million in 1977 and $5.6 million in 1978. The major portion of this cost is for composition (i.e., hot-metal typesetting), and the cost of this composition is continually increasing.

The question arises of how much longer the House can continue to rationalize the increased expeditures for printing of the Record via hot metal. Over the past 10 years, while the number of pages and copies has remained approximately constant, the unit cost per page has increased 170 percent at an average of 10.5 percent per year. Projecting these figures for 1987, the cost per daily page will be between $520 and $644. The yearly cost for the House Congressionial Record program alone will be in the area of $8.3 to $10.3 million.

The graph on the following page provides a simulation of estimated costs per page of the Record for the next 10 years (1977-87) based on the previous 10 years (1967-77). Record costs are expected to increase between 6 to 10 percent a year. The graph portrays a 6percent cost increase per year.

GPO is authorized to print and bind the Record. It is the responsibility of the House (i.e., the Official Reporters Office) to collect the text and provide the input to GPO. Consequently, the GPO is limited in its printing methods by the form in which the House provides the text. It is the responsibliity of the House to provide the GPO with the text in a form that can be printed via the most cost-effective means available.

3.4 CONSTRAINTS

Regardless of the method of text capture, editing, composition, and printing, a number of factors in the environment must be considered as being mandatory requirements; i.e, constraints.

(1) The House is in session an average of 155.5 days (or 43 percent) of the year. The statistics for last Congress showed that an average of 3 days per week, 5.4 hours per day are spent in session. Normal sessions begin at noon and adjourn at 5:30 p.m.; however, occassionally the House convenes at 10 a.m., and once remained in session for 35 hours. Continuous support from the Official Reporters Office is expected at all times that the House is in session. (2) Reporters must have total mobility during their recording of the debate since the practice of assigning seats or speaking at a microphone is not currently required by the House.

(3) The reporters must have the opportunity to place the language of the debate in correct parliamentary form.

(4) The House transcribers type at an average of 100 words per minute (or 8 characters per second) on Selectric typewriters with a 22-ounce adjustable touch. Hard copy of the transcript is produced immediately for proofing by the reporter. An original (only) transcript of 100 percent accuracy is available on the House floor within 30 minutes after the proceedings are held.

(5) The reporter-transcriber teams work in close proximity to each other, out of work-related reasons and because of lack of space. It is unreasonable to expect to be able to place any large pieces of equipment or additional personnel in the present office space.

(6) At any given 5-minute period during the day, up to seven teams can be working on various stages of their segment.

(7) Pages must be able to be numbered according to the present page scheme, including the addition of the alphabetic numbering after the second to the last page of the segment.

(8) Based on the limited amount of time available for production of the hard copy original, absolutely no interruption of service can be tolerated.

(9) One and only one copy of the final transcript is to be produced. However, additional printings of individual pages (with the correct page number) may be necessary should errors be found by the reporter before the transcript segment is logged in on the floor. It is currently typed on legal size (81⁄2 by 14 inch) paper, quadruple spaced, 61 characters per line, with variable number of lines per page.

(10) Based on the limited amount of space and the dictation procedures, noise levels must be kept to a minimum.

(11) Logbooks must be kept containing information identical to that which is kept at the present time so that the rules and

regulations that govern the text to be printed can continue to be enforced.

(12) Those portions of the Record currently submitted by the Bill and Digest Clerks must remain their responsibility, and must be included as part of the Record each day.

(13) The final transcript must be ready to go to GPO by 9 p.m. each day that the House is in session, provided that the House adjourns before that time. All portions of the transcript recorded any time before 9 p.m. must be sent by 9 p.m. unless the House is still in session. This includes the extensions of remarks. At the present time, all transcript segments and extensions prepared by 5:30 p.m. are sent to GPO at that time; however, current House rules permit the Members to revise their remarks until 9 p.m. (14) The staff of the Official Reporters Office cannot be expected to perform any additional duties that are not currently part of their responsibilities.

(15) The working space (office) of Reporters must be as close to the House Chamber (floor) as the present location.

SECTION 4.-CONCLUSIONS

The basic conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that although the present procedures for production of the Congressional Record are fulfilling the rules of the House, with a reasonably high degree of user satisfaction, the fact remains that the increase in printing costs will soon become prohibitive. Since the printed text is a primary record of the thoughts and rationale behind the making of the country's laws, the Record provides an easily accessible method of determining congressional intent on matters of vital importance to this country.

In order to assure continued production of the Record, a more cost-effective means of printing must be investigated as soon as possible so that the ever-upward spiraling of cost can be abated. Based on past experience, the House has found that composition costs, currently the largest factor in printing, can be drastically reduced through the use of computers. The basic idea behind "electronic printing" is to capture the original keystroke onto a computer-readable medium, then use this medium for editing and printing. One House application currently employing this technique has decreased composition cost by 50 to 75 percent per page.

It is the responsibility of the House to record and transcribe the proceedings; therefore, the responsibility of capturing the original keystroke also lies with the House. However, a review of the environment of the House office currently providing the major portion of the onsite text input shows that the basic functions of that office may not be changed unless the House rules are modified. The knowledge and expertise that has been built up over the years in both personnel and procedure development of that office is invaluable to the House.

But with any system, whether it be manual or computerized, there is always room for improvement. The place in the current reporters system that improvements can be made with very little impact on procedures is in the typing of the transcript. As long as a hard copy original of the transcript is produced, the machine used for production of the text can be considered a variable. Its only requirements are that it be 100 percent reliable, as easy, as fast, and as least as quiet to use as typing on a Selectric typewriter. One area that has not been discussed in this report deals with security. At the present time, no special security procedures have been set up for recording of House debate on a subject that affects national security. Such procedures will be necessary some day, and the Reporters Office is on notice that it must be prepared to handle the problem. Input from the Speaker's Office will be necessary on this subject.

In addition to that kind of security is a second type: security of data so that unauthorized persons may not access, read, change, or