A PLAN FOR A NEW LEGISLATIVE INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS Prepared by The Library of Congress February 16, 1996 Submitted to the Committees on House Oversight Senate Rules and Administration House Appropriations Senate Appropriations Pursuant to Public Law 104-53 HIGHLIGHTS Public Law 104-53 directed the Library of Congress to develop a plan for the creation of a single legislative information system to serve the entire Congress. In addition, the law required the Library to examine issues regarding efficient ways to make legislative information available to the public and to assess the potential role of commercial sources of legislative information. This plan summarizes the major programs currently under way in the House, Senate, GPO, and the Library to improve the creation of, and access to legislative information. If coordinated, these development programs offer an excellent opportunity to reduce duplication and to improve the quality of legislative information. The new legislative system should provide Members of Congress with the information that is the most useful to them in making informed public policy decisions. This information must be comprehensive, timely, accurate, easy to use, and provide a permanently accessible electronic record of the legislative activities of the U.S. Congress, including official committee actions, congressional documents, policy analyses, and much more. As Congress' primary legislative information system, it should be developed and maintained collaboratively by all the offices and legislative support agencies that serve the Congress and should be identified as the legislative information system of the U.S. Congress, not of either chamber alone or of one support agency. Because the system will serve both the House and the Senate, the Library recommends that the House Oversight Committee and the Senate Rules and Administration Committee create a joint House and Senate Legislative Systems Working Group, chaired by a Member, and composed of Members and officers from both chambers, including Members from the Appropriations Committees, the Joint Committees on the Library and on Printing, and the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House to oversee and coordinate responsibilities for the new system. The Working Group should be supported by a formally established team consisting of the senior technical managers of the legislative organizations that would be tasked to build and maintain the legislative information system. Key issues to be addressed by the Working Group include data standards, data coordination and preparation, data sources (both governmental and commercial), and public access. Completion of the proposed system and its general availability in all congressional offices will require several years. The plan allows for an iterative development cycle that permits the release of new features and files as soon as they are available. While it is difficult to project costs with any precision, the plan assumes that the system will have to be built within existing resources approved by Congress. Congress needs to begin this process soon or this rare opportunity for creating an integrated and collaborative system will be lost. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Public Law 104-53 directed the Library of Congress to develop a plan for the creation of a single legislative information system to serve the entire Congress. In addition, the law required the Library to examine issues regarding efficient ways to make legislative information available to the public and to assess the potential role of commercial sources of legislative information. This report constitutes the required plan and is submitted by the Library in accordance with Public Law 104-53. In July 1995, the Library of Congress completed a study of duplication among legislative information systems supported by the Congress. This study confirmed the extensive overlap which has developed since the 1970s among the systems designed for both the collection and retrieval of legislative data. This plan updates the information contained in the Library's earlier duplication study and summarizes the major programs currently under way in the House, Senate, GPO, and the Library to improve the creation of, and access to legislative information. If coordinated, these development programs offer an excellent opportunity to reduce duplication and to improve the quality of the legislative information available to Congress. The primary goal of the new legislative information system should be to provide Members of Congress with the information that is the most useful to them in making informed public policy decisions. The system must ensure that such information is comprehensive, timely, and accurate. The new system should be easy to use and should enable staff of offices, committees, and legislative support agencies to serve Members more effectively. It should also provide a permanently accessible electronic record of the legislative activities of the U.S. Congress. The new system will be Congress' primary legislative information system, and should be developed and maintained collaboratively by all the offices and legislative support agencies that serve the Congress. The Library recommends that the system be identified as the legislative information system of the U.S. Congress, not of either chamber alone or of any one support agency. Each office and agency which currently creates, prepares, maintains, prints, or provides access to legislative information should contribute to the system based upon its legislative responsibilities and its areas of expertise. In order to take advantage of the efficiencies inherent in modern technology, it should be a distributed system, enabling it to mirror the distributed organizational responsibilities within the Legislative Branch. Because no single entity has responsibility for all legislative information, and because the system will serve both the House and the Senate, the Library recommends the creation of a joint House and Senate legislative systems working group (hereafter referred to as the Working Group) to carry out oversight and coordination responsibilities for the new system. The Library suggests that the Working Group be created by the House Oversight Committee and the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, that it be chaired by a Member, and that it be composed of Members and officers from both chambers. The Library suggests that the Working Group also have official representation from the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, the Joint Committee on Printing, the Joint Committee on the Library, the Secretary of the Senate, and the Clerk of the House. Regarding the chairmanship of the Working Group, the Congress may wish to consider having the chair jointly appointed by the Committee on House Oversight and the Committee on Senate Rules and Administration, in consultation with the other participating committees and officers. The Working Group should be supported by a formally established team consisting of the senior technical managers of the legislative organizations that would be tasked to build and maintain the legislative information system. This Senior Technical Team, designated by the Chair of the Working Group, would ensure coordination among their organizations and would provide management and technical expertise to support the congressional Working Group. The tasks of the Working Group would include 1) establishing policies 2) ensuring user input 3) establishing technical standards 4) setting development priorities 5) approving implementation plans 6) assigning responsibilities 7) monitoring progress 8) making adjustments to the plan and assignments as needed and 9) resolving disagreements over technology. The Library suggests that the organizational and technical issues identified in this plan form the initial agenda of the Working Group. The Working Group and the Senior Technical Team would establish subteams to analyze issues, prepare recommendations, and implement solutions approved by the Working Group. After gathering and prioritizing user requirements, the most important issues that the Working Group will need to consider are described below. Data Standards. The preparation of data is typically the most expensive individual component of an information system. To obtain the greatest efficiencies and most cost-effective benefits of open architecture systems, it is essential that data exist in standard formats. Openly established standards would facilitate the integration of legislative information such as bills, committee reports, and support agency analyses, with data available from commercial sources. There are a number of efforts under way within the Legislative Branch related to data standards. For maximum benefit, these efforts needed to be coordinated by the Working Group. In addition, it would be productive to seek input from private companies that use and market legislative data produced by Congress. Data Coordination and Preparation. The Library recommends that data be created and validated by the office or organization specifically responsible for that data, and that the Working Group resolve any issues related to the duplication of information. The system should contain a digital version that is an exact duplicate of the printed version of each official legislative document. A special objective of the Working Group should be identifying and supporting methods for obtaining timely data from committees on proposed and completed legislative activities without imposing undue burdens on committees. The Working Group should also consider the potential role of commercial services, and determine whether and how such services could be integrated with the congressional system. The plan also makes specific recommendations for reducing the overlap between the LOC THOMAS system and the GPO ACCESS system, and for improving the integration of these two systems. Data Sources. To be most useful to Members of Congress, the legislative information system must provide access to a wide range of current and historical information, including existing statutes, support agency analyses, academic studies, court decisions, budget and financial data, regulations, executive branch policies, public and private sector analyses, lobby group position papers, and newspaper reports from local, national, and international sources. Much of this data will exist in a variety of formats, including text, audio, and video. In addition to official documents from the current and from previous Congresses, Members need immediate access to some types of information, such as the status of floor actions and pending amendments, even before they are officially published. Finally, after policies have been agreed upon and laws have been passed, Members need information about the effects of these decisions on domestic and international affairs. For a legislative information system to serve the Congress well, it must be able to provide access to this broad range of information to Congress on a timely basis, in formats that are understandable, and in ways that support the legislative decision making process both now and in the future. The plan discusses the kinds of data needed from both government and commercial sources. Commercial Sources. Although one option for Congress would be to contract with one or more commercial sources for legislative information, the Library recommends instead that the "core legislative information" of Congress should be compiled and made available to its Members and its committees by its own offices and staff through the legislative information system proposed in this plan. The system developed to provide core legislative information should be based on an open architecture that encourages commercial providers to continue to offer their services to Congress on a competitive, value added basis. In this environment, Members and committees would be free to purchase the systems and services that were of use to them, and which would complement the legislative information system proposed in this plan. The Library recommends that Congress produce and distribute its core data to ensure continuity and reliability. Guaranteed access to the legislative information of Congress should not be dependent on continued success in the marketplace. Congress should have complete control of the collection, validation, and distribution processes for its own data. Other Technical Issues. The plan discusses other technical issues for the Working Group to address, including the evaluation and selection of search engines, the design of the user interface, the coordination of training and user support, the development of productivity tools, the retirement of older systems, preservation and long term access, the need for common architectures and the use of open standards within the Legislative Branch, and the importance of security. Public Access. The plan proposes that the public have access to the same core legislative information as the Congress, and that this information be made available on a system with comparable capability. The plan also discusses reasons for maintaining both the LOC THOMAS system and the GPO ACCESS system, while taking steps to integrate the best features of both systems, thereby reducing duplication of effort and confusion among users. Schedule. Completion of the system proposed in this plan and its general availability in all congressional offices will require several years. The schedule for the project will be significantly affected by the time required to 1) upgrade the workstations in House and Senate offices 2) develop and implement new data coding standards and procedures 3) develop all the required capabilities in the new retrieval system and 4) provide adequate security. Nevertheless, the nature of technology in use within the House and Senate and the support agencies allows for an iterative development cycle that permits the release of new features and files as soon as they are available. This means that congressional staff will be able to use each new capability as early as possible, assuming they have a workstation that will support the system, without having to wait for the entire plan to be complete. Estimated Costs and Staffing. At this stage of planning for the legislative information system, it is difficult to project costs with any precision. The full scope of this effort first has to be approved or further defined by the committees. The Working Group, supported by the Senior Technical Team, will then have to develop the plan in more detail with time frames for the various phases agreed upon. This effort will obviously be multi-phased over several years. The staff resources available to all of the Legislative Branch organizations that will be tasked to build this system are a critical issue. For this plan, the Library has assumed that the system will have to be built within existing resources approved by Congress, and that the time frame for completion of specific elements of the system will therefore have to be adjusted based upon available staff and financial resources. Also, participating organizations must be able to manage their resources so that they can fulfill their other mandated and priority mission functions. It will be a significant challenge to build the proposed legislative information system with existing, and probably declining resources, especially because the demand for staff with the technical skills needed to build the new legislative information system for Congress has become highly competitive. Next Steps. It is important to begin the process of coordinating the separate system initiatives under way within the Legislative Branch as soon as possible. Otherwise, this rare opportunity for creating an integrated and collaborative system will be lost. The committees may well wish to obtain additional comments on this plan from other offices and agencies of the legislature and from commercial vendors through an invitation for comment or through a hearing. Once this process is completed, the Library recommends that the committees determine whether they wish to approve and implement this plan in its current or in a modified form by the end of the current fiscal year. CONTENTS HIGHLIGHTS i EXECUTIVE SUMMARY iii INTRODUCTION 1 BACKGROUND 2 GOALS OF A NEW LEGISLATIVE INFORMATION SYSTEM 5 PROPOSED HOUSE AND SENATE JOINT LEGISLATIVE SYSTEMS WORKING GROUP 6 USER REQUIREMENTS 9 DATA STANDARDS 10 DATA COORDINATION AND PREPARATION 11 DATA SOURCES: GOVERNMENT 13 DATA SOURCES: COMMERCIAL AND OTHER NON- GOVERNMENT 18 SEARCH ENGINES 21 USER INTERFACE(S) 22 USER TRAINING, DOCUMENTATION, AND SUPPORT 23 PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS 24 RETIREMENT OF LEGACY SYSTEMS 24 PRESERVATION AND LONG TERM ACCESS 26 OPTIONS FOR PUBLIC ACCESS 26 SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE 