RETIREMENT OF LEGACY SYSTEMS

The retirement of the systems that currently provide Congress with legislative information presents all of the challenges that arise whenever there is a proposal to replace an older system (or so called "legacy system") with a newer system. Despite their shortcomings, the Library's SCORPIO system, the House MIN and ISIS systems, and the Senate LEGIS system work every day for hundreds of staff on Capitol Hill and in district and state offices.

The basic principle should be that the current systems can be retired when the new system provides comparable functionality. The difficulty in applying this principle arises when one tries to specify exactly when comparable functionality has been achieved. Despite the fact that new technology provides many advantages over the older systems (e.g., the graphical user interfaces make them easier to understand, the user can "click" and link immediately to related information, such as the text of the debate in the Record cited in the status section of the bill), the older systems have been developed and fine tuned for over 20 years, and they have a number of features that are not yet available in the newer technology.

Here are two generic examples:

• Systems operating on the World Wide Web cannot yet combine the results of previous searches with the results of later searches. There are ways to get around this problem, but the optimal and comparable solution is not yet clear.

• Many expert users prefer to type in the specific system command rather than go through a series of "dialog boxes" because it is faster and more efficient for them. Most new systems permit this in limited and/or complex ways.

Here are two examples specific to individual systems:

• The Library of Congress SCORPIO system allows congressional staff to request books located through its online card catalog through the ORDER command.

• The House MIN system allows users to search for and read a summary of floor proceedings within minutes of their occurrence.

In the case of both of these specific examples, it will be possible to develop these capabilities in the new system, but it will take time and resources to accomplish the task. The new technology does not come already equipped with these customized features that have been developed over the years.

The older data accessible through these systems present an additional challenge. The data from the 104th Congress will certainly be accessible. However, the digests of the bills back through the 93rd Congress may not be transferrable to the new technology, although it will probably be possible to provide some limited means of access. While the older data is not searched as frequently as that of the current Congress, its availability, however infrequently needed, is still important to many staff. As one example, committees often ask CRS for information about historical trends in legislative activities. These questions can only be answered at a reasonable cost by accessing the older data in the current House, Senate, or Library legislative systems.

It is important to understand the significance of this problem without overdramatizing it. While nearly all of the data in the current systems exists in some print version, much of the value and accessibility of the data exists only through its availability in an online retrieval system. In this context, the definition of comparable functionality becomes a matter of judgment tempered by the issue of cost. At this point, it will require more analysis in order to make a recommendation about how to handle older data. Solution(s) to this problem will affect the decision about when comparable functionality has been achieved.

Table of Contents