counting information needed by offices. Ultimately, this data enables the Secretary to provide oversight information to the Rules Committee and the Joint Committee on Printing.

The Service Center

In September 1995, at the direction of the Rules Committee and the Joint Committee on Printing, the Secretary's Office undertook responsibility for management of the GPO/JCP Service Center. The Service Center (now located in SH-B07) is staffed by experienced GPO printing specialists who provide Senate committees and the Secretary's Office with complete publishing services for hearings, committee prints, and preparation of the Congressional Record. Services include keyboarding, proofreading, scanning and composition.

As a result of these services, committees have been able to decrease or eliminate overtime costs associated with the preparation of hearings, and can now publish in a more timely manner. Committees may also realize additional savings because the work done in the Service Center is chargeable to the committee as performed (as opposed to having a full-time staff member or detailee assigned to printing functions). Finally, by providing the ability to process what would otherwise be backlogged work, use of the Service Center may preclude the need to assign additional staff or GPO detailees to publishing duties.

During 1997, the Service Center assisted 19 committees with the preparation of 263 hearings, committee prints, and Senate documents, including the Tributes to Senator Thurmond and the Tributes to Senator Tsongas. This represents threequarters of all Senate committees which have printing responsibilities. From another perspective, the Service Center has assisted with 71 percent of the publications printed in 1997.

Congressional Record

In 1997, 13,089 pages were printed for the Senate and 14,203 pages were printed for the House (including Digest, Extension of Remarks, Proceedings, and Miscellaneous pages) for a total of 27,292 pages. This is a total of 867 fewer pages than in 1996. There were a total of 1.4 million copies printed and distributed in 1997, including 462,060 to the Senate, 319,115 to the House, and 662,825 to Executive Branch agencies and the public.

The total approximate cost to produce the Record was $12.8 million. Based upon the percent of content and distribution quantities, the proportional Senate cost was $5.9 million, the House was $6.4 million, and all other recipients $532,000. Per copy cost was about $8.86 (Record costs are based upon GPO estimated appropriation costs, not including costs to produce the Record Index or microfiche copies).

During 1996, GPO developed separate costs for Record pages which were telecommunicated to GPO and for those pages keyboarded at GPO. The cost of telecommunicated pages is $408. Keyboarded pages are $448. These costs apply to all categories of pages (Proceedings, Digest, etc.) for the House and Senate portions of the Record. The number of telecommunicated pages is currently available to us, and we are working with the Joint Committee on Printing to also obtain keyboarded page information. Once available, the combined figures will enable the Senate, House, and GPO to pinpoint Record expenses and areas in need of further automation and expense reduction.

Legislation

The office captures data regarding all printed versions of all measures considered in the Senate. Beginning this Congress, all versions and distribution of House measures are included. For the sake of brevity, the following information is summarized by major category of legislation, such as Senate bills. Each category includes the successive versions in which all measures were printed during their legislative cycle (such as a Senate bill which is introduced, reported, and printed as passed), including star prints. Information relating to specific versions of all legislation is available, as is the additional number of copies ordered printed for the Document Room (see Docutech Project) and committees.

The following table is for the first session of the 105th Congress. The "Number of Pages" column refers to the number of original pages, including blanks, within the categories listed. The total number of printed pages is not shown, but is available. Costs are rounded to the nearest hundred, and are based upon estimated GPO appropriation rates.

The Document Services section coordinates requests for printed legislation and miscellaneous publications with other departments within the Secretary's Office, Senate committees, and the Government Printing Office, to ensure that the most current version of all material is available, and that sufficient quantities are in storage to meet projected demand.

The primary responsibility of this section is to provide services to the Senate. However, the section also serves the general public, the press, and government agencies. Requests for material are received at the walk-in counter, through the mail, by fax, and via recorded messages. Recorded and fax messages operate twentyfour hours a day, and are filled the same day they are received, as are mail requests.

Summary of Annual Statistics

The following chart is a summary of activities and trends in Document Services from 1987 through 1997.

It is noted that the decreases for 1997 result from the availability of legislation on the Internet.

Docutech Project

The following tables summarize quantities and costs associated with on-demand (supplemental) printing of bills and reports during the second session of the 104th Congress, and the first session of the 105th Congress. The first table compares work printed at the request of Document Services during the last two years. The second and third tables indicate work printed for other government agencies by GPO in order to more fully employ the machine. Costs are based upon a charge of two cents per page.

The Office of Captioning Services provides real-time captioning of Senate floor proceedings for deaf and hard-of-hearing persons. The office also provides the unofficial transcripts of Senate floor proceedings to offices via the Senate Intranet.

Overview of Activity

Requests from Senate offices to provide additional services increased during 1997. We did not provide any additional services when compared to 1996.

We continue to depend on the Senate Library and increasingly on the Internet to verify information. We added to our reference collection and updated some existing reference materials in 1997.

Caption quality continues to be our number one priority. We conduct peer reviews on a weekly basis. The office average for accuracy was up slightly for 1997.