30 SUGGESTED SCHEDULE 32 ESTIMATED COSTS AND STAFFING REQUIREMENTS 33 NEXT STEPS 34 APPENDIX A: HOUSE PLANS A-1 APPENDIX B: EXAMPLE OF BILL FROM GPO ACCESS B-1 APPENDIX C: EXAMPLES OF ANNOTATED BILLS C-1 APPENDIX D: AMENDMENTS D-1 A PLAN FOR A NEW LEGISLATIVE INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS INTRODUCTION Public Law 104-53 (H.R. 2492), section 209, directed the Library of Congress to develop a plan for the creation of a single legislative information system to serve the entire Congress. The law directs that the plan be approved by the Committee on Rules and Administration of the Senate, the Committee on House Oversight of the House of Representatives, and the Committees on Appropriations of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Upon approval of the plan, the Library of Congress, or the entity designated by the plan, shall develop and maintain the system, in coordination with other appropriate entities of the legislative branch. The law directs the Library to take into consideration the findings and recommendations of the Library's earlier study, required by House Report No. 103-517, to identify and eliminate redundancies in congressional information systems. The law also requires that the Library examine issues regarding efficient ways to make legislative information available to the public and submit its analysis to the committees for their consideration and possible action. The Conference Report (H.Rept. 104-212) that accompanied H.R. 2492 directed the Library to include in its analysis and plan an evaluation of commercial sources of legislative information as well as the various databases and data creation, processing, and distribution systems extant in the legislative branch. This report constitutes the required plan and is submitted by the Library in accordance with the directives contained in Public Law 104-53. In July 1995, the Library of Congress completed a study of duplication among legislative information systems supported by the Congress.1 This study documented the extent of overlap which has developed since the 1970s both among the systems designed for the collection and preparation of legislative data and among the systems designed for the retrieval, display, and printing of this information. The study found that while there have been steps taken to reduce duplication in the creation and preparation of data, there are still significant opportunities for reducing this overlap further and making the process even more efficient. With respect to systems for retrieval and display, the report found that, on balance, duplication has been increasing. Despite Senate proposals to eliminate its retrieval system and rely on the Library, overlap had increased because of the creation within the last two years of systems that contain common legislative information, including the GPO ACCESS system, the LOC THOMAS system, and the House gopher and Web servers. Recent improvements in technology, coupled with the need to replace aging legacy systems, have led to independent efforts in the House, Senate, and GPO to improve their systems for data collection and preparation. This same combination of aging systems and recent technical advances has also affected the development of retrieval systems; the Library, the GPO, and the House are each rebuilding or improving their existing search and display systems. The fact that these new development programs are under way now offers an excellent opportunity to reduce duplication and to increase the amount of coordination that should exist among systems that are so highly interdependent. One of the primary recommendations of this plan, which will be underscored in other contexts, is that the committees should act soon to ensure that these separate initiatives are purposefully integrated both to reduce duplication of effort and to improve the quality and compatibility of the systems being developed. Absent such a directive, the design and development of these systems will proceed quite separately, with the result that in a relatively short time (probably by the start of the next Congress), they will be much more difficult and costly to integrate. The Library suggests that the plan contained in this report, after it has been reviewed and modified as necessary by the committees, can offer an effective means to achieve this coordination, particularly by the establishment of a bicameral working group on a new legislative information system (see discussion below). The Library further suggests that this plan, as approved, can provide the basis for the guidelines and agenda for the proposed working group. The section that follows describes the major programs under way within the legislative branch to create and provide access to legislative information; it also updates the information contained in the Library's duplication study submitted in July 1995. BACKGROUND GPO ACCESS System. The 103d Congress passed Public Law 103-40, which directed the Government Printing Office (GPO) to make Legislative Branch and Executive Branch information, beginning with the Congressional Record and the Federal Register, available via online systems. In response to this mandate, GPO developed its ACCESS system, which was first released to depository libraries and the public in June 1994. This legislation authorizes the Superintendent of Documents to determine what other publications distributed by that office will be made available on the system. With respect to legislative information, ACCESS currently includes, among other documents, the full text of bills and the Congressional Record for the 103d and 104th Congresses, the Congressional Record Index (since 1983), the House and Senate Calendars, committee reports for the 104th, the History of Bills since 1983, the 1994/5 Unified Agenda, and the U.S. Code. In December 1995, the Public Printer eliminated all charges for use of the ACCESS system. GPO plans to replace the current ACCESS software with a more sophisticated commercial retrieval system during the first half of calendar 1996. GPO has also developed plans for making many Executive Branch agency publications available through the ACCESS system. In response to a congressional directive, GPO is developing a plan, which will be subject to congressional approval, for making the Depository Library Program entirely electronic (except for core publications which will also be available in print) by 1998. LOC THOMAS System. In December 1994, Speaker-elect Gingrich and Chairman-elect Thomas directed the Library of Congress to develop a system for making legislative information available to the public through the Internet.2 In his speech at the inauguration of the THOMAS system the Speaker stated that his intention was to ensure that the public has direct, immediate, and free access to legislative information. In January 1995, the Library released to Congress and the public its THOMAS system, which currently includes the full text of the bills and the Congressional Record for the 103d and 104th Congresses (received from the GPO), and the CRS-prepared bill digest database, which contains information on sponsors and cosponsors; committee, floor, conference, and executive actions; amendments; and summaries of all bills. In response to guidelines established by the House Oversight Committee, and in response to requests from the JCP, the Library is also working to make other legislative information available on THOMAS, including committee reports (projected availability in February 1996), House and Senate procedural rules, etc. The House Oversight Committee has approved specific guidelines for the legislative information that it wishes to be made available on THOMAS, but the Senate has not yet provided its guidelines to the Library. Senate Initiatives. In February, 1995, staff of the Senate Appropriations Committee asked the Library of Congress to analyze and, if feasible, to develop the means for providing legislative information retrieval services for the Senate in place of its current Senate Legis system. The Library has been working with the Senate Computer Center to develop a plan for implementing this request. The plan currently calls for the Senate Computer Center to continue to pass its legislative information to the Library, and to begin sending its Treaties, Nominations, and Executive Communications files to the Library on a regular production basis. The Library makes its legislative files available to Senate offices now, and will make the Treaties, Nominations, and Executive Communication files available via its SCORPIO retrieval system as early in 1996 as possible. This task is made relatively straight forward because the Senate Legis system and the Library's SCORPIO system are derived from the same software system. When the Library completes the planned replacement of its SCORPIO system, all Senate files would be migrated to the new system. This plan, if approved by the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, would enable the Senate Computer Center to focus its efforts on the replacement of its current data collection system, which supports the Secretary of the Senate, while the Library focusses on providing retrieval services to the Senate. House Initiatives. In November 1995, the Committee on House Oversight approved several initiatives that relate to the proposed legislative information system. These included 1) the House Information Systems Program Plan 2) the Policy Guidelines for a Joint Effort Between the Library of Congress and the U.S. House of Representatives to Provide Electronic Access to Legislative Information Created by the U.S. Congress, and 3) the ideas encompassed in the concept of the "CyberCongress" (see Appendix A for a discussion of CyberCongress). The House Information Systems Program Plan mandates a new information research facility for the House based on the World Wide Web paradigm and replacement of the MicroMIN, MIN, and ISIS systems. MIN and ISIS are two general information systems used extensively by the House community. They provide extensive information, research, and computational services, covering legislative, newswire, periodical publications, geographic and demographic information and services, federal funding information and services, and administrative services. MIN represents over 15 years of user driven development and delivery of services, and is used each month by over 5000 users from almost every House office. ISIS was built, using newer technology and information system approaches, upon H.I.R.'s experience from delivering information services via MIN and driven by user requirements which exceeded the capabilities of the technology used to deliver MIN. See Appendix A for a discussion of the plans to retire MIN and ISIS. The Policy Guidelines, prepared by The Committee on House Oversight's Computer and Information Services Working Group, are intended to provide the House and the public with more unified and less redundant systems for accessing legislative information. The objectives of these policy guidelines are to 1) provide access for the House and the public to legislative information in electronic formats; 2) improve the timeliness and amount of legislative information made available to the House and the public; 3) establish policies and procedures that ensure that legislative information in electronic formats will be prepared, preserved, maintained and continue to be made available to the House and the public for as long as Congress shall determine; and 4) reduce the duplication of legislative information services supported by the Congress. The Policy Guidelines propose that the Library make available for retrieval, legislative information that is prepared by, or on behalf of, the entire Congress, or by the committees, subcommittees, or offices of the Congress. The House, through its electronic research services supported by HIR, would provide access to information which is prepared by party organizations or by the House leadership; or which is by, or about an individual Member. The House would also provide access to information which is temporary or subject to frequent change, such as committee and floor schedules. The committee also approved a resolution stating that "...it is the sense of the Committee that the Chairman should recommend to the Senate Rules and Administration Committee the establishment of a joint Legislative Information Working Group which would review and make recommendations with respect to the integration of the various separate but related initiatives currently being undertaken within the Legislative Branch to provide improved access to legislative information both to the Congress and to the public." GOALS OF A NEW LEGISLATIVE INFORMATION SYSTEM The Library recommends that the goals for a new legislative information system for Congress include the following. The system should 1. Provide Members of Congress with the legislative information that is the most useful to them in making informed public policy decisions. 2. Be comprehensive, timely, and accurate. 3. Be easy to use. 4. Reduce duplication. 5. Enable staff of offices, committees, and legislative support agencies to serve Members more effectively. 6. Enable Members of Congress to serve their constituents more effectively. 7. Provide a permanent, accessible, and portable electronic record of the legislative activities of the U.S. Congress. 8. Create links among the various components of legislative information. The system should serve a variety of purposes and be used by Members and their staffs in a number of complementary ways. Examples: A Member of Congress or a staff person new to the Hill (or new to a particular issue) should be able to use the system to help them get up to speed quickly on any legislative topic. The system should require little training and yet provide easy online access to current and previous legislation, support agency publications, committee reports, hearings, and outside literature. A staffer should be able to use the system to check the status of a piece of legislation within minutes of action on the floor, call up the committee report on the bill as soon as it is available, view a support agency report on the bill, see an explanation of how that bill would amend an existing statute, and link directly to the portions of the U.S. Code that would be affected if the bill became law. A congressional or a legislative support agency staff person should be able to specify areas of legislative interest, and then receive daily, in a single integrated listing, information related to those areas, including new bills introduced, actions on bills previously introduced, items from the Congressional Record, committee reports and hearings, relevant support agency reports, news articles, listings (with links to the full text) of public policy articles in journals, magazines, and other publications, etc. PROPOSED HOUSE AND SENATE JOINT LEGISLATIVE SYSTEMS WORKING GROUP Background The fragmentation of legislative information policy has been a continuing problem within the legislative branch. A variety of informal operating arrangements has been undertaken in the past to coordinate information policy, but with little permanent success. The 1977 Commission on the Operation of the Senate identified major areas of overlap, duplication, and fragmentation in Senate administrative operations, including information policy. Based on these findings, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee (from 1977 through 1981) encouraged informal collaboration between itself and the offices of the Secretary of the Senate and the Sergeant at Arms to establish a comprehensive information policy in the Senate, to define the appropriate roles for each entity, and to eliminate administrative fragmentation in other policy areas as well. This informal arrangement was supplanted in 1981 when the Senate Majority Leader directed the Secretary and Sergeant at Arms to establish a working group comprised of senior administrative staff in their respective offices. Again, numerous informal arrangements were agreed to concerning merger and consolidation of services to Senate offices, including establishment of revised standards for providing computer and information services to Senate offices. Similar informal arrangements have existed in the House to coordinate work among House officers, the former House Information Systems, and the former House Administration Committee. But, these informal units have had no permanent authority and have not yet been able to overcome bicameral differences in setting Congress-wide information policy standards. The issue was again reviewed more formally by the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress in 1993. A study commissioned by the Joint Committee and carried out by Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government recommended the creation of a bicameral committee