The Senate moves a step closer to being a "public" frienemy

The Scoop blog can finally cross an item off its list of the 10 most wanted types of federal data.

The U.S. Senate has begun posting roll call voting data in XML format.

John Wonderlich, policy director for the foundation, wrote: "The new votes data should help fuel a renaissance of vote analysis and visualization. XML encourages advanced processing and analysis, making votes legible to both humans and computers, and giving us a new view on how senators vote."

This move reverses the Senate's longstanding policy of restricting public access to raw data about how senators vote. The House has been publishing roll call vote data in XML format since 2004.