SUMMARY

This report of the Technical Services staff describes the major activities of the past year. There has been a continued improvement in the quality and quantity of services provided to the Senate by the Sergeant at Arms Computer Center and by other organizations servicing the Senate.

The Senate Legis System, a comprehensive tracking and reporting system for all legislative and executive activities of the Senate, has continued to expand, and now encompasses committee scheduling information, the leadership's floor schedules, executive communications and Presidential Messages, petitions and memorials, and related official information about Senators, Committees, and actions of the Senate. During the 96th Congress, Legis has also been programmed to provide a variety of printed reports. These include reports to assist the Secretary of the Senate in his official recordkeeping activities, legislative activity reports for individual Senators, printed reports for Committees of the Senate, and an automatic tracking system to keep Senators and staff informed in a timely manner of all measures of critical interest. All nominations received by the Senate will be tracked in Legis beginning in January 1981, at the start of the 97th Congress.

The Program Review System, through which committees can store, analyze, and present information regarding programs within their jurisdiction, became fully operational during the 96th Congress, with the publication of the users guide and announcement of availability. During 1980 the system was enhanced with expanded analytical features and improved data entry and update features. The enhancements include: mass update of user codes; larger work areas for extended precision in calculations; exponentiation; and roll-up of account and program totals into function totals to facilitate comparison with function amounts. Additional committees were authorized use of the system. In addition to federal budget and program data bases, data bases have been established for analysis of the geographic distribution of federal funds; for development and test of geographic allocation formulas; for committee office expenses; and for analysis of detailed operating cost and production statistics on certain federal agency operations under a committee's jurisdiction.

The Federal Assistance Awards Analysis System is in the planning stage. Committee staff have worked with the Office of Management and Budget, executive branch agencies, and state and local government organizations in the development of a new executive branch system with information on recipients of grant and other assistance awards, the Federal Assistance Awards Data System (FAADS). The Office of Management and Budget will provide quarterly FAADS tapes

to the Senate and special reports will be prepared for Senators and committees on request.

The Geographic Reporting System provides special analyses on the distribution of federal grant and other funds to regions, states and counties. These analyses are prepared from computer tapes provided by the Community Services Administration (CSA) and supplement the materials published by CSA. Approximately 25 different analyses have been developed in response to requests from Senators and committees. The Senate Sergeant at Arms conducts a continuing progam to improve services and modernize facilities and equipment. Several competitive procurements were completed during the year which acquired more cost-effective and efficient equipment.

The Senate's data communications network continues to expand into state offices on a planned schedule.

A variety of improvements have been made in computer systems supporting text processing1 and records management functions in the Senate. The Senate Journal was phototypeset in 1980 as a pilot test of automating the Senate portion of the Congressional Record in 1981. A task force completed a study of the uses of the Record as a basis for determining the potential for reducing costs of the Congressional Record program via microform production and distribution.

Enhancements were made to the Bill Drafting System in the Office of Legislative Counsel including an additional capability to print committee print bills on demand as an alternative to typesetting at GPO. The Secretary of the Senate was provided a computerized system to verify page counts of hearing transcripts based on a computer analysis of the magnetic tape. All committee legislative calendars were converted to a uniform typographic standard in 1980.

The Rules Committee approved development of detailed design specifications for a Senate records management and indexing system, slated for completion in 1981.

1 This report was prepared on the experimental office work station mentioned on page 15. Data was keyboarded on a visual display unit which provides both word processing and page composition capabilities on the same device. Typesetting commands are executed immediately upon being entered and the results are displayed for verification. Printing, or reproduction, is accomplished through the use of a high speed laser printing device.

SENATE INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS (HARVEY)

Senators require independent, accurate, comprehensive, and timely information to assist them in legislative tasks, in the formulation of legislative issues, in the drafting of legislation, and in their representative functions. Information is needed on all legislative and investigative activities of Senate committees and conferences in a timely, accurate, and understandable manner. Senate Information Retrieval Systems provide Senators, committees, officers, and their staffs with responsive access to information that will assist them in their legislative tasks.

SENATE LEGIS

The Senate's Legislative Information System (Legis) became fully operational during the first session of the 95th Congress. Official Senate information concerning the sponsorship, co-sponsorship, official title, statements of purpose, and comprehensive floor, committee, subcommittee and conference status, scheduling and reporting data for bills, resolutions, and amendments were entered and verified by staff of the Secretary of the Senate. With the completion of the Senate computer programming for the Senate's legislative measures, including floor amendments and their respective legislative status, together with the installation in the Senate Computer Center (Office of the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate) of the Library of Congress' Scorpio, Logic Library and Libra Software, several important goals of the Rules and Administration Committee were realized. These include:

(1) committee scheduling; time, date and location of committee meetings, hearings, and conferences available via terminals in every Senator's office;

(2) a nightly updated Legis/Scorpio data base for all Senate users using the same retrieval language as on-line data bases at the Library of Congress; 100 Senator's offices and 14 Committees became fully trained Legis users during the 96th Congress;

(3) on-line files of amendments pending on the Senate floor, the Majority Leader's Daily Schedule, the Assistant Majority Leader's Whip Notice, and News about Legis for all Senate users;

(4) on-line or overnight data exchange with the Library of Congress and House Information Systems and the incorporation of Library and House data not previously in the Senate Legis data base.