to coordinate information policy for the legislative branch. Its recommendations specifically urged that Members of Congress be in control of any informal coordination mechanism in order to assure that disputes and deadlocks at the staff and administrative level could be quickly resolved. [The bicameral committee] should have the responsibility to resolve policy issues on the deployment and use of information technology within the Congress. While many issues concerning guidelines and procedures for collaborating and coordinating activities can be worked out by senior staff managers and officials, they are often helped if they know that if they fail there is the option to take the matter to an elected official with the jurisdiction and knowledge to work it out.3 Proposal The new system will be Congress' primary legislative information system, and should be developed and maintained collaboratively by all the offices and legislative support agencies that serve the Congress. The Library recommends that the system be identified as the legislative information system of the U.S. Congress, not of either chamber alone or of any one support agency. Each office and agency which currently creates, prepares, maintains, prints, or provides access to legislative information should contribute to the system based upon its legislative responsibilities and its areas of expertise. In order to take advantage of the efficiencies inherent in modern technology, it should be a distributed system, enabling it to mirror the distributed organizational responsibilities within the legislative branch. Because no single entity has responsibility for all legislative information, and because the system will serve both the House and the Senate, the Library recommends, as already proposed by the Committee on House Oversight, the creation of a joint House and Senate legislative systems working group to carry out oversight and coordination responsibilities for the new system. For the remainder of this report, this proposed joint legislative systems working group of Members will be referred to as the Working Group. The Library suggests that the Working Group be created by the House Oversight Committee and the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, that it be chaired by a Member, and that it be composed of Members and officers from both chambers. These committees have lead policy and oversight responsibility for information technology within their respective chambers and should therefore take primary responsibility for formation and operation of the Working Group. The Library suggests that the Working Group also have official representation from the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, the Joint Committee on Printing, the Joint Committee on the Library, the Secretary of the Senate, and the Clerk of the House. Regarding the chairmanship of the Working Group, the Congress may wish to consider having the chair jointly appointed by the Committee on House Oversight and the Committee on Senate Rules and Administration, in consultation with the other participating committees and officers. The Working Group would need to be supported by a formally established team consisting of the senior technical managers of the legislative organizations that would be tasked to build and maintain the legislative information system. Many of the issues to be addressed in creating a single system, such as data standards, database architecture, transfer protocols, etc. are very technical in nature and require a high degree of coordination. They cannot be resolved without extensive discussions and consultations among the various entities of the Congress which prepare, distribute, retrieve, display, and print legislative data. This team would provide the technical and management expertise necessary to make informed recommendations and to develop a viable system. They would also be able to bring together staff for subteams that will be needed to analyze various issues and then to develop agreed upon solutions. The Legislative Branch Telecommunications Network team, established several years ago by the Appropriations Committees, is a good example of a group that has worked effectively in the manner envisioned in this plan to improve and support technology that serves the entire Congress. The technical team proposed here will be referred to as the Senior Technical Team. The Library assumes that no separate funding would be provided for staff to support the Working Group and that the Senior Technical Team would therefore provide such support. The Library believes that this would be an appropriate role for the staff involved because they are people who are already tasked by their organizations to provide legislative information system support to Congress. In this capacity they should be integrally involved in the design and development of a new system. Finally, while the Working Group should be authorized to make decisions and resolve disagreements among organizations, the Working Group should avoid imposing requirements that would interfere with the ability of any of the contributing organizations to fulfill their other legislative mandates or achieve other elements of their mission. The Senior Technical Team should include staff who could advise the Working Group on the potential impact of the legislative information system requirements, and who could propose alternatives for achieving the goals of the system which were in concert with current operations and business practices. The tasks of the proposed Working Group will include the following: A. Establish policies. B. Ensure user input. C. Establish technical standards. D. Set development priorities. E. Approve implementation plans. F. Assign responsibilities. G. Monitor progress. H. Make adjustments to the plan and assignments as needed. I. Resolve disagreements over technology. In addition, the Library recommends that this report, which discusses the major technical and organizational issues and enumerates several required tasks in the development, maintenance, and operation of a new legislative information system for Congress serve as the Working Group's initial agenda. Should Congress choose not to create a joint Working Group, it will be more difficult to achieve the goals of the legislation to create a single, integrated system that reduced duplication within the Legislative Branch. Each chamber and each support agency would continue to develop its own system, with a high probability that there would be uncoordinated, wasted effort. Congress could choose to designate one office or support agency to be responsible for coordinating the development of a single system, but it is unlikely that any one office or agency would have sufficient authority to succeed. USER REQUIREMENTS One of the first and most important tasks for the Working Group will be to collect, collate, and prioritize user requirements. There have been several efforts undertaken during the past year to gather user requirements, including work carried out by the House Oversight Committee, the Government Printing Office, and the Congressional Research Service. These need to be supplemented by similar efforts to obtain requirements from the groups that have not yet been surveyed. A suggested list follows at the end of this section. Some of the primary advantages of the tools now available to build retrieval systems are that they allow for rapid prototyping, early production use, and relatively easy modification. These features enable users to work with and evaluate early versions of the system and give developers feedback on suggested improvements. Developers can then make these changes more quickly than was true with older technology, and this cycle can repeat itself as long as is useful. This process, which is sometimes referred to as iterative development, enables developers to build and make systems available while they are still gathering requirements from users. The GPO ACCESS system and the LOC THOMAS system are examples of this type of development cycle. The user groups whose requirements need to be met by the new system include the following: 1. House and Senate Member offices (including Members, AAs, LDs, LAs, LCs, press secretaries, etc.). 2. House and Senate committees (including chairs, ranking minority Members, other Members, staff directors, professional staff, etc.). 3. Officers of the House and Senate. 4. Legislative Branch support agencies (CRS, CBO, GAO, GPO). If this system, or portions of it, are made available to the public (see discussion under section entitled OPTIONS FOR PUBLIC ACCESS), the feedback from the following groups should be solicited: individual citizens, libraries and library groups, federal and state governments, affected private and public organizations, and possibly the legislatures of other countries. DATA STANDARDS After user requirements, the most important task of the Working Group is the establishment of data standards. The preparation of data is typically the most expensive individual component of an information system. In addition, to obtain the greatest efficiencies and most cost-effective benefits of open architecture systems, it is essential that data exist in standard formats to meet the range of searching, displaying, and printing requirements the new system will have to meet. Also, standard data formats are needed for timely data transfer and exchange, to make it easier to migrate older data to the new technologies that will inevitably emerge, and to help ensure access to historical data. Finally, openly established standards would facilitate the integration of legislative information such as bills and committee reports with data available from commercial sources. It would be productive to seek input from private companies that use and market legislative data produced by Congress. See discussion below under DATA SOURCES: COMMERCIAL AND NON-GOVERNMENT. Various official as well as de facto standards are acceptable. The standard beginning to emerge as the most promising within the Legislative Branch is the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), which is both an official U.S and international standard. GPO is currently playing an important role in establishing SGML as a usable standard for both Legislative and Executive Branch data. Although SGML offers the most flexibility and capability for meeting the requirements of a sophisticated information system, it is also among the most demanding and possibly expensive to implement. New tools are being introduced regularly in the technology market place that promise, over time, to reduce the cost of SGML and make it easier to use, yet it is important not to underestimate the cost of this standard. Both the Clerk of the House and the Senate Computer Center also have undertaken projects to evaluate and possibly implement SGML. The Congressional Research Service is also evaluating SGML for its reports for Congress, and the GAO has long used a version of SGML to produce its reports. An early task of the Working Group should be to establish a subteam of representatives from various legislative branch organizations, and possibly commercial users of this data (See discussion below under the heading DATA SOURCES: COMMERCIAL AND NON-GOVERNMENT), to analyze and make recommendations regarding data format standards. If the cost-effective implementation of such recommendations requires changes in legislative procedures, the Working Group will need to be advised as early as possible. Also, because it will take time to establish and to implement these recommendations, the subteam will need to make recommendations for interim standards.4 Finally, the group will need to establish a process for modifying standards on a regular basis as new data and new retrieval requirements emerge. One of the challenges for the Working Group will be to find cost-effective procedures for coding data according to standard without placing an excessive burden on any one organization. One of the options made possible by a standard such as SGML is that codes could be established for a variety of data elements, such as bill number, speaker name, subject, etc., and for a wide range of functions, such as printing, data display, retrieval, etc. The resulting groups of codes, sometimes referred to as a "common tag set", could be used by all Legislative Branch agencies for tagging the data for the functions with which they are most concerned. Agencies might then collaborate on tagging some of the data, and thereby share the cost and eliminate duplication in this expensive process. It will still be necessary, however, for one organization to be responsible for the technical maintenance of a shared tag set and its associated formats and standards. DATA COORDINATION AND PREPARATION The study of duplication among legislative tracking systems cited above noted that while there had been a concerted effort to reduce duplication of effort in the creation of legislative data, there were still opportunities for making this process more efficient. One of the primary tasks of the Working Group should be to establish guidelines for reducing duplication of effort and for increasing the efficiency of data preparation. The Library proposes the following guidelines for the Working Group to consider in addressing these issues. 1. Data should be created and validated by the office or organization specifically responsible for that data. For example, the Clerk of the House should be the source for House floor actions, House floor amendments, etc., the Secretary of the Senate for similar information from the Senate, etc. 2. The proposed Working Group should resolve any issues related to the duplication of information. 3. The system should contain a digital version that is an exact duplicate of the printed version of each official legislative document. 4. Identifying and supporting methods for obtaining timely data from committees on proposed and completed legislative activities (e.g., hearings, markups, reports, etc), without imposing undue burdens on committees, should be a special objective of the Working Group. 5. The Working Group should consider the potential role of commercial services, and determine whether and how such services could be integrated with the Congressional system. (See discussion below under the heading DATA SOURCES: COMMERCIAL AND NON-GOVERNMENT.) 6. With respect to the current overlap between the GPO and LOC systems, the following is proposed. GPO would continue to maintain an official digital version of congressional documents for which they are responsible in an electronic format that mirrors the printed format.5 (See sample, Appendix B.) As directed in PL103-40, and in coordination with the Working Group, GPO would continue to create and add congressional documents in an official digital format. The Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress would create and maintain an annotated version of bills that would include: 1) Explanations added to the text of the bill itself when necessary to understand the effect of the bill.6 This often occurs when the bill amends an existing statute, and it is necessary to research the U.S. Code to have a full understanding of the bill. It can also be useful to have such explanations for summarizing long textual provisions. (See examples, Appendix C.) 2) Direct links between the annotated bill and legislative support agency publications (e.g, CRS, GAO, and CBO reports) that provide information relevant to the bill. 3) Direct links from the bill to the most current version of the U.S. Code so that the user could more easily review the relevant portions of the Code directly. The Library would continue to receive, as it does now, the status, sponsors and cosponsors, and committees of referral or origin of bills. The Library would also continue to integrate this information with the annotated version of the bill to provide a more complete system for search and retrieval of bills, and to link this data to the relevant portions of the full text of the online Record. The CRS would continue to digest bills, as it does now, but would focus greater attention on providing timely summaries of bills receiving congressional action. Congressional staff could call CRS directly to obtain an explanation of a bill that had not yet been annotated or summarized. GPO and LOC would work closely together to ensure the close integration of their systems so that the congressional user could move easily between the annotated and the official version of a bill. The Working Group would determine, after an analysis of the resources required, whether it was feasible and cost-effective to create linked and/or annotated versions of other congressional publications, e.g., committee reports, hearings, the Record, etc. One of the most important challenges for the Working Group in implementing these guidelines will be to achieve the optimum balance among the