As you know, in the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970, the Congressional Research Service was directed to continue its support to members of Congress, reference and information support, and some research support. It was directed also to begin to give indepth policy analysis support to committees of Congress, and also to members, in-depth research and analysis support.

You will notice the climb in the amount of work. This chart is stated in staff years, not in number of requests. The climb in work from 1970 to the present is shown here; it has more than doubled.

POLICY ANALYSIS DEVELOPMENTS

In the policy analysis aspect, we have had since 1973 these developments: You see the tremendous development of policy analysis, and in-depth research for committees, growing from 1973, more than doubling in that time. The same thing happened for members of Congress; the amount of in-depth analysis and policy work almost doubled.

You will also notice that as of this year, 1977, this last year, the amount of staff years devoted to members, both in the policy analysis field and in the information and reference field, is just about equal now to that which is devoted to committees.

There are several other things that I would like to point out with this chart.

The ability to give in-depth policy analysis and research work to committees has not only greatly assisted committees of Congress in doing their work, but many of our products developed for committees by various innovative means have been utilized to come around and serve the members themselves. Issue briefs, for example, multiliths, materials that have been prepared for committees in their work, when those bills come to the floor or when they come to the attention of members and they need to study those bills, why then these products come around and serve the members.

So what I am trying to point out is this inner working in CRS to make the sum greater than the total of all of its parts.

CONSTITUENT WORK LEVEL

You will notice also that the amount of staff years in constituent work-there is always a question as to how much work the Congressional Research Service is doing for constituents-has stayed about level; in fact it has tapered off a little bit.

We feel our ability to serve constituents, assist constituents of Members of Congress, has also been enhanced by the policy analysis and research work and the material we have developed; whether the constituents are mayors of towns, members of the general assembly, or citizen constituents without portfolio, we think they too have been served. We think service to constituents is an important part of a member's portfolio and it is appropriate for the Congressional Research Service.

So I think this chart graphically gives you an idea of what has happened in the past 7 years since the passage of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970.

SPACE SAVED THROUGH WORKSITE SHIFTS

In our budget request we are mindful this year that the committee was concerned there was no space for the Congressional Research Service to expand. As you noted this morning, that is indeed the case. Therefore, our budget request has been devoted to only 5 positions that actually require new space in the Library of Congress itself.

Some of the workload for members and committees we can transfer to our reference centers where we can do a much better job; it is not just a matter that we can give quicker service from these reference centers, but with the facilities there, such as the microfiche collection, the cathode ray tubes, we can give a tremendous amount of service and we can keep a high level of production. Also, we can better use the same facilities in our Congressional Reference Division by the night shift employees we requested without requiring additional space.

The night shift employees in the Congressional Reference Division can utilize very valuable automated machinery, materials and files and put them to double duty. A good bit of our request is in the category of night shift personnel, and also additional personnel to staff the reference centers which, as I indicated, are closer to the members' offices and also can provide valuable space which we don't have available in the Library.

[Chart 2 follows:]

REQUESTS AND POSITIONS CHARTED

This next chart shows, by dotted lines, projections starting in 1977 of policy analysis and information and reference requests and of what our budget positions would be if we received what we requested starting in 1978. These are the positions that we received for this current year.

We feel our ability to achieve this increased production without what would seem to be a corresponding increase in personnel to serve the additional Information and Reference requests and indepth analysis, will be achieved by the utilization of night shift staff; reference people in our reference centers; and also the use of data bases in our reference centers and in the Congressional Research Service itself.

CONTRACT FUNDS REQUESTED

Another very important aspect of our budget request related to the increased workload on Chart No. 2 is for additional contract money. The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 indicated that where we did not have expertise in a particular area, but did not necessarily want to make that expertise a permanent part of our staff, we should do that work through consultants or contracts; we feel we can do much of this in-depth analysis work with our contractual request.

The foregoing charts may be referred to later if you have questions. They illustrate what I believe to be pretty much the story of our requests this year.

I have a few additional remarks, Mr. Chairman.

One aspect I would like to bring to your attention in keeping up with the additional workload we have from Congress, without adding personnel in the Research Service itself, is through an expanded member-committee office effort.

Last year in my testimony before the committee I indicated one of the biggest problems in the Congressional Research Service was the meeting of deadlines in general; such as rush requests for a specific item that sometimes gives us trouble-it is just part of our overall deadline workload-in trying to get material to the Members of Congress in time to use it, whether it is on the floor or in committee, or for some of their work back home.

The shifting of the workload to the Reference Centers and to the night shift I think will greatly assist us in this area of meeting deadlines.

LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANTS INSTITUTE

In regard to deadlines and rush requests, some members have reflected to me, and we found this true in the surveys we have made, that they are concerned whether their legislative assistants are properly utilizing the Congressional Research Service, whether they understand our rules and regulations. Therefore we have initiated a Legislative Assistants Institute where, in lieu of briefing small groups of legislative assistants, we have now briefed better than 250 LAs.