The Senate Legis System has been implemented as an on-line, interactive data base computer system possessing a flexible capability for expansion into all official areas of Senate activity. As an umbrella information system, Legis has now been extended to cover a wide variety of Senate official recordkeeping, printed reports, and on-line

retrieval functions. The system was further designed to facilitate the exchange of information in a real-time mode with the House of Representatives, the Library of Congress, and the Government Printing Office. Computer software has been designed and programmed for ease of modification as new procedures are adopted or modified, as new categories of information are added to the system, and as new report and computer terminal retrieval requirements are identified. Software costs have been shared by the Senate, the Library of Congress, and the House of Representatives. Where possible, software developed by one computer center has been transferred and installed in either of the other two computer centers.

ENHANCEMENTS TO LEGIS

During the 96th Congress, more summary and status information on bills, resolutions, and amendments were added to all Legis files. This includes statements of purpose for amendments, additional detailed status information for floor, committee, subcommittee, and conference actions, and cross reference information supplied by the Senate Daily Digest Office and the Bill Digest Section in the Congressional Research Service. This data is in addition to the digest, abstract, subject indexing and House of Representatives information already supplied to previous Bill Status and Bill Digest systems.

A number of additional Legis capabilities and related services were completed during 1978. Significant among these are:

-Presidential Messages, Executive Communications, and Petitions and Memorials. Data was supplied to the Legis System by the Executive and Legislative Journal Clerks beginning in January 1979;

-Programming has now been completed for the tracking of all nominations received by the Senate and the Executive Clerk will begin entering this information with the start of the 97th Congress;

-Installation of new Scorpio retrieval system features, including full text search capability in the Senate Legis file and the Libra software for generating batch reports from Scorpio files. These features were made available to all Senate users beginning in early 1979;

-Completion of an on-line programming task which provides the capability for designated Senate staff to add Senate subject terms to legislative and other items in the Legis system; and

-Completion by the Senate User Support Group of user documentation for Legis, the on-line and batch Legis capabilities, and data entry documentation for the Secretary of the Senate.

The Senate Computer Center also programmed reports for purposes of auditing official data bases and for providing editing and verification capabilities to Committee Clerks, the Bill Clerk, the Daily Digest Clerk, and staff in the Senate Library.

Additional Legis and Scorpio display formats were provided for all Senate Legis users. These include forward and reverse chronology for all status actions, the sorting of status by subcommittees within the same committee, "all" and "summary" options for information concerning a respective measure or amendment, and free text information regarding committee memberships, changes in committee

sizes, temporary committees and committee memberships, and relevant legislative and party caucus information regarding committees and committee membership.

Concurrent with the achievement of these goals, a number of Legis printed reports authorized by the Rules Committee were programmed during the 95th and 96th Congresses by staff of the Senate Computer Center. The most important of these were official reports for the Secretary of the Senate, Senate Committees, and each individual Senator. These reports contain comprehensive information of all Senate measures, Senate actions on House measures, and all final actions on measures which cleared both Houses. Important examples of these reports include:

-Official ledgers provided to the Senate Bill Clerk for bills, resolutions, printed amendments, unprinted amendments, and all Congressional status actions for these legislative measures. These reports replace the manual ledgers in the Secretary's Office;

-The Index and History of bills and resolutions which assisted the Senate Journal Clerk, in the preparation of the Senate Journal for 1978; -Printed reports of bills, resolutions, and amendments for each Senate Committee calendar clerk. These reports contain all official information for measures acted upon by each respective committee;

-Legislative Activity Reports for each Senator. These reports are in six parts, organized by measures sponsored, measures co-sponsored, committee of referral for measures sponsored, committee of referral for measures co-sponsored, with a subject index to each of these legislative items at the back of the report;

-On-line and batch reports providing current information on actions. which have occurred in the Senate for the same day, and meetings, hearings, and conferences scheduled that same day; and

-Auto-tracking reporting capability for Senators and Committees; this Legis Service was announced to the Senate in December 1979.

CAPABILITIES OF AUTO-TRACKING

The auto-tracking service assists Senators and staff in monitoring legislation of particular interest. Whenever a legislative action occurs, or a co-sponsor added, or an amendment submitted for one of the measures being monitored, the new information about the measure is included in auto-tracking reports for the next day.

With Senate auto-tracking, legislation can be monitored several ways: 1. Senator's sponsored measures and amendments.

2. Senator's co-sponsored measures and amendments.

3. All measures referred to a particular committee or subcommittee (Senate or House).

4. Individual measures by measure number.

5. All measures on a particular subject (using the indexing terms and phrases that are present in the Legis system).

In the daily auto-tracking report, measures are divided into the above five categories. No measure is printed more than once. If, for example, a Senator's sponsored measures and all measures referred to a committee are being monitored, and a co-sponsor is added to one of