requirements to reduce duplication of effort, ensure synchronization of databases that will be created for various functions, and reduce the cost of data preparation. For example, with regard to the above proposal that the LOC create an annotated bill file and that the GPO create an official electronic file, there are a number of technical issues. Should the LOC create its annotated file from a database derived from the GPO master file and stored on a Library server? It might be more cost-effective to create the annotated file this way, but how would the Library and the GPO ensure that the annotated file was always synchronized with the official file? Alternatively, if the preferred technical solution were to create a single master SGML database with the LOC annotations as one of the tagged elements, how would a database of this complexity affect response times at user workstations? These are issues that the GPO and the LOC will have to work on together, with the Working Group approving the solution(s). There are various technical options for meeting each of these requirements, and new options will become available as the marketplace generates new technical tools. It is likely therefore that the optimum solution will change over time. The Working Group will have to implement flexible solutions that can adapt new technologies as they become viable. DATA SOURCES: GOVERNMENT After the matters of data standards and data coordination are resolved, the next most important set of issues are the questions of what data to include in the system and in what order of priority. To create informed public policy, lawmakers require access to a wide range of current and historical information, including existing statutes, support agency analyses, academic studies, court decisions, budget and financial data, regulations, executive branch policies, public and private sector analyses, lobby group position papers, and newspaper reports from local, national, and international sources. They also need immediate access to official records, publications, and documents from the current and from previous Congresses. Finally, after policies have been agreed upon and laws have been passed, they need information about the effects of these decisions on the domestic and international affairs of this country. For a legislative information system to serve the Congress well, it must be able to acquire and provide this broad range of information to Congress on a timely basis, in formats that are understandable, and in ways that support the legislative decision making process both now and in the future. In addition, much of the information that lawmakers require has to be available to them before it becomes a formal publication. For example, actions on pending legislation are recorded in a variety of printed sources, but it is important for Members and staff to have the status of bills as soon as possible, often before it is printed. Similarly, Members need the text of amendments before it is available in official publications. An example of a new information source of increasing value is the video record of floor proceedings. Through cable television, Members can see floor actions as they occur, but they have no means for recalling and reviewing such data on a timely basis. New technology, likely to be available on a production basis within the next 12-24 months, could be incorporated into the legislative information system to make this possible. To best serve the needs of Members, therefore, a new legislative information system has to be broadly conceived and must include information in a variety of formats, including text, data, audio, and video available from a wide range of sources on a timely basis. The discussions that follow in this section (DATA SOURCES: GOVERNMENT INFORMATION) and in the next section (COMMERCIAL AND OTHER NON-GOVERNMENT) identify the categories of information that the Library recommends for inclusion in the system. These lists will need to be modified as more users have an opportunity to comment on them. Because everything cannot be brought online at the same time, the Working Group will need to establish a more specific ordering. Although this should probably be based on the assumption that data currently available to Congress in one of its existing systems should be incorporated into the new system first, the Working Group may want to make modifications based upon user feedback and a determination of more pressing requirements. Congressional Information Bills The system should include all published versions of all bills, including both the official full text version prepared by the GPO and the annotated version by the Library, with links to support agency publications and the most current version of the U.S. Code. The Office of the Legislative Counsel of both the House and the Senate play a critical role in the preparation of a large majority of the bills introduced each year. These Offices are already working with GPO on the preparation and tagging of bill text, and it would be useful to explore the possibility of the Legislative Counsels coordinating with the Working Group to support the timeliness, accuracy, and utility of the new legislative information system. Bill Amendments A new legislative information system for Congress can provide the opportunity to improve the availability of information on both floor and committee amendments. If adequate data tagging standards can be developed and implemented for both bills and amendments, display technology could enable users to view more complete information about the content and status of a given amendment by itself, as well as see how the bill would read if the amendment were approved. Achieving these improvements may require some procedural changes in the way amendments are handled in the House, such as establishing a formal numbering system. Such changes, however, would provide considerable benefit to Members and staff in locating and displaying information about amendments. See Appendix D for a more detailed discussion about ways to improve access to amendments. Status of Bills Timeliness, accuracy, and detail are critical criteria for this data. Several years ago, House Information Resources pioneered a method for providing a summary of House floor proceedings within 10-15 minutes of the actual event. Today's technology offers the potential for linking data that is this timely to the bill or amendment itself so that users can have very current status information. The importance of accuracy dictates that the Clerk of the House and Secretary of the Senate be the source of these data for floor actions and that they have the tools to enter and correct data as quickly as possible. Sufficient detail is important both because of the need to understand what happened (e.g., was it a voice or recorded vote, what was the recorded vote number, where in the Record can the debate be found, etc.) and because of the number of questions that the leadership, committees, and members ask about workload and about actions (e.g., how many times did the House vote to suspend the rules). Currently, the House, Senate, and the Library each collect some status steps, some of which are overlapping, others of which do not contain sufficient information. The Library recommends that a subteam of the Working Group address this overlap and develop procedures for collecting status information as efficiently as possible while meeting the criteria of timeliness, accuracy, and detail. The status of legislation within committees poses a special challenge. Knowing both what has happened to a bill in committee and also what is scheduled to happen is an important need of Members, staff and support agencies. Committees, on the other hand are deluged with work, and while they are the authoritative source of these data, they need tools that enable them to collect, prepare, and distribute this information quickly and easily. Ideally, committees should be able to create and disseminate status and schedule information as a natural by- product of work they must do for themselves. A number of commercial companies have been able to develop a profitable business in part from having employees in the field to collect such information from the committees. While this is beneficial to many, it means that congressional offices that need this information, which Congress itself creates, have to pay for it. The Library recommends that the proposed subteam on status address ways to acquire both floor and committee actions, scheduled as well as completed actions, on a more timely basis. This will require an analysis of the cost of purchasing this information from commercial vendors compared to the cost of developing and maintaining a system or systems that help committees provide this information themselves, with minimum impact on committee staff time. House Information Resources has an initiative under way now to examine this issue, and the Senate Rules Committee is considering a similar project. Congressional Record Over time, the Congressional Record has come to serve many important functions for the Congress. It is a record of debate, a schedule of activities, a forum for the publication of ideas, a means of recognizing achievements, a method of communicating with constituents, a system for recording official business, and a widely accessible medium of communication about the activities of Congress. As a consequence it is both vital and costly. The GPO has had to be highly creative and effective in developing systems to meet Congress' requirements for the Congressional Record. Nevertheless, as Congress addresses the need to reduce its own costs, one of the issues it may wish to consider is whether there are other, less costly, yet equally effective means of meeting the multiple objectives of the Record. The improving state of electronic publication, and the increased availability and value of video data, combined with efforts to create and collect data more efficiently may allow for such opportunities. The Library recommends that a subteam of the Working Group be established to determine the feasibility of this proposal. Committee Publications Timeliness, accuracy, and accessibility are the important criteria for committee publications, which include hearings, reports (from both individual and conference committees), prints and documents. Hearings can be further delineated to include submitted testimony, and both unedited and edited transcripts of testimony. Also, testimony can be recorded and distributed in print and, increasingly, in audio and video media. There is an understandable tension between committees, which, with decreasing staff resources, are responsible for the cost and accuracy of these publications, and those outside of committees, including Member offices, support agencies, and the public, who always want immediate access to these publications. This is another area in which private firms are developing businesses from the demand for these publications, even though the documents they produce are unofficial. Technology cannot provide a simple answer to the conflicting pressures that surround committee publications. It is reasonable, however, to include within the mandate of the Working Group the task of making recommendations regarding standards and systems that can help committees accomplish their work more efficiently, and, therefore, help address some of these concerns. It may be possible for the Working Group to work with interested committees and the GPO to evaluate systems that could meet some of these requirements. Votes Information about votes, while extremely important, is also extremely sensitive. On the one hand, they are a public record of a Member's position on issues. On the other hand, they are often difficult to categorize accurately. A number of congressional groups, private companies, and nonprofit organizations make it their business to characterize Members' votes. Yet it can be difficult to know what a Member intended by his or her vote by the description of the vote alone. On the other hand, most offices would find it useful to have some valid, non-partisan description of votes by topic, e.g, defense appropriations, etc. The Library recommends that the new legislative information system be designed to make it possible for Members to retrieve a comprehensive record of their own recorded votes as easily as possible, so that each office does not have to duplicate this information on its own. Offices may, of course, choose to augment this basic data with their own information regarding the context, purpose, etc. Any office or the public should also be able to find an accurate listing of the yeas and nays on any recorded vote in the system as they can now through the online versions of the Congressional Record, although the new system should make it easier to locate and display these votes. The Library also recommends that the Working Group consider whether and how it might be possible to provide a non- partisan description of votes by topic. Beyond these basic capabilities, however, the Library recommends that the new legislative system not provide any additional functionality regarding votes. Statutes This category includes both the Statutes-at-Large and the U.S. Code. The major challenge in this category is that the most current version of the U.S. Code is produced by commercial companies. The schedule for updating the Code is controlled by law, with the result that those who can afford commercial services often use those as a first choice, even though they are unofficial. Treaties, Nominations, Executive Communications These categories are a part of the current Senate Legis system and should be included in the new legislative information system. With the growth in full text systems, these files should eventually be expanded to include the complete text of each of these items. Legislative Branch Support agency Information All Legislative Branch agency publications should be included in the system with links among their individual reports, and, when appropriate, between them and specific pieces of legislation. Executive Branch AND Judicial Branch Information Congress should have reliable, timely access to all Executive and Judicial Branch information relevant to its work. The key issue is establishing priorities as well as taking advantage of cost-effective opportunities. There has been a significant growth in Executive Branch information accessible through open architecture, but access to Judicial Branch information, while improving, is still primarily available through modern technology from commercial vendors. Beyond the issue of access is the problem of linking to data sources as easily as possible. This is another task that can be made less costly through the establishment of data standards. State Information Finally, it is important to note, given the trends in federal/state relations, that information by and about state policies, plans, legislation, and programs will become increasingly important. This is yet another area where commercial systems tend to have the most advanced capabilities, although many states are now beginning to make their official publications available on the Internet. DATA SOURCES: COMMERCIAL AND OTHER NON- GOVERNMENT A number of commercial companies have developed good systems for providing access to legislative information. Developed in the 1980s, after the congressionally funded House, Senate, and Library systems had demonstrated their value, these systems have evolved to serve a growing pay-for- service market. In certain areas, such as committee schedules and activities, political analysis, newspaper stories, case law, and the U.S. Code, they provide more up-to-date information than any of the congressional systems. Many congressional offices as well as the support agencies (GAO, CBO, and CRS) have found various commercial services essential for performing their work. Many of these companies also rely heavily on congressionally produced data (e.g., the text of bills, committee reports, etc.) obtained from GPO, to which they add their own value-added services. A detailed comparative matrix of legislative information available from congressional and from commercial sources is available from CRS upon request.7 For several years, the House and Senate have, under their own separate arrangements, purchased some of the services of these companies to supplement the information provided by congressional systems. The House has tended to purchase selected data elements and integrate them with its own MIN and ISIS system. For several years, the Senate has authorized offices to choose from among several vendors who offer a variety of services. Many Senate offices use these services extensively. One option for Congress to consider would be to solicit bids from commercial companies to provide its legislative information system entirely through contract. It is impossible to