Technology Update

The Senate Recording Studio continues to refine a system that captures Office of Captioning Services captions and marks them with day/date/time and speaker information prior to storage in a database. This database can be searched by Senators and staff using key words. Once the text is located, a Senator's speech can be listened to on computers configured to handle audio events from a web page. Other enhancements to this service are anticipated during 1998.

Captioning Services' role in this project has been to identify phrases that trigger key events in the marking of the captions and reviewing the text for indexing errors. The technology used for real-time captioning is not WindowsTM compatible and needs to be updated or replaced. In addition, our current software is believed to not be year 2000 compliant.

ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICES

DISBURSING OFFICE

Front Counter-Administrative and Financial Services

The Front Counter is the main service area of all general Senate business and financial activity. It is the receiving point for most incoming expense vouchers, payroll actions, and employee benefits-related forms, and is the initial verification point to insure that paperwork received in the Disbursing Office conforms to all applicable Senate rules, regulations, and statutes. The Front Counter is the first line of service provided to Senate Members, officers, and employees. All new Senate employees (permanent and temporary) who will be working in the Capitol Hill Senate offices are administered the required oath of office and personnel affidavit and provided with verbal and written information regarding their pay and benefits. Authorization is certified to new employees for issuance of their Senate identification card. Cash advances are issued to Senate staff authorized for official Senate travel and travelers' checks are available for sale to assist the traveler. Numerous inquiries are handled daily, on subjects ranging from pay, benefits, taxes, Senate laws and regulations, in our commitment to provide the highest degree of customer service. Senate entities, in the course of their official duties, receive cash and checks as part of their daily business. The Front Counter maintains the Senate's internal accountability of funds used in daily operations. Reconciliation of such funds is executed on a daily basis. These funds are submitted through the front counter and become part of the Senate's accountability of federally appropriated funds and are then processed through the Senate's general ledger system.

Activities

The Front Counter administered oath and personnel affidavits to more than 3,200 new Senate staff, maintained brochures for 26 federal health insurance carriers and distributed approximately 3,000 brochures to staff during the annual FEHB open season, issued approximately 1,500 cash advances for official Senate travel and received more than 20,000 checks from Senate entities.

Payroll Section

The Payroll Section maintains the Human Resources Management System and is responsible for: processing, verifying and warehousing all payroll information submitted to the Disbursing Office by Senators for their personal staff, by Chairmen for their committee staff, and by other elected officials for their staff, issuing salary payments to the above employees, maintaining the Automated Clearing House (ACH) FEDLINE facilities for the normal transmittal of payroll deposits to the Federal Reserve, distributing the appropriate payroll expenditure and allowance reports to the individual offices, issuing the proper withholding and agency contributions reports to the Accounting Section and transmitting the proper Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) information to the National Finance Center (NFC) while maintaining earnings records for distribution to the Social Security Administration, and maintaining employees' taxable earnings records for their W-2 statements, which are also prepared by this section. The Payroll Section is also responsible for the payroll portion of the Report of the Secretary of the Senate.

Activities

January 1997 started with the processing of more than 2,200 open season changes. The Payroll Section processed all the forms in conjunction with the open seasons for Federal Employees' Health Benefits (FEHB), Combined Federal Campaign (CFC), and the Thrift Savings Program (TSP). The year's second TSP open season produced an additional 1,200 forms for processing during July and August 1997. During January 1997, 4,500 salary increases in conjunction with the 2.3 percent cost of living increase were also processed.

The U.S. Senate started participating in the National Directory of New Hires for the Federal Parent Locator Service, a project sponsored by the U.S. Department of

Health and Human Services.

Planning for the transfer of the U.S. Capitol Police payrolls from the U.S. Senate Human Resources Management system to the National Finance Center began in September.

The Payroll Supervisor attended the Southern Users' Integral Conference that was held in New Orleans, Louisiana. The basic function of the Users Conference was to prepare Integral users for the final move to year 2000 technology. Although this was a regional conference, 18 states and the District of Columbia attended.

Upgrade For Year 2000 Compliance

One effective method of handling year 2000 compliance would be to upgrade to Integral version 9.5.3. The length of the segments has doubled in size. This means an increase in processing speed and an increase in data being held within each segment. The programmers will have a definite game plan to follow. Version 9.5.2 has been Beta tested by a medical research center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. When Version 9.5.3 comes up, most of the problems found from the first two updates of 9.5 and the Beta testing will have been resolved. Our programmers will have the opportunity to review the problems of the Beta tests and the solutions used to correct the problems.

Future Activities

Payroll will continue with the upgrade to the 9.5 and year 2000 compliance. Payroll will also continue to work with the group of consultants to verify that we are continuing to move in the right direction for a Human Resources Management system. Once Payroll is year 2000 compliant and the FMIS is operational and can be upgraded to include the entire allowance system, then Payroll will be in the position to move to client server system and a biweekly payroll if applicable. Employee Benefits Section

The Employee Benefits Section's (EBS) primary responsibilities are administration of Senate employees' health and life insurance and retirement programs. The section's work includes research and verification of prior Senate or other federal service for new appointees. EBS prepares these forms for payroll input after they are returned and verifies the accuracy of the information when the Official Personnel Folder is received. Employment verifications for loans, the Bar, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Defense, and for outside insurance are