A Primer on Congressionally Mandated Reports and How to Find Them

Last month, we discussed recent updates to Congress.gov, focusing on executive communications. As we noted, executive communications are “messages sent to the chambers by the President, executive branch officials, state or local governments, private citizens, and other entities.” This post focuses on using online and print resources to locate one type of executive communication: congressionally mandated reports submitted to Congress from executive agencies and the federal courts.

Background on Congressionally Mandated Reports

Congress receives thousands of reports each year from executive and judicial branch officials and agencies. Not to be confused with congressional committee reports, agencies draft congressionally mandated reports when required by federal statutes. Agencies submit these reports to the House and/or Senate, and sometimes a specific congressional committee. Here are some examples of reporting requirements found in federal statutes:

• 7 U.S.C. § 6523(c): Directing the Department of Agriculture to submit a report on the national organic certification cost-share program to the House Committee on Agriculture and the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
• Public Law 115-237, § 4(b)(1): Requiring the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to deliver reports to Congress