know how much this option might cost without a formal RFP process, although it is important to note that even under such an arrangement, Congress would still have to perform some of the most costly components of such a system, including collecting, verifying, and distributing basic information such as bills, reports, etc. However, there are a number of reasons for suggesting that the legislative information system could take advantage of the value provided by commercial companies without relying on them entirely or exclusively. The Library recommends instead that the "core legislative information" of Congress should be compiled and made available to its Members and its committees by its own offices and staff through the legislative information system proposed in this plan. The Library suggests the term "core legislative information" to refer to those basic congressional documents and activities that record the fundamental work of the Congress. It includes the text of bills and amendments; committee reports, hearings, prints, and documents; the Congressional Record; committee and floor actions on bills; conference and White House action on legislation; the resulting statutes and U.S. Code; rules of procedure; etc. This list is not comprehensive, but it is likely that there would be general agreement on the core legislative information of the Congress. By contrast, commercial companies provide political analysis and commentary, "insider" information, related newspaper stories, magazine and journal articles, case law, etc. which are also valuable to Congress. The system developed to provide core legislative information, as proposed in this plan, should be based on an open architecture that encourages commercial providers to continue to offer their services to Congress on a competitive, value added basis. In this environment, Members and committees would be free to purchase the systems and services that were of use to them, and which would complement the legislative information system proposed in this plan. Ideally this would maximize the value received from the commercial services without paying a second time for the information available through the congressional system. The Library recommends that Congress produce and distribute its core data for several reasons. Continuity and reliability would be ensured. Guaranteed access to the legislative information of Congress should not be dependent on continued success in the marketplace. Commercial companies must also balance the demands of their various customers. Congress, on the other, should have complete control of the collection, validation, and distribution processes for its own data.8 Library staff discussed these proposals with several of the commercial companies that provide legislative information services, including CQ, Legislate, Lexis/Nexis, and West Publishing. While the Library would not presume to represent the official views of these companies, several themes emerged in the discussions. There appeared to be a consensus that the basic proposals were sound, and that Congress should maintain and provide access to its own core legislative information, although all companies reserved final judgment until more details were known. These companies would benefit to the extent that the congressional system improved the timeliness, accuracy, and utility of the core information which they all use in their systems. Some expressed interest in exploring the options for linking their systems or their data to the congressional system, provided that such action provided no threat to the licensed arrangements under which their systems and data were provided. In addition, some noted the benefit of possibly having a more consistent approach to the procurement of services for the entire Legislative Branch. Historically, the House, Senate, and support agencies have each taken a different approach to this process. This contrasts with some of the benefits that have resulted from the work of the Legislative Branch Telecommunications Network team (LBTN) in procuring long distance services for the Legislative Branch.9 Beyond that, there could be value in developing data standards in an open environment in which companies, to the extent of their interest, would have an opportunity to participate or comment. The Library believes that its recommendations would create a framework that would enable Congress to maintain control over, and have improved access to its core legislative data, while at the same time continuing to benefit from the services of private companies, who could offer their products in a supportive, but competitive environment. SEARCH ENGINES In general, the term search engines refers to the software programs which collectively work together to support the indexing and retrieving of data. The explosive growth of computer generated data and the creation of nationwide data networks have lead to concurrent growth in the technology of search engines during the past several years. Numerous private companies, research institutes, and public sector organizations have become engaged in developing products for the search engine market. This is likely to be an evolving and continually improving field of technology for several years. By comparison, the systems now in operation in the Senate, House, and Library were created over 20 years ago and had to be built almost entirely "from scratch." It is these systems, sometimes referred to as "legacy systems" which the new legislative information system will eventually replace, once it can provide the same data and system capabilities, or comparable functionality. While the House, Senate, and Library have continually improved their systems within the limits of the original technology used in their construction, it is clear that to achieve the goals of the new legislative system, it is necessary to build it with today's tools, which have been developed from the beginning to leverage the advantages of distributed processing, graphical user interfaces, and high performance, integrated communication systems. The capabilities of today's search engines vary depending upon whether they are constructed as complete and independent systems or as "tool kits" which skilled programmers can use to construct a complete system. Prices vary accordingly, and the most cost-effective choice depends upon a variety of factors such as the skill and experience of inhouse staff, the projected need for continuing development, the specific capabilities required, etc. The House, Senate, GPO, and Library computer centers have each begun to use some of these new retrieval systems to meet several of their unique institutional requirements. One of the most important advantages of the technology now being brought into the Legislative Branch is that it is built upon open rather than proprietary standards. In a distributed technical environment, open standards are critical because they make it possible to integrate systems so that duplication of effort can be avoided. At the same time, open standards make it unnecessary to require that each technical organization utilize the same search engine or data collection system, so long as they can all meet the essential requirements for interoperability. In today's competitive market environment, this principle is especially important because it allows the Congress to continue to take advantage of technical and price competition as such opportunities arise without having to insist that every organization within the Legislative Branch acquire and use the same software at the same time. This promotes continued competition among commercial companies in developing technology that meets Congress' requirements. Diversity and competition in the field of search engines is also important because of the range of requirements inherent in certain kinds of data and among certain kinds of users. Some systems may be optimized for searching and displaying text, others may be optimized for searching and displaying video. Similarly, some systems may have advantages for novice users, others for expert searchers. Because the legislative information system will have to accommodate data from a variety of sources, the system would have to accommodate the needs of staff who might be using a variety of search engines. The Library recommends that the Working Group form a subteam to address issues related to the integration of search engines, to continually assess the state-of-the-art in this technical field, and to regularly evaluate the effectiveness of the search engines used in Congress' legislative information system. USER INTERFACE(S) The user interface is designed with software that enables the user to learn what is available in the system, formulate specific requests for information, receive and display the results of a search, and perform other tasks, such as storing the retrieved data, sorting it, sending it to someone else, and incorporating it into another document. With the advent of the graphical user interface (GUI), there have been tremendous improvements in interface software which have made it much easier to understand and use systems, and enable many more tasks to be performed. A well designed graphical user interface is a critical element of the legislative information system because it will allow staff to find information without having to know where it is stored or what search commands to use. For example, the interface would enable the user to request the official electronic version of the bill as it passed the House, which might be stored at GPO, and the schedule for the markup on that bill in a Senate committee, which might be stored on a committee server. The user would not have to know how to request that data technically, nor know where it was stored. The interface would take care of these tasks. Interfaces can also be customized to meet the needs of different types of users (expert, novice, congressional, public, etc.) at a relatively small cost compared with alternatives such as building a different system to meet the needs of various users. A building metaphor may help to illustrate this point. The collection and preparation of data, and the design of a search engine can be compared to the foundation, walls, roof, plumbing, and wiring of a house. The user interface is analogous to the windows of that house, both in terms of its cost relative to the rest of the house, and in the sense that it allows different views into the data that resides in the house. This flexibility of interface software is an important asset because of the range of user needs. For example, the staff of the House and Senate bill status offices are expert users of legislative retrieval systems and have different requirements from the newly arrived legislative correspondent or the professional staff member on the committee. Another advantage of the flexibility and power of user interface software is that it can manage access to licensed information. For example, if the House and Senate continue to license information from commercial sources under contractual arrangements, it might be possible to integrate this data effectively with the data in the legislative information system through the design of the interface linked with the necessary security systems, and still remain within the requirements of the contractual obligations. There are a variety of options for accomplishing this, depending upon the flexibility of the vendor systems and the interests of the commercial providers. (See previous discussion under DATA SOURCES: COMMERCIAL AND NON- GOVERNMENT) The power and flexibility of interface software can pose certain challenges. There are a variety of commercial providers of this type of software, and it can be customized by the user as well as by the designers of the legislative information system. The Working Group would need to establish some guidelines regarding the compatibility requirements of the software that offices could select to access the system. Absent such guidelines, the costs to develop and support all the possible software choices could be quite expensive. The Library recommends that the Working Group form a subteam to design user interfaces(s), taking into account the needs of different users and the variety of data formats. The projected rate of technical enhancements in user interface software, the changing requirements of users, and the growth in the amount and kinds of data available on the system will require that the subteam make adjustments and improvements in the user interface(s) on an ongoing basis. The user interface should encourage and enable user to send suggestions for system improvements to the Working Group. USER TRAINING, DOCUMENTATION, AND SUPPORT Adequate user support through training, documentation, and troubleshooting is an essential requirement. Like most organizations in this country, Congress is a beneficiary of the dramatic improvements in the sophistication and in the ease of use computer technology that have occurred in the last five years. However, as this technology has become more widely used and as it is applied to larger number of critical business operations, maintaining ease of use has become more challenging. The Library recommends that the design and support of the legislative information system follow these principles: 1. Design the system so that required training time can be kept to an absolute minimum. 2. Provide multiple ways for users to obtain the required training, including training classes, online help, printed documentation, self teaching programs, and audio and video instruction programs. 3. Through the Working Group, coordinate the work needed to provide user support, based upon the current programs and expertise of each of the organizations within the Legislative Branch. For example, the House Information Resources, the Senate Computer Center, GPO, and the Library each provide training programs for their congressional clients. It might prove most cost-effective to divide and coordinate responsibility for introductory and advanced courses and for documentation among these organizations. PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS An important component in the development and improvement of a legislative information system should be an ongoing, coordinated program of evaluation, testing, and implementation of tools that can improve productivity both for creators and for users of the system. For example, under the distributed system proposed in this plan, various groups would be responsible for the preparation and tagging of data to standard specifications. A new piece of software that can make this process more efficient will benefit everyone. Similarly it would be valuable to encourage the development of automatic retrieval features that would benefit all users, such as allowing them to specify whether they wanted to search for an exact phrase, to search comprehensively for all variants of the words in a phrase (e.g., balanced budget, balancing the budgets, bringing the budget in balance with..., etc.), or search effectively for variations in the expression of an idea (e.g., ...ensure that federal expenditures match federal revenue generation...). The selection of productivity tools for evaluation should be the result of a thorough understanding of the requirements of data creators and of users, balanced against technical opportunities. The basic principle is that resources spent on this effort should be business driven rather than technology driven. However, the testing program should be carried out by staff who have both a Hill-wide view and who also can gauge the potential of emerging technology to meet a variety of Hill-wide requirements. RETIREMENT OF LEGACY SYSTEMS The retirement of the systems that currently provide Congress with legislative information presents all of the challenges that arise whenever there is a proposal to replace an older system (or so called "legacy system") with a newer system. Despite their shortcomings, the Library's SCORPIO system, the House MIN and ISIS systems, and the Senate LEGIS system work every day for hundreds of staff on Capitol Hill and in district and state offices. The basic principle should be that the current systems can be retired when the new system provides comparable functionality. The difficulty in applying this principle arises when one tries to specify exactly when comparable functionality has been achieved. Despite the fact that new technology provides many advantages over the older systems (e.g., the graphical user interfaces make them easier to understand, the user can "click" and link immediately to related information, such as the text of the debate in the Record cited in the status section of the bill), the older systems have been developed and fine tuned for over 20 years, and they have a number of features that are not yet available in the newer technology. Here are two generic examples: Systems operating on