FOREWORD Title VIII of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (P.L. 93-344) amended the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970, and assigned to the Comptroller General certain responsibilities for helping the Congress obtain and use information. As part of its program for carrying out those responsibilities, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) is publishing the 1976 Congressional Sourcebook - the first edition of a series of directories reflecting an inventory of program-related information. The inventory is comprised primarily of information collected from executive branch agencies, and constitutes the basis for the Sourcebook publications. The current series of the Congressional Sourcebook encompasses three separate volumes. Each volume is an indexed directory and guide, addressing a different area of program-related information: (1) Recurring Reports to the Congress Congress on a recurring basis. (2) Federal Program Evaluations describes nearly 800 reports required of 89 executive branch agencies by the contains an inventory of approximately 1700 evaluation reports produced by and for 18 selected Federal agencies, including GAO evaluation reports that relate to the programs of those agencies. (3) Federal Information Sources and Systems describes approximately 1000 Federal sources and information systems maintained by 63 executive agencies, which contain fiscal, budgetary, and program-related data and information. Our purpose in publishing the Congressional Sourcebook series is to facilitate identification, acquisition, and compilation of relevant and reliable information which may be needed by the Congress in carrying out its oversight and budget control responsibilities. Accordingly, the GAO has established a continuing program to maintain a current inventory of recurring reports, evaluation studies, and fiscal, budgetary, and program-related information sources and systems. The inventory is being maintained on central computer files in such a manner as to render them transferrable to the Library of Congress for inclusion in the Congressional Research Service's SCORPIO information retrieval system, thus facilitating their use by the committees of both Houses of the Congress. In developing and maintaining such files, we aspire toward a capability which ultimately shall allow us to select independent budgetary, fiscal, and program data and relate them together to disclose different and perhaps new perspectives for a given program, issue, or activity. We recognize that the further development of the Congressional Sourcebook will depend in large measure on the continued collaboration of users among legislative and executive branch agencies, and we trust that it will be a useful resource to all. In this regard I invite your comments and suggestions on how these directories can be made more helpful in future editions. iii Reeser B. Stads Elmer B. Staats INTRODUCTION The General Accounting Office has produced this volume of the Congressional Sourcebook to assist the Congress in fostering and promoting the development of standardized information systems in the Federal agencies. With that objective in mind, Congress has directed the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, in cooperation with the Comptroller General, to develop, establish, and maintain for use by all Federal agencies, standardized data processing and information systems for fiscal, budgetary, and program-related data and information. This responsibility is set forth in Title VIII of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. Elaborating upon that responsibility, the Act also calls upon the Comptroller General to develop and maintain an up-to-date inventory and directory of sources and information systems containing such data and information. Purpose and Scope of this Directory This Directory, Federal Information Sources and Systems, represents our initial effort under these provisions of the new legislation. It is an indexed reference guide to over 1,000 Federal sources and information systems in 63 agencies, which contain budgetary, fiscal and program-related data. All the sources and systems cited in this volume were identified and selected from materials compiled in the first government-wide inventory of its kind. Initiated by a letter from the Comptroller General dated July 1, 1975 to 89 Federal departments and agencies, the inventory was conducted during the period from July through December 1975. The letter (Appendix) requested each agency to submit descriptions of their information systems and sources. Our plan for conducting the inventory, including the mail-out instructions for the agencies, was reviewed in cooperation with representatives from the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of the Treas. ury, and the Congressional Budget Office. The objective of our plan was to develop a comprehensive understanding of current Federal executive information capabilities: that is, to determine what information is available, how it is structured, how well it is organized into unique collections, which level within the agencies could be most responsive to our survey, and who are the working-level contacts within the agencies. Our staff followed up the mailing of survey materials with scheduled interviews at each agency site. Our guidelines to the agencies included the following definitions: the term, sources, was defined as including publications (e.g., catalogs, directories), activities, or organizations oriented to centralized processing and dissemination of information (e.g., libraries, clearinghouses, information centers, documentation centers); the phrase, information systems, was defined as including organized collections of procedures and data bases used to store, manipulate, and generate information for specific purposes and functions. Information Reliability The Directory is not exhaustive. The agencies that kept organized system inventories of their own were able to supply extensive identification and accompanying descriptive information and data. However, only five agencies of the 63 respondents were able to supply offthe-shelf materials. Many agencies found it necessary to compile their own inventories to satisfy our request. Working on the assumption that the agencies would find it more expedient responding to a rather unstructured survey of existing information materials, we conditioned our request only by the general requirement that their materials should be supplied in the form of system directories, manuals, catalogs, or summary listings of agency sources and systems. Consequently, many of the agency submissions were not directly comparable in terms of level of detail or comprehensiveness of content. Availability of Information The General Accounting Office does not maintain copies for distribution of source documents and informational materials cited in this Directory. Readers are advised to request such materials from the agency contact given in the citation entry. Questions or comments regarding the contents of this Directory should be addressed to: Program Analysis Division U.S. General Accounting Office USER'S GUIDE This Directory is designed to serve the reader as a handy desk reference to sources and information systems in the Federal executive branch. It contains two parts: a citation section, and an index section. Citation Section. A citation constitutes the complete record for each entry in the Directory. The citations are arranged in numerical sequence by executive agency. Each citation contains a number of information elements, as shown in the sample entry below. The information elements numbered in the sample are explained as follows: (1) Issuing Agency: The department, agency, board, commission or other governmental organization which maintains the system or issues the source document cited. (2) Accession Number: An 8-digit number which uniquely identifies each citation entry in numerical sequence. (3) Title: Denotes the title of either a source or an information system and its identifying acronym or initials. An asterisk indicates that the system or source is considered to be especially significant. (4) Budget Function/Subfunction: Indicates how the source or system is related to the Federal budget. Such indication is intended as a rough guide to function/subfunction categories identified in the FY 1976 Federal Budget. (5) Agency Contact: Indicates the point of contact within an agency for obtaining additional information about a citation entry. (6) Abstract: Describes or summarizes the objectives, information content, and outputs of the information system. (2 (3 4 5 6 SAMPLE ENTRY Department of Transportation -S01100-012 -1975 Automotive Data Base. -Budget Function/Subfunction: Other transportation (407). -Agency Contact: Bruce Allen, Principal Analyst, Management Information System. 426-1827. This data base is used to support quick-reaction studies for the Office of the Secretary's Automotive Fuel Efficiency Program. It contains 216 vehicle models both domestic and import. Each model is described by 50 attributes which include engine characteristics emission system, transmission, fuel economy, emission level, performance, price, production, etc. A matrix of 50 x 216 is generated and each automobile is analyzed by its unique characteristics in relation to others. Index Section. This section has three separate indexes, which are printed on a different colored paper for ease of reference. The indexes are described below as follows: (1) Subject Index, (2) Agency Index, and (3) Budget Function/Subfunction Index. (1) Subject Index: The subject index is derived from the titles and abstracts of each citation entry. This index allows the reader to search alphabetically for the keyword or phrase relating to his subject. If the keyword appears in the index, the associated system titles and accession numbers are listed below it. (2) Agency Index: The agency index alphabetically lists the names of departments, agencies, and other organizations responsible for operating or maintaining the system or source. The titles and accession numbers are listed below their respective issuing agencies. (3) Budget Function/Subfunction Index: The budget functional Index enables the reader to relate each system to the budget functional/subfunctional category by which Federal funds are classified in the FY 1976 Federal Budget. The system titles and accession numbers are listed beneath their respective functional categories. |