About CORD

The Congressional Oversight Records Database (CORD) is an effort by the Levin Center to create the first-ever comprehensive database of congressional oversight reports. For the purpose of its database, the Levin Center defines an “oversight report” as any document that:

  • was produced by a congressional committee, subcommittee, or member of Congress;
  • is labeled or formatted like a report;
  • involved fact-finding; and
  • is distinct from a House or Senate filing in connection with specific legislation.

While the Levin Center can guarantee the completeness of the Oversight Reports collection, insofar as the methodology described in the codebook (linked below) is followed.

Additionally, CORD catalogs what we refer to as Oversight Records, or documents that meet all of the above conditions except for “is labeled or formatted like a report." In other words, these are documents that are generally very short and usually just list facts without much (if any) analysis. The Levin Center does not guarantee that the Oversight Records dataset is complete.

CSV of CORD's publicly available reports HERE. Please make a copy of the spreadsheet. Do not edit the spreadsheet.

For more information, find the CORD Codebook HERE.

Please send any additional questions or comments to Grace Moore, Levin Center Research and Data Specialist, at gmoore@wayne.edu. Further, if you notice any missing reports or have a collection of reports not already cataloged here, please contact Grace or the Levin Center.