the World Wide Web cannot yet combine the results of previous searches with the results of later searches. There are ways to get around this problem, but the optimal and comparable solution is not yet clear. Many expert users prefer to type in the specific system command rather than go through a series of "dialog boxes" because it is faster and more efficient for them. Most new systems permit this in limited and/or complex ways. Here are two examples specific to individual systems: The Library of Congress SCORPIO system allows congressional staff to request books located through its online card catalog through the ORDER command. The House MIN system allows users to search for and read a summary of floor proceedings within minutes of their occurrence. In the case of both of these specific examples, it will be possible to develop these capabilities in the new system, but it will take time and resources to accomplish the task. The new technology does not come already equipped with these customized features that have been developed over the years. The older data accessible through these systems present an additional challenge. The data from the 104th Congress will certainly be accessible. However, the digests of the bills back through the 93rd Congress may not be transferrable to the new technology, although it will probably be possible to provide some limited means of access. While the older data is not searched as frequently as that of the current Congress, its availability, however infrequently needed, is still important to many staff. As one example, committees often ask CRS for information about historical trends in legislative activities. These questions can only be answered at a reasonable cost by accessing the older data in the current House, Senate, or Library legislative systems. It is important to understand the significance of this problem without overdramatizing it. While nearly all of the data in the current systems exists in some print version, much of the value and accessibility of the data exists only through its availability in an online retrieval system. In this context, the definition of comparable functionality becomes a matter of judgment tempered by the issue of cost. At this point, it will require more analysis in order to make a recommendation about how to handle older data. Solution(s) to this problem will affect the decision about when comparable functionality has been achieved. PRESERVATION AND LONG TERM ACCESS The issues of preservation and long term access will be important for the new legislative information system. Much of the data in that system may exist only in digital format, and the question of how to ensure the preservation and long term access to the data in the new legislative information system must be answered before it is necessary to move on to the generation of technology beyond today's. Except for the problem of acid based paper, the invention of the printed book provided a solution to this problem for over 500 years. The current online systems have been in operation for less than 25 years and we now face the problem. Fortunately the advances in technology and the development of data standards such as SGML offer potential solutions to this problem in the future, but only if they are purposefully and effectively implemented from the beginning. Because of the important role legislative histories play in the interpretation of Federal laws and regulations, the Working Group's design for a new legislative information system must plan for both the permanent archiving of core legislative data and its long-term accessibility. Legislative history, at whatever level of detail recorded, constitutes the framework from within which future legislative, judicial and executive actions will be taken, whether these are in the form of new legislation and amendments, court decisions, or agency rulemaking. For this reason, practically all legislative data collected must be indefinitely retained and constantly available. An indefinite period of retention has the added benefit of meeting scholarly and public interest in the legislative process. Historical data can migrate to appropriate agencies with archival responsibility at a designated time and still have the potential to be integrated at the user interface level within the distributed computing environment that constitutes the legislative information system infrastructure. For purposes of security and reliability, certain data sets, particularly those in heavy demand, may be 'mirrored' or copied to more than one site. OPTIONS FOR PUBLIC ACCESS PL104-53 directed the Library to examine issues regarding efficient ways to make legislative information available to the public and to submit its analysis to the committees for their consideration and possible action. The Library interprets this issue to center on the question of access to the public without charge. There are, as noted above, a number of commercial providers who make legislative information available to the public for a fee. Also as noted above, the proposals in this plan, if implemented, would improve the quality, accuracy, and timeliness of core congressional legislative information available to the public through these commercial sources. The GPO ACCESS system and the LOC THOMAS system, on the other hand, are examples of congressional mandates to make legislative information accessible to the public without direct charge. The remainder of this discussion will focus on the issue of free access to the public. There are three fundamental questions inherent in the issue of public access to Congress' legislative information system: 1) Should the public have access to the same public legislative data? 2) Should the public have access to the same technical system? and 3) Should the public have access to this information through more than one congressionally supported agency or office? 1. Access to the same core legislative data? The answer must be yes. A fundamental tenet of democracy is the importance of an informed electorate, and the Congress has passed a number of laws to ensure that the public has access to government information. With the recent advances of technology that affect how government information is prepared and distributed, however, it is important to note the implications of this principle for the proposed new legislative information system. A. Implicit in this principle is the need to ensure that the legislative information available to the public is as accurate and as timely as the information available to the Congress through this system. Technically this goal is achievable. The obvious qualification inherent in this statement is that if the information is not in the system it is not accessible either to the Congress or to the public. Committee chairs, for example, can choose not to make some information regarding committee actions available to the system. Despite the improved access that the public now has to legislative information through GPO ACCESS and LOC THOMAS, the most persistent criticism by some members of the public has concerned what is NOT YET available in these systems rather than what is. The implementation of the recommendations in this plan should address many of these concerns, but it may never be possible to address all of them. B. Restricted and licensed information would be excluded from public access unless the contract specified otherwise. As noted earlier, many Members and staff find it valuable to subscribe to commercial sources of information in order to carry out their work. This plan suggests a number of ways in which that licensed information could be linked to the proposed congressional legislative information system so that it could be more easily accessible to offices which subscribed to it. Such information could be made available to members of the public who chose to purchase it as well, but it is not reasonable to assume that it could be made available for free. Similarly, restricted material, such as CRS Reports, which CRS is prohibited from disseminating to the public, or other internal, confidential materials would be excluded from public access. 2. Access to the same technical system? If the answer to question 1 above is yes (i.e., the public should have access to the same core legislative data on a basis that ensures the same accuracy and timeliness), then the answer to this question is also yes. The simplest way to ensure the same access to legislative information is to provide access to the same system. The alternative of providing the same data on a different system raises some basic difficulties. For example, what if the separate public system did not have the same capabilities? The congressional system, for instance, will allow the user to link directly from information in the status field (committee reported measure to the House) to related information (the text of the committee report). If the public system did not have such a feature, there would be legitimate criticism that the public was not getting access to the same information. In today's technology, system data and system capabilities are inextricably linked. If the public system has to have the same features, then who would build it and who would pay for it? Once the issue of funding a separate system is raised, the option of allowing access to the same system becomes preferable. This is not to suggest that there would be no additional costs to giving the public access to the same system. There would have to be continuing upgrades to servers and communications systems to ensure adequate response time. It might even be necessary to limit the number of public access ports so that congressional users could have reliable access when needed for the conduct of business. Or, it might be necessary to have a separate but mirrored servers to support the Congress and the public. However, with the continuing improvements in the power of distributing processing and in security systems, the cost of providing access to the same system, even on separate servers, would be lower than the cost of building an entirely separate system. 3. More than one congressionally supported provider of access to the public? In the most specific instance, the question is whether the GPO ACCESS system and the THOMAS system should both continue to provide public access to legislative information. The broader question is whether Congress should allow multiple access points for the public now or in the future.10 In this context it is important to note the following: the implementation of this plan would eliminate duplication of effort within the Legislative Branch in the creation, collection, preparation, and distribution of legislative information. The basic issue then becomes whether there should be multiple points for the public to access this information. With respect to this issue, the Library offers the following analysis. 1. Both the Library's THOMAS system and the GPO ACCESS system are needed for each of these agencies to be able to accomplish their missions. GPO is charged with making government information available, of which legislative information is a small, albeit important, component. The public would reasonably expect to find or be able to get to legislative information through GPO ACCESS. Similarly, the Library, in serving both the Congress and the nation, must make its collections, which include legislative information, as accessible as possible. This goal is at the heart of the Library's national digital library effort. Even if the GPO and the Library had not already been directed by Congress to build the ACCESS and THOMAS systems, they would have to build them today. 2. The integration of the two systems as proposed in this plan would reduce duplication of effort. Equally important, integration will create a better system by drawing on the best elements of both systems, and on the special expertise of each institution. GPO and the Library each have decades of experience in their respective fields. The accumulated knowledge of the Library and the GPO are complementary for the task at hand. Neither can do as good a job alone as they can do together. 3. ACCESS and THOMAS have both been well received and are heavily used by the public. They both have wide name recognition with the public. There is some confusion about overlap, but if data integration can be achieved, minor modification of the THOMAS and ACCESS interfaces could help eliminate this confusion without either system having to lose its purpose, its public identity, or its appeal. 4. In the future, other congressional organizations may wish to provide access to the data in the legislative information system without duplicating it. (For example, Members who develop their own World Wide Web HomePages). Under this plan, that objective could be accomplished without duplication of effort and with a guarantee that the information retrieved would be the same regardless of the window used to access it. In its previous study on duplication, the Library outlined other options for eliminating one or more of the gateways to public legislative information. Since that time, however, the growth in the public use of both GPO ACCESS and THOMAS, and the potential improvements that would result from integrating the systems as outlined in this plan suggest instead that the option of multiple access points to a coordinated, non-duplicative system would be preferable. In summary, the Library recommends that GPO and the Library integrate their systems as described in the section entitled DATA COORDINATION AND PREPARATION. Additionally, the Library recommends that: 1. GPO and LOC modify their current HomePages to inform users that the systems are integrated and they will get the same data regardless of where they enter the system. 2. LOC and GPO inform other service providers, and especially the library community, which provides the access points for many public users, about the integration of the systems. 3. The Working Group should consider whether to design a set of coordinated interface(s) to which both THOMAS and GPO ACCESS can point so as to improve access to legislative information -- perhaps with the network address of www.congress.gov. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE The architecture of the system will in most ways be decided or dictated by the users' requirements, available resources, and best practices and standards. Where multiple architectural systems solutions are available, it will be of critical importance to ensure adequate representation from each agency, to facilitate detailed technical discussion, and, most important, to arbitrate disputes and make authoritative and final decisions. The Committee on House Oversight has recently completed an information systems plan which provides a useful statement about the technical environment and direction of the House, which will be a key guideline, along with HIR standards and procedures, for integration of the legislative information system in the House. The Senate Rules and Administration committee has recently begun a similar effort at technical planning, which, along with Senate Computer Center standards and procedures, will guide implementation in the Senate. An essential accomplishment of the Working Group must be the development of a system architecture which will continue to evolve toward common technology during the rest of the decade. At the outset each agency will bring its own technology specific architecture and its near-term technology plans to the Working Group. This plan requires an open systems architecture so that the diverse technologies already in use or being procured can be coupled in such a manner that they communicate with each other while still allowing each agency to capitalize on its own current technology and staff skills. It is critical that this level of openness be provided at the beginning so each agency can assume an appropriate role in the development of a future shared system architecture. Thus, the details of the system architecture components noted below will be determined from the Working Group sessions. In time, as new technology is phased in and legacy systems are replaced, the system architecture choices will become more unified and will fulfill the goal of reaching a common system architecture across agencies. Desktop Standards While it will take some time for all congressional offices to acquire the technology needed to support a modern legislative information system, this is an excellent time for Hill-wide coordination. All organizations are moving toward common standards and open architectures for both the desktop as well as for large systems. Ongoing coordination and communication among organizations would help ensure that this important trend continues. Equally important will be the willingness of Member offices and committees to agree to recommended standards. A range of options is important in the congressional