyist. Expected to be completed in 2026.
Pushed a prohibition on committee members propositioning committee staff for sex.
Coordinated efforts to protect the Office of Congressional Ethics against efforts to defund the office.
Pushed to protect communications from staffers to the Office of Congressional Ethics/ Ethics Committee so it could not be forced to be disclosed to employers.
Drove forward efforts to reform the Congressional Accountability Act to allow for disclosures when members pay to settle ethics claims.
Successfully prompted the U.S. Capitol Police Inspector General to publish reports online.

Coalition Work

An expert on the appropriations process, created and led a coalition of organizations to lobby on appropriations issues, succeeding in obtaining 40-50 items for each appropriations cycle over almost ten years.
Led the Congressional Data Coalition, which successfully encouraged Congress to publish its legislative information as structured data and the adoption of an Open Source policy.
Forged a coalition of organizations to support strong congressional oversight of national security, and successfully pushed back on efforts to renew anti-democratic surveillance laws.
Founded and managed the cross-partisan Open Government Roundtable, which includes 50 organizations from across the political spectrum
Established and directed the Advisory Committee on Transparency, a coalition of organizations that closely work with the Congressional Transparency Caucus and holds public events.
Co-created an international consortium of over 140 parliamentary monitoring organizations from 75 countries and drafted a common Declaration on Parliamentary Openness.

Informing the Public

Routinely testified before Congress, including before the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress with respect to strengthening Congress’s capacity, the House Administration Committee on oversight of the Capitol Police, and the House Committee on Oversight with respect to transparency initiatives.
Created the First Branch Forecast in 2017, a weekly newsletter focused on rebuilding Congressional capacity that is the flagship for wide-ranging efforts to rebuild the Legislative branch. Typical newsletters reach congressional staff (including members of congress, senior leadership and committee staff, support office and agency staff), executive branch employees, journalists, members of civil society, press, and funders.
Routinely speak on panels.
Routinely speak with the press.
Routinely author articles and op-eds.

Organizational Leadership

Founded and serve as Executive Director of the American Governance Institute (2024).
Created Demand Progress’ democracy reform agenda and the position of policy director, advised federal executive and legislative branch officials on major reforms, and forged coalitions with unlikely political partners. Led fundraising and coalition efforts for research and advocacy work.
At Demand Progress / Education Fund, managed a team of nearly a dozen staff, plus numerous contractors, on issues including democracy building, government reform and accountability, digital democracy, national security/surveillance reform, and war powers.
Created CREW’s government accountability and transparency policy agenda, provided policy advice to federal executive and legislative branch officials, and forged coalitions.

Co-created the Sunlight Foundation's government transparency agenda and advised federal executive and legislative branch officials on transparency reforms.

Download CV

daniel@schumanfund.com