CapNews.net describes itself this way:

CapNews.Net is an Internet News Service covering Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court and executive agencies.... In 2008 CapNews.Net will launch its full operations and begin offering news video syndication services to media organizations and others, and also continue posting videos directly to the public via YouTube.com and other video platforms.

You can find their YouTube videos here and others on Google Video here. I haven't discovered any comprehensive list or index or indication of what their coverage is or will be, but this looks like a service that could develop into a key resource for fast access to Congressional hearings. See for example The Cyber Initiative hearings, Committee on Homeland Security, Thursday, February 28, 2008. A version is also available on the committee's website, here.

This hearing should be of professional interest to government information specialists!

• Hearing, U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. E-Government 2.0: Improving Innovation, Collaboration, and Access 12/11/07 10:00 AM (EST). [The hearing was broadcast live and will be available for viewing later here.]

In pre-hearing news coverage (Web Leaders Seek More Searchable Government, by Kim Hart, Washington Post, December 11, 2007; page D08), Hart quotes the witnesses as saying that, even though four out of five Web surfers use search engines to find information and bypass the agency's home page, basic government information often does not show up in results provided by search engines run by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com.

Witnesses Testimony is already available online as PDF documents:

• Karen S. Evans, Administrator, Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology , Office of Management and Budget
• John Lewis Needham, Manager, Public Sector Content Partnerships , Google, Inc.
• Ari Schwartz, Deputy Director , Center for Democracy and Technology
• Jimmy Wales, Founder , Wikipedia

The purpose of the hearing is to examine what progress the government has made in getting services and information online and available to the public; what new technologies can be used to enhance the government's ability to collaborate and share information; and what challenges remain five years since the passage of the E-Government Act.

In addition, Senator Lieberman will be announcing at the hearing that he'll be introducing legislation to make CRS reports available to the public, and an initiative to enhance the availability and format of legislative information through THOMAS.

Getting a hearing quickly is difficult if not impossible -- unless you have money. Now, without fanfair, one committee is making it easier. See a list here, and read more about it in Dan Froomkin's article, Citizen Journalists, Start Your Engines! (December 4, 2007).

Major hearings are often transcribed in real-time by CQ Transcripts and the Federal News Service, but those are copyrighted works that are only available to those who pay for them or have a subscription to Nexis.

Up until now, it took more than six months for public-domain transcripts of most hearings to become available. They had to work their way through an arduous proofing and approval process before finally being published by the Government Printing Office.

But now, without any formal announcement, the House Oversight Committee has started Web-publishing the preliminary transcripts prepared by official stenographers as soon as they are available -- typically within a few days of the hearing. In other words, while the news is still fresh.

Let's hope other committees follow its lead.