Lapas attēli
PDF
ePub

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.

[ocr errors][ocr errors]

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

« iepriekšējāTurpināt »