ESTIMATED COSTS AND STAFFING REQUIREMENTS

At this stage of planning for the legislative information system, it is difficult to project costs with any precision. The full scope of this effort first has to be approved or further defined by the committees. The Working Group, supported by the Senior Technical Team, will then have to develop the plan in more detail with time frames for the various phases agreed upon. This effort will obviously be multi-phased over several years.

The staff resources available to all of the Legislative Branch organizations that will be tasked to build this system are clearly a critical issue. For this plan, the Library has assumed that the system will have to built within existing resources approved by Congress. The time frame for completion of specific elements of the system will therefore have to be adjusted based upon the staff and financial resources available. Equally important, participating organizations will have to be able to manage their resources to allow them to fulfill their other mandated and priority mission functions.

It will be a significant challenge to build the proposed legislative information system with existing, and probably declining resources. With the explosive growth of information technology throughout the country, the demand for staff with the technical skills needed to build the new legislative information system for Congress has become highly competitive. These market pressures are exacerbated by the fact that some of Congress' most experienced and skilled technical staff will be eligible for retirement during the time this system is being developed. While contracting for technical support is one option, the cost of such contracting is usually higher during the near term, especially because the skills needed are in such high demand, and will almost certainly be higher for the period when the system will be built. These forces make it especially important that Congress' technical groups be able to retain their skilled staff. In addition, these staffing constraints underscore the importance of a collaborative effort to create the system. It will take an enormous effort, and it will require the experience and special talents of all of the Legislative Branch agencies working together.

With respect to the Library, it should be pointed out that it is redesigning its text-based information systems for its own purposes which include enhancing support of CRS in their role in serving Congress. In undertaking to support a broader range of Congressional requirements, the Library will be leveraging its own efforts. To minimize costs, the strategy is to use shared technology whenever possible. For example, the work being done for the National Digital Library program, the replacement of SCORPIO, and the Global Legal Information Network will be based on the same technology strategy, e.g. open systems, client server, the Inquery Search Engine, Web Browsers, and the Internet. We would expect that this technology approach would be compatible with the approach of other appropriate Legislative Branch participants.

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