USER REQUIREMENTS One of the first and most important tasks for the Working Group will be to collect, collate, and prioritize user requirements. There have been several efforts undertaken during the past year to gather user requirements, including work carried out by the House Oversight Committee, the Government Printing Office, and the Congressional Research Service. These need to be supplemented by similar efforts to obtain requirements from the groups that have not yet been surveyed. A suggested list follows at the end of this section.
Some of the primary advantages of the tools now available to build retrieval systems are that they allow for rapid prototyping, early production use, and relatively easy modification. These features enable users to work with and evaluate early versions of the system and give developers feedback on suggested improvements. Developers can then make these changes more quickly than was true with older technology, and this cycle can repeat itself as long as is useful. This process, which is sometimes referred to as iterative development, enables developers to build and make systems available while they are still gathering requirements from users. The GPO ACCESS system and the LOC THOMAS system are examples of this type of development cycle.
The user groups whose requirements need to be met by the new system include the following:
- House and Senate Member offices (including Members, AAs, LDs, LAs, LCs, press secretaries, etc.).
- House and Senate committees (including chairs, ranking minority Members, other Members, staff directors, professional staff, etc.).
- Officers of the House and Senate.
- Legislative Branch support agencies (CRS, CBO, GAO, GPO).
If this system, or portions of it, are made available to the public (see discussion under section entitled OPTIONS FOR PUBLIC ACCESS), the feedback from the following groups should be solicited: individual citizens, libraries and library groups, federal and state governments, affected private and public organizations, and possibly the legislatures of other countries.
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