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Treaties, Text, and Timely Updates – Congress.gov Spring Cleaning

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Since introducing Congress.gov in September 2012, we have continued to add the databases from THOMAS to the new system.  We launched with legislation, followed soon thereafter by the Congressional Record, Committee Reports, and nominations.  Today, we are releasing treaty documents.  You can select “All Sources” and search across all of these data sets at once, something that was not possible on THOMAS.  With this, all of the data sets in the left hand navigation of THOMAS are included in Congress.gov.  We have one more data set that was on the legacy system to add, Senate Executive Communications.

The bill text now defaults to the XML/HTML version. What does this actually mean? It is a much better layout that can include a linked table of contents and links to Public Laws and the U.S. Code.  It still looks great on mobile devices and is easier to navigate if you can click deeper into the legislation via the table of contents.

The default bill text is now the XML/HTML version.
The default bill text is now the XML/HTML version.

The Congress.gov team values user feedback.  From user testing, to surveys, and even comments to this blog, we collect and analyze feedback from a variety of users (including those for whom the site is named).  After announcing the update last year in February when advanced search, browse, and appropriations tables were added, we received several comments about the appropriations table, including “[t]he old appropriations table was much more detailed, with committee and subcommittee markups.”

In moving from the table on THOMAS to Congress.gov, we made the decision to streamline the table and use responsive design so it would be mobile friendly.  Based on feedback, we found that this was not what our users wanted.  They missed the detail of the THOMAS table.  With this release, the appropriations table is much more comprehensive (but no longer as mobile friendly).  Like always, please continue to tell us what you think.

Updated Congress.gov Appropriations Table Based on User Feedback
Updated Congress.gov Appropriations Table Based on User Feedback

The enhancements in this release follow a busy past twelve months during which we added nominations, accounts, saved searches in June, removed the beta label in September, and added email alerts in February.

For the complete list of what is new or enhanced as of today, Robert updated the Congress.gov enhancements page to include:

March 2015

New Feature – Treaties:

Treaty documents are available on Congress.gov for all treaties submitted to the Senate since the 94th Congress (1975-1976). Treaties submitted prior to the 94th Congress are included if they were pending in 1975. Treaty documents include the following features: 

  • Support for global search of treaties:
    • Text search via resolution text, treaty doc text, treaty topic, originating organization, countries, TIAS number, citation (including old treaty number), and index terms
    • Supports cross-data-source facet: Congress
    • Supports treaty-specific facets: Status of Treaty Document, Treaty Topic
  • The treaty detail page includes a detailed overview, list of Senate actions, and tabs for: resolution of ratification; treaty document; amendments; additional fields.
  • The treaties landing page, includes a treaty number search, links to relevant internal and external pages, and a faceted result set.
  • A link to treaties has been added to the homepage.
  • Treaties have been added to the activity scope of the committee profile page (this feature only affects Senate Foreign Service committee).
  • Treaties have been added to overview box for amendments that amend treaties.

New Feature – Executive Reports:

  • Executive Reports, dating from 1995-present, have been added to the scope of the existing Committee Reports functionality. 
  • The Senate Foreign Relations Committee profile will feature treaties, in addition to legislation and nominations.

Enhancement – Advanced Search:

  • The following fields have been added:
    • Related bills
    • Subjects
    • Private legislation (in the command line)
    • Congress (for the Congressional Record collection)
    • Date range searches for “Latest Action” of nominations and treaties
  • Treaty fields
  • An “Is all of” operator has been added to the following fields:
    • Action – Status of Legislation
    • Committee – House
    • Committee – Senate
  • The advanced search form has been widened.
  • The advanced search form interface supports curated “popular” legislative action searches that can be selected from a menu.
  • Advanced search and command line search results can be refined with facets.
congressdotgov-three-new-browse-options-march-2015
New Browse Options

Enhancement – Browse:

  • New reports/tables are available, allowing the user to browse:
    • Bills with Chamber Action
    • Major Actions on Bills and Amendments
    • Actions by Committees and Subcommittees

Enhancement – Bills are in XML as the default display option in the Text tab of bill detail page:

  • XML will display as the default in Text tab of the bill detail page.

Enhancement – Current information about activity on the House and Senate Floor is now displayed on the homepage:

  • Congress.gov displays current Congressional activity on the homepage, including current-day bill, nomination, and treaty record links for items considered by the House and Senate.
  • The start and end time of next and previous House and Senate daily chamber sessions will display on the homepage.

Enhancement – Member Profiles:

  • URLS now display BioGuide IDs.

Enhancement – Appropriations Table:

  • Per user feedback, the appropriation tables have been revised and now include additional fields, such as subcommittee information.

We continue to take steps to improve Congress.gov. Thanks to all of you for providing us such great feedback during this period of transition from THOMAS. You have certainly helped improve Congress.gov!

Comments (2)

  1. These are a lot of great advances in content and navigation. As you can imagine, I’m especially excited to see the XML/HTML as default display for the text of bills, with working hyperlinks for many of the citations, no less! Congratulations to the whole LOC team!

  2. Look fantastic. My wishlist for the future includes links from legislation pages to corresponding text/video of committee hearings and debates on the floor of congress. Please and thanks!

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