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.

• 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.

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