environment, but a wide range of variations and a large number of waivers impedes the ability of the entire Congress to operate as cost-effectively as possible. Telecommunications As with data standards, the Working Group will involve the appropriate technologists from each of the Legislative Branch agencies to establish clear guidelines and documentation of telecommunications standards to be met in design and implementation of the system(s). A major goal of the Working Group will be to leverage investments already made in telecommunications infrastructure within the legislative branch agencies in recent years. While technically complex, issues pertaining to telecommunications standards are fairly well understood on Capitol Hill, and it is believed likely that the agencies will be able to build on the cooperative work that is already under way to facilitate implementation of the system. The networking capability already in place, which connects different types of networks used in each agency, has proven to be a coherent logical network because of the telecommunications standards being followed by all agencies. This system will be enhanced in future years as the volume of data traffic increases and as newer technologies become available. Estimates of the volume of data traffic and its frequency, decisions on redundancy for backup configuration support among the agencies, and physical infrastructure requirements will be determined when laying out the plan for interconnectivity of the agencies. Servers It is expected that modern client-server architecture and sophisticated storage management systems will provide the base technology for development of the system. Each of the legislative agencies is now involved, to varying degrees, in development of systems of this kind. How we configure these servers (i.e. a central server site, distributed servers, mirrored servers in multiple locations, or some other solution or combination) will depend on the requirements, both for services and security. Modern server and storage management equipment and techniques, capable of meeting the requirements to be defined, are under study and consideration. Major issues will include data retention requirements, access requirements, environmental requirements, availability, reliability, and cost. Equally important considerations will be the current staff skills and the legacy systems each agency is porting to the client server environment. Since physical location of information in such a networked environment becomes less important than access to it, agencies may host each others need for storage and serve as 'hot' backup sites in emergencies. Specifications for servers will include a global system view where the networks across agencies are viewed as a whole and all servers are seen as potentially accessible. The technology capabilities will help to shift the system architecture focus from individual agency views to a shared global one, and will emphasize the value gained from a more common system architecture. Important considerations are the operating system versions in use, data storage standards for directories and file structure, storage media and strategy for management of files by frequency of use. The Working Group will need to relate current practices to a global view of servers in order to project future technology decisions and directions. Security The Working Group must and will be sensitive to the implications that modern system and telecommunications technologies pose for securing the confidentiality and reliability of the information and communications shared between agencies of the legislative branch, as well as with the public. In fact, numerous discussions among CapNet implementation teams have focused on the differences among the agencies both in terms of policies and missions as related to security issues. Despite these differences, it is essential that users be assured that they are receiving data that is verified and authenticated. Differences in the missions of the legislative branch organizations make issues of security particularly thorny. The degree of security required can vary among agencies. It will be necessary that the Working Group establish a subteam to work cooperatively to ensure that each design solution considered will satisfy the variety of security and access concerns that exist within the branch. The system will be designed and implemented with consideration of the unique security requirements of each Legislative Branch agency, and with consideration given to the difference in their missions. Ultimately, each legislative agency must be confident that it can protect itself to whatever level the organization requires, based on the inevitable tradeoffs between services offered and resources required. The Working Group will examine the alternatives and find reasonable compromises and/or solutions to the level of security required of the system and the institutions. SUGGESTED SCHEDULE The outline below suggests the basic tasks that must be undertaken each year. Completion of the system proposed in this plan and its general availability in all congressional offices will require several years. The schedule for the project will be significantly affected by the time required to 1) upgrade the workstations in House and Senate offices 2) develop and implement new data coding standards and procedures 3) develop all the required capabilities in the new retrieval system and 4) provide adequate security. Nevertheless, the nature of technology in use within the House and Senate and the support agencies allows for an iterative development cycle that permits the release of new features and files as soon as they are available. This means that congressional staff will be able to use each new capability as early as possible, assuming they have a workstation that will support the system, without having to wait for the entire plan to be complete. 1996 1. Charter and establish the Working Group. 2. Share and review current development plans. 3. Establish priorities for 1996. 4. Gather user requirements. 5. Establish data standards. 6. Establish guidelines for data coordination and system integration. 7. Approve specific development work. 8. Place emphasis on rapid prototyping, iterative development, early production use and testing. 1997 1. Collect user feedback. 2. Establish priorities for 1997 3. Continue development work. 4. Establish integrated, synchronized databases. 5. Begin retirement of legacy systems. 1998 1. Continue retirement of legacy systems. 2. Collect user feedback. 3. Establish priorities for 1998 4. Continue development. At this point items 2-4 repeat themselves. ESTIMATED COSTS AND STAFFING REQUIREMENTS At this stage of planning for the legislative information system, it is difficult to project costs with any precision. The full scope of this effort first has to be approved or further defined by the committees. The Working Group, supported by the Senior Technical Team, will then have to develop the plan in more detail with time frames for the various phases agreed upon. This effort will obviously be multi-phased over several years. The staff resources available to all of the Legislative Branch organizations that will be tasked to build this system are clearly a critical issue. For this plan, the Library has assumed that the system will have to built within existing resources approved by Congress. The time frame for completion of specific elements of the system will therefore have to be adjusted based upon the staff and financial resources available. Equally important, participating organizations will have to be able to manage their resources to allow them to fulfill their other mandated and priority mission functions. It will be a significant challenge to build the proposed legislative information system with existing, and probably declining resources. With the explosive growth of information technology throughout the country, the demand for staff with the technical skills needed to build the new legislative information system for Congress has become highly competitive. These market pressures are exacerbated by the fact that some of Congress' most experienced and skilled technical staff will be eligible for retirement during the time this system is being developed. While contracting for technical support is one option, the cost of such contracting is usually higher during the near term, especially because the skills needed are in such high demand, and will almost certainly be higher for the period when the system will be built. These forces make it especially important that Congress' technical groups be able to retain their skilled staff. In addition, these staffing constraints underscore the importance of a collaborative effort to create the system. It will take an enormous effort, and it will require the experience and special talents of all of the Legislative Branch agencies working together. With respect to the Library, it should be pointed out that it is redesigning its text-based information systems for its own purposes which include enhancing support of CRS in their role in serving Congress. In undertaking to support a broader range of Congressional requirements, the Library will be leveraging its own efforts. To minimize costs, the strategy is to use shared technology whenever possible. For example, the work being done for the National Digital Library program, the replacement of SCORPIO, and the Global Legal Information Network will be based on the same technology strategy, e.g. open systems, client server, the Inquery Search Engine, Web Browsers, and the Internet. We would expect that this technology approach would be compatible with the approach of other appropriate Legislative Branch participants. NEXT STEPS As noted in the Introduction, it is important to begin the process of coordinating the separate system initiatives under way within the Legislative Branch as soon as possible. Otherwise, this rare opportunity for significantly reducing duplication of effort will be lost. The committees may well wish to obtain additional comments on this plan from other offices and agencies of the legislature and from commercial vendors through an invitation for comment or through a hearing. These additional comments will undoubtedly prove useful in considering this plan. Timing is also important, however, both to continue progress and to ensure effective coordination of effort. The Library therefore recommends that the committees determine whether they wish to approve and implement this plan in its current or in a modified form by the end of the current fiscal year. APPENDIX A: HOUSE PLANS (Information submitted by HIR) Plans for Retirement of MIN and ISIS In fulfilling the Committee's mandate to retire MIN and ISIS by porting the data and functionality to a World Wide Web browser environment, H.I.R. will leverage its investment in these systems. H.I.R. is currently working on an overall strategy to retire MIN and ISIS services and identify migration paths to new services. The strategy involves developing and delivering services in an incremental effort, over the coming year. H.I.R. has already developed a pilot Web-based access to all of its Newswire and Periodical services. Additionally, a House Votes service has been developed and linked with extensive Bill information. The House Votes service accesses H.I.R. data sources and is linked with the Congressional Record and Full Text of Legislation in the Library of Congress THOMAS Web system. H.I.R. will continue to migrate MIN and ISIS services which can be quickly and effectively implemented via the Web. These services may not be the final answer, and as new efforts come on line, these services would merge with the new ones, or be entirely replaced by the new ones if appropriate. H.I.R. is taking this approach, because it can immediately meet the Committee on House Oversight mandates. The CyberCongress At the start of the 104th Congress, a vision was established for a CyberCongress - a shift to a new third wave paradigm built on communication, networking, and computing technologies. The essence of the vision is to remove restrictions of time and space for Members, committees and staff allowing them the flexibility to perform their work at the best time and best place. At the same time and using the same technologies, timely access to House information and activities would be available. This vision manifests itself in three areas: legislative process, constituent participation, and staff support. Key elements are: Legislative Process - Focused, more productive Legislative Branch information research programs, for example: - Time-sensitive legislative information such as amendment text, text of rules, and reports accompanying bills will be made accessible almost immediately. - The World Wide Web "hypertext" model will be applied to legislative data allowing Members to easily navigate and drill down to the information they need. - Enhanced Communication among Members and staff - office, district and home, for example: - Universal in-boxes can be implemented allowing access to voice, E-Mail and fax messages from any location or device. - Workstations with built-in video- conferencing capabilities will allow Members to meet with each other, with constituents, and with staff; in Washington, at district offices and at home or remote locations when necessary. - Electronic decision support systems for Members, committees and staff, for example: - Whip counts can be taken quickly and completely using messaging-based groupware products, two-way pagers and other devices available now. - Electronic decision support facilities for committee 'brainstorming' sessions. Constituent Participation - Relocation of work and staff to the district, closer to the constituents. - Convenient public access to the House via the Internet. - Constituent participation through E-Mail, Home Pages, and electronic town meetings and surveys combining the Internet and C- SPAN in unique ways and with minimal effort. Staff Support - Tracking of events, initiatives, commitments and staff assignments. - Interactive multi-media based legislative and administrative training, and education at the time and place that meets the individual's needs, for example: - New staffers will receive an individual multimedia training package tailored to their job and information requirements for use as both a tutorial and a reference. - Paperless, workflow-directed office procedures, e.g., vouchers, service requests, even constituent correspondence, for example: - Payroll transactions will be initiated electronically, authorized by "electronic signatures" and delivered, processed, and confirmed very rapidly via workflow technology. H.I.R. is taking an aggressive approach to achieving the objectives defined for the CyberCongress. As part of this effort, H.I.R has taken actions to improve the technology infrastructure, worked to help implement the new Equipment Purchase Guidelines, and assisted the Computer and Information Systems Working Group in the evaluation and recommendation of a House messaging system. One important aspect of a new Congressional Legislative Information System is the necessary technical infrastructure to support the demands and desired capabilities of the system. H.I.R. is involved in a number of initiatives to improve the technology infrastructure of the House. The Committee on Appropriations has authorized funds to upgrade the House communications infrastructure. This will involve updating the campus wiring plan, upgrading the telecommunications hardware, expanding the remote access capability, and enhancing the equipment to support the data communications environment. These actions are necessary to sustain the expected growth in the use of existing voice and data communications facilities and complex network applications. Implementation of these projects has begun and will continue through the next two years. These funds also provide a wide area data communication line in one district office of every Member. At the same time, the Committee on Appropriations has made funds available for the procurement of desk top hardware to improve the operations of administrative and support offices of the CAO and to establish a uniform platform for implementing paperless financial and administrative operations. This funding will also provide one personal computer for each House office to assure that no office is restricted in its access to these improved services. Deployment of the systems has begun in H.I.R. and other CAO offices, with efforts by H.I.R. to standardize the workstations, servers, printers, and software. Deployment of the personal computers for each House office will begin in March, 1996, and proceed throughout the summer. While offices will be able to utilize these computers for multiple functions, the primary use of these computers will be for research, administrative, and financial services