OPTIONS FOR PUBLIC ACCESS PL104-53 directed the Library to examine issues regarding efficient ways to make legislative information available to the public and to submit its analysis to the committees for their consideration and possible action. The Library interprets this issue to center on the question of access to the public without charge. There are, as noted above, a number of commercial providers who make legislative information available to the public for a fee. Also as noted above, the proposals in this plan, if implemented, would improve the quality, accuracy, and timeliness of core congressional legislative information available to the public through these commercial sources. The GPO ACCESS system and the LOC THOMAS system, on the other hand, are examples of congressional mandates to make legislative information accessible to the public without direct charge. The remainder of this discussion will focus on the issue of free access to the public.
There are three fundamental questions inherent in the issue of public access to Congress' legislative information system: 1) Should the public have access to the same public legislative data? 2) Should the public have access to the same technical system? and 3) Should the public have access to this information through more than one congressionally supported agency or office?
1. Access to the same core legislative data?
The answer must be yes. A fundamental tenet of democracy is the importance of an informed electorate, and the Congress has passed a number of laws to ensure that the public has access to government information. With the recent advances of technology that affect how government information is prepared and distributed, however, it is important to note the implications of this principle for the proposed new legislative information system.
A. Implicit in this principle is the need to ensure that the legislative information available to the public is as accurate and as timely as the information available to the Congress through this system. Technically this goal is achievable. The obvious qualification inherent in this statement is that if the information is not in the system it is not accessible either to the Congress or to the public. Committee chairs, for example, can choose not to make some information regarding committee actions available to the system. Despite the improved access that the public now has to legislative information through GPO ACCESS and LOC THOMAS, the most persistent criticism by some members of the public has concerned what is NOT YET available in these systems rather than what is. The implementation of the recommendations in this plan should address many of these concerns, but it may never be possible to address all of them.
B. Restricted and licensed information would be excluded from public access unless the contract specified otherwise. As noted earlier, many Members and staff find it valuable to subscribe to commercial sources of information in order to carry out their work. This plan suggests a number of ways in which that licensed information could be linked to the proposed congressional legislative information system so that it could be more easily accessible to offices which subscribed to it. Such information could be made available to members of the public who chose to purchase it as well, but it is not reasonable to assume that it could be made available for free.
Similarly, restricted material, such as CRS Reports, which CRS is prohibited from disseminating to the public, or other internal, confidential materials would be excluded from public access.
2. Access to the same technical system?
If the answer to question 1 above is yes (i.e., the public should have access to the same core legislative data on a basis that ensures the same accuracy and timeliness), then the answer to this question is also yes. The simplest way to ensure the same access to legislative information is to provide access to the same system. The alternative of providing the same data on a different system raises some basic difficulties.
For example, what if the separate public system did not have the same capabilities? The congressional system, for instance, will allow the user to link directly from information in the status field (committee reported measure to the House) to related information (the text of the committee report). If the public system did not have such a feature, there would be legitimate criticism that the public was not getting access to the same information. In today's technology, system data and system capabilities are inextricably linked.
If the public system has to have the same features, then who would build it and who would pay for it? Once the issue of funding a separate system is raised, the option of allowing access to the same system becomes preferable.
This is not to suggest that there would be no additional costs to giving the public access to the same system. There would have to be continuing upgrades to servers and communications systems to ensure adequate response time. It might even be necessary to limit the number of public access ports so that congressional users could have reliable access when needed for the conduct of business. Or, it might be necessary to have a separate but mirrored servers to support the Congress and the public. However, with the continuing improvements in the power of distributing processing and in security systems, the cost of providing access to the same system, even on separate servers, would be lower than the cost of building an entirely separate system.
3. More than one congressionally supported provider of access to the public?
In the most specific instance, the question is whether the GPO ACCESS system and the THOMAS system should both continue to provide public access to legislative information. The broader question is whether Congress should allow multiple access points for the public now or in the future.10 In this context it is important to note the following: the implementation of this plan would eliminate duplication of effort within the Legislative Branch in the creation, collection, preparation, and distribution of legislative information. The basic issue then becomes whether there should be multiple points for the public to access this information. With respect to this issue, the Library offers the following analysis.
1. Both the Library's THOMAS system and the GPO ACCESS system are needed for each of these agencies to be able to accomplish their missions. GPO is charged with making government information available, of which legislative information is a small, albeit important, component. The public would reasonably expect to find or be able to get to legislative information through GPO ACCESS. Similarly, the Library, in serving both the Congress and the nation, must make its collections, which include legislative information, as accessible as possible. This goal is at the heart of the Library's national digital library effort. Even if the GPO and the Library had not already been directed by Congress to build the ACCESS and THOMAS systems, they would have to build them today.
2. The integration of the two systems as proposed in this plan would reduce duplication of effort. Equally important, integration will create a better system by drawing on the best elements of both systems, and on the special expertise of each institution. GPO and the Library each have decades of experience in their respective fields. The accumulated knowledge of the Library and the GPO are complementary for the task at hand. Neither can do as good a job alone as they can do together.
3. ACCESS and THOMAS have both been well received and are heavily used by the public. They both have wide name recognition with the public. There is some confusion about overlap, but if data integration can be achieved, minor modification of the THOMAS and ACCESS interfaces could help eliminate this confusion without either system having to lose its purpose, its public identity, or its appeal.
4. In the future, other congressional organizations may wish to provide access to the data in the legislative information system without duplicating it. (For example, Members who develop their own World Wide Web HomePages). Under this plan, that objective could be accomplished without duplication of effort and with a guarantee that the information retrieved would be the same regardless of the window used to access it.
In its previous study on duplication, the Library outlined other options for eliminating one or more of the gateways to public legislative information. Since that time, however, the growth in the public use of both GPO ACCESS and THOMAS, and the potential improvements that would result from integrating the systems as outlined in this plan suggest instead that the option of multiple access points to a coordinated, non-duplicative system would be preferable.
In summary, the Library recommends that GPO and the Library integrate their systems as described in the section entitled DATA COORDINATION AND PREPARATION. Additionally, the Library recommends that:
- GPO and LOC modify their current HomePages to inform users that the systems are integrated and they will get the same data regardless of where they enter the system.
- LOC and GPO inform other service providers, and especially the library community, which provides the access points for many public users, about the integration of the systems.
- The Working Group should consider whether to design a set of coordinated interface(s) to which both THOMAS and GPO ACCESS can point so as to improve access to legislative information -- perhaps with the network address of www.congress.gov.
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