status of selected major legislation. The Checklist is issued weekly

as an updated version of the Status Report. The following paragraphs describe in greater detail the contents of these publications.

3.1 Digest of Public General Bills and Resolutions

The Digest is published cumulatively with bi-weekly supplemental

issues. The description which follows is concerned with the cumula

tive issues.

The Digest is divided into seven parts:

Part I. Status of Measures Receiving Action.

This section of the Digest lists all measures which have re-
ceived action and/or become law. They are listed in numerical
order by Public Law number or by bill (resolution) number.
The listing in this section includes a digest of each measure,
and a brief legislative history which includes: date reported,
report number, date considered, dates passed, conference
action and approval or veto date.

Part II. Public Law Listing.

This is an index which lists by Public Law number, all the measures which have been enacted and includes their respective bill or resolution number for cross-referencing.

Part III. Digest of Public General Bills and Resolutions.

This portion of the Digest contains several discriptive paragraphs on each bill. In the case of a complex or lengthy bill, the description is often sub-titled by Title Number of the Bill or other major division pertinent to the organization of the bill. Private bills are listed in this section only by number;

Part IV. Author (Sponsor) Index.

This index provides a reference, by number, to all public and private bills or resolutions sponsored by each member of Congress. The index includes a one word or brief phrase description of the subject matter of each bill or resolution listed.

Part V. Subject Matter Index.

As the name implies, this portion of the Digest provides an index to bills and resolutions by subject matter. At the present time, the major headings in this index are based on the Legislative Indexing Vocabulary (LIV); however, the American Law Division is currently preparing a new vocabulary for future use in the Subject Matter Index.

Part VI. Specific Title Index.

This is an index of all bills which contain a specific title.
is arranged alphabetically according to the first word in the
title.

Part VII. Identical Bill Index.

This index lists those measures which are identical or substantially similar in content.

It

The information published in the Digest is supplied by all divisions of CRS with the American Law Division having principle responsibility for both data collection and publication. The data used in

the publication of the Digest is maintained on computer files by

The Bill Digest System can be viewed as consisting of two elements: the Input Processing System and the Display and Output System.

The Input Processing System utilizes the IBM Administrative Terminal System (ATS) which is resident in one IBM 360/40. There are fortyseven terminals connected to the 360/40 which are used for a variety of applications. One of these is to maintain the Bill Digest Data Base. Through ATS, identification, description, digest and status information on all bills are input. Identification, descriptions and the digests are entered about two days after the bills are introduced. The digesting is performed by 8 digesters. As the bills and resolutions go through the legislative process, status information is added. A classification scheme for identifying the steps in the legislative process has been developed and utilized by CRS. The scheme provides for coverage of 62 discrete steps; actual coverage by CRS represents 38 of these steps. These steps are grouped into 9 categories:

8. Conference Procedures

9. Final Action

Whenever new bills are added, or status is changed or other informa

tion added, the complete records are "queued" onto tape by the ATS

console operator, as well as stored within the ATS data base.

Until recently, the ATS data base was used to produce the digest.

In order to prepare for a more complete status system and a retrieval system three innovations were implemented:

1. A structural record was created by imbedding tags into ATS text. This permits the file to be used by resources other than

ATS.

2. Transactions were added to the file on a daily basis rather than waiting until just before the digest is printed.

3. Indexes are now kept current.

The second and larger IBM 360/40 houses CICS. In addition, two batch programs, an edit program and an update program, also operate in this second computer. The edit program processes the tape from ATS checking all fields. A very large amount of editing is performed which includes the use of various look-up tables. The edit program produces a listing and a file showing each bill

The ATS file is then input to the update program which maintains

the date base. Only those bills which have passed the edit are

added to the data base.

The data base includes an ISAM file of indexes and a BDAM

master file. The index file relates the bill numbers to the

address of the base record on the master file.

Block size on the master file is 7200 characters. Record size

is 360 characters. Each bill occupies one or more records up to 1600 bytes. The base record contains some fixed identification

data, a field directory and variable data fields. When a variable field exists, there is entry for that field in the field directory which identifies and locates the field. The field directory is in a fixed sequence but the data itself may be scattered among various records in various blocks. When new data is added,

the entire record is rewritten over the old record. The next

available locations are used for overflow storage even though they are not contiguous with the previous fields of the record.

CRS input is from the printed bills, the Congressional Record, and from information gathered by phone. CRS acquires the data necessary by studying the Congressional publications