being implemented by H.I.R. and the Committee on House Oversight. H.I.R. staff is working with the Committee on House Oversight and Focus groups of House staff to select and prioritize applications. Also, as part of improving the infrastructure and controlling the costs of technical support, on May 10, 1995, the Committee on House Oversight passed the Guidelines for the Purchase of Software, Computers, and Related Equipment. These guidelines provide direction to House offices for obtaining not only office automation products but technical support services as well. The Guidelines define the role of H.I.R. as technical consultant to House offices and places new commitments on H.I.R. for identifying requirements for hardware and software purchases. H.I.R. worked closely with the Committee on House Oversight, the Office of Procurement and Purchasing, House offices and vendors to develop procedures and practices to implement the Guidelines on October 1, 1995. Another key component of modern information systems is messaging services. H.I.R. participated with the Committee on House Oversight's Computer and Information Systems Working Group in evaluating messaging products for potential use by the House. After an extensive process that included negotiation with House staff and vendors, the Group recommended that the House proceed with a "Proof of Concept" test period for Microsoft Exchange. On November 15, 1995 the Committee on House Oversight approved this proposal. The test period will take approximately 4 months, and if successful, the House will be able to operate a single messaging service that offers the foundation for development of other enterprise-wide capabilities. The Proof of Concept plan is a top priority for H.I.R. and will draw upon resources throughout the organization as well as other House offices. The test period will evaluate technical capabilities, establish design and implementation parameters, and identify a House- wide training program. Full deployment of this service is scheduled for completion by fourth quarter 1996. Once implemented, this service will provide the medium through which offices can easily exchange not only messages with attached and/or embedded documents, but also fax messages, telephone messages, scheduling information, news bulletins, administrative forms, and even conference and discussion information. With the introduction of new technology and systems and with the high turnover rate of staff in House offices, regardless how easy to use or learn a system is, there is a large need for training. H.I.R. believes this is a critical element of our user support plan, and is working to identify and deliver training services beyond the traditional classroom instruction approach. H.I.R. is building a strategic training plan that will incorporate multi-media and distance learning elements. H.I.R.'s goal is to offer a variety of training media that is timely and meets the needs of both Members and staff. APPENDIX B: EXAMPLE OF BILL FROM GPO ACCESS APPENDIX C: EXAMPLES OF ANNOTATED BILLS As They Might Appear on the New Legislative Information System APPENDIX D: AMENDMENTS Floor Amendments Floor amendments are covered as separate records in three of the current systems on the Hill (House, Senate, and Library) and in the various commercial systems that include legislative information (Congressional Quarterly Washington Alert, Legi-Slate, and NEXIS/LEXIS). Floor amendment coverage in the new legislative information system should continue some of the unique features of the current Hill systems and expand on the current material by: (1) providing enhanced amendment information; (2) establishing links to related documents; (3) continuing to provide amendment records as separate entities and as part of the larger bill status information; and (4) continuing the capacity to generate numerical totals. (1) Enhanced Amendment Information Amendment information should include amendment number (with a permanent sequential numbering system for both the House and the Senate), text, an augmented description, popular title(s), status information, and sponsor/cosponsor information. The list of recommendations below provides more information on each of these elements. Establish a permanent sequential numbering system for House amendments. This would be similar to the Senate system, so that every amendment has a unique, permanent number. Identifying House amendments and locating information on them is complicated because amendments are assigned a temporary number in relationship to a bill. This temporary number bears no relation to the computer- generated amendment number subsequently used in SCORPIO, HIR, etc. Provide the text of the amendment (including amendments in the nature of a substitute). If the amendment is revised, provide the text of the original and the revised amendment(s). Provide links between the original amendment and any revised versions. Also provide links to Congressional Record page cites for these texts. Add the Daily Digest description of the amendment or another value-added description (for comprehension/augmented retrieval). Example of Value Added Descriptions to an Amendment Text (H. Amdt. 274 to H.R. 2492 in the 102nd Congress)Text of amendment (from the Congressional Record, 7-24-91, p. H5790): Amendment offered by Mr. Burton of Indiana: Page 25, beginning line 10, strike ", together with $1,000,000," and all that follows through line 14 and insert a period.Daily Digest description of amendment:The Burton of Indiana amendment that sought to delete $1 million in appropriations for the Urban Highway Corridor and Bicycle Transportation Demonstration Project.Other value-added description of amendment (based on information given in Rep. Burton's floor statement about the amendment):Burton (Indiana) amendment offered in Committee of the Whole. To delete $1 for a bicycle path in Macomb County, Michigan (part of the Urban Highway Corridor and Bicycle Transportation Demonstration Project).Note: H. Amdt. 274 is the computer-generated amendment number for this Burton amendment but the number 274 is not specified in the Congressional Record in relation to the amendment. As noted above, this complicates searching for information on amendments. Add popular amendment titles (titles frequently used to refer to the legislation, especially in the press) to aid in identifying specific amendments. Example: The popular title of Senate amendment 2280 to H.R. 4 in the 104th Congress is noted in SCORPIO as the Welfare Reform bill. This helps to clarify the official amendment purpose "Of a perfecting nature." This type of information is currently compiled by the Senate Library and CRS and added to SCORPIO by CRS. Include status information on amendments with Congressional Record page cites. The CRS Bill Status Committee, an in-house working group, recommended the following amendment status steps; amendments are PROPOSED11, OFFERED12, CONSIDERED, AGREED TO, REJECTED, TABLED, WITHDRAWN, FELL ON POINT OF ORDER. Provide links to Congressional Record pages containing the transcript of these actions, including direct links to vote results. Examples of Amendment Status Information7-24-91 BURTON (R- Indiana) amendment #274 to H.R. 2942 offered in Committee of the Whole. To delete $1 million for a bicycle path in Macomb County, Michigan (part of the Urban Highway Corridor and Bicycle Transportation Demonstration Project). Text of amendment. (CR H5790)7-24-91 BURTON (R-Indiana) amendment #274 considered in Committee of the Whole. (CR H5790-H5792) 7-24-91 BURTON (R-Indiana) amendment #274 rejected in Committee of the Whole. Failed by voice vote. (CR H5792)3-11-93 NICKLES (R-Oklahoma) amendment #80 to S. 460 offered in Senate. To delay enactment until one year after appropriations have been authorized to pay the state's costs of implementing the act. Text of amendment. (CR S2750-S2751)3-11-93 NICKLES (R-Oklahoma) amendment #80 considered in Senate. (CR S2750-S2763) 3-11-93 NICKLES (R-Oklahoma) amendment #80 tabled in Senate. Senate vote 31 (53-43). (CR S2763)(2) Links to Related Documents There should be links between all related documents or sections of documents. Some examples would include: Links between amendments and the bills/sections of bills they would amend. Links between original amendments and any revised versions. Links between first degree and second degree amendments and other procedurally related amendments. Links between amendment records and Congressional Record pages containing the text, debates, votes, etc. on that amendment. Links between amendments and CRS reports/sections of reports about that amendment. (3) Amendment Records as Separate Entities and as Part of Bill Status SCORPIO currently provides amendment records as separate entities and as part of the bill status section of the bill record13. The commercial legislative databases do not treat amendments as separate entities but note amendment information only as part of the bill status information. This makes it harder to provide complete information about the discrete amendment (for example, where action on the amendment spans several days and is interrupted by other actions) or to generate the type of numerical totals described below. The recommended situation is to have full amendment status information (with appropriate links to the text of the amendment and to other documents) in both the amendment record and the bill status record. (4) The Capacity to Generate Numerical Totals SCORPIO currently provides the capacity to generate numerical totals by browsing an appropriate entry in the alphabetical index to the Bill Digest file. This makes it possible, for example, to view the total number of House amendments proposed in the current and previous Congresses (without generating a list of all the amendments and counting them). This same capacity is recommended for the new legislative information system and would be used to answer questions like: The number of amendments sponsored by a Member. The number of amendments that passed on the Senate floor during the first session of the 104th Congress and breakdowns by voice vote, unanimous consent, or recorded vote. The number of amendments in the nature of substitutes that passed the House in the 103rd Congress. Committee Amendments Amendments at the committee and subcommittee level should be covered in the legislative information system. Current systems on the Hill note in their bill status information that mark-up sessions have been held but do not provide details of what happened or the amendments offered. Congressional Quarterly (CQ) and Legi-Slate both write summaries of markups14 that include detailed descriptions of amendments offered, the final status of the amendment, and vote information. In addition, Legi-Slate weaves Member statements (generally brief sound-bite quotations) about the bill throughout their markup summary. Example of Amendment Information in the CQ and Legi-Slate Summaries of a May 18, 1995 Markup of H.R. 1530, the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 1996CQ: The full (House National Security) Committee (Chairman Spence, R-S.C.) approved legislation (HR1530) that would reauthorize programs at the Department of Defense and related agencies for fiscal year 1996. ... Committee Vote: Authorization/Abortion. Delauro, D-Conn, amendment to strike provisions prohibiting privately-funded abortions for members of the armed forces at overseas military hospitals. Rejected 20-32; R 3-25; D 17-7, May 24, 1995. [Individual Yeas, Nays, Not Voting records follow]15Legi-Slate: The House National Security Committee today reported the bill [HR 1530] authorizing funds for the Defense Department for fiscal 1996. ... Delauro offered an amendment that would have overturned a provision prohibiting abortions from being performed at military installations abroad. She said the debate over the amendment was "simply over the right to choose." "How can you say to someone you have the right to go fight for our country but when you're offshore you won't have the same rights" as in the U.S.," Pat Schroeder (D-CO) added. Although the amendment stipulated that taxpayer money would not be used to pay for overseas abortions, Dornan said using the country's military facilities to do the abortions still involved taxpayer funds. The amendment was defeated in a 20-32 roll call vote. Basic committee amendment information that could be supplied by the committees/subcommittees themselves for the new legislative information system would include amendment sponsor, description, status, and vote information. Full transcripts of all markups would be helpful but would be time- consuming for committee staff to compile. Supplementary use of CQ or Legi-Slate markup summaries (and the full text transcripts of selected markups compiled by Federal News Service) could be substituted, where congressional offices wish to purchase them. 1DUPLICATION AMONG LEGISLATIVE TRACKING SYSTEMS: FINDINGS, A Report Prepared by the Library of Congress for the House and Senate Appropriations Committees Pursuant to House Report 103-517 and House Report 104-141, July 14, 1995. 2The Library automated the production of its bill digest files in 1969, made them available in the Library's public reading rooms in 1975, and, with the approval of the Joint Committee on the Library, made them more broadly available to the public through national communications networks in 1990. 3 Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government. Opportunities for the Use of Information Resources and Advanced Technologies in Congress: A Study for the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress. A consultant report prepared by Robert Lee Chartrand and Robert C. Ketcham. New York: The Carnegie Corporation, 1993, p. 48. 4SGML is currently the most sophisticated data standard available for the purposes of the legislative information system. Other standards that are in wide use and could continue to serve on an interim basis include ASCII and HTML. 5GPO currently does this by providing what is referred to as a portable document format (PDF) version of bills, the Congressional Record, and other congressional documents. The specific technology used to do this is not as important (the technology will continue to evolve) as the fact that the GPO is able to do this efficiently as a result of its production operations for preparing and printing bills, the Record, etc. 6These explanations would be created through a modification of the procedures used to prepare digests of bills, a task which CRS is already required to perform. (see 49 STAT 471; 2 USC 166 (d)(6)) 7The title of the working document is WHERE TO FIND INFORMATION IN CONGRESSIONAL DATA SYSTEMS. This is a working document updated annually (June 1995 was the most recent update). It is not a formal CRS product. 8An example from the experience of the Congressional Research Service is illustrative. For a number of years during the 1980s, the Service purchased a database of abstracts of the Congressional Record, before the full text of the Record was available online. The index terms used in this file were based in part on the requirements of CRS and in part on the requirements of other purchasers, often lobbyists, whose views of what was important in the Record was not always as objective and as comprehensive as CRS required. 9This comparison is not meant to imply that only one vendor should be selected to provide this type of information. The ranges of services in the marketplace for legislative information is quite different and usefully diverse compared to the range of services provided on the long distance market. 10This question relates only to congressionally supported systems, not to commercial or other private companies that may choose to provide services to the public. 11PROPOSED would be used when the amendment is first submitted by a Member. Links would be to the "Amendments Submitted" (Senate) and "Amendments" (House) sections of the Congressional Record. 12OFFERED would be used when the amendment is offered on the floor. 13Not all SCORPIO amendment information is currently present in both amendment and bill records, primarily because the information comes from separate sources and has never been successfully amalgamated. For example, Congressional Record page cites for the text of an amendment are currently only part of the bill record and the amendment description indicating the effect of the amendment is currently only part of the amendment record. 14Federal News Service also completely transcribes selected newsworthy markups. States News Service compiles markup summaries which are available on NEXIS and elsewhere, but these are much less detailed than those written by CQ and Legi-Slate. States News Service also seems to be missing many markups, especially recently. 15These individual Member voting records are also available in Legi-Slate in a separate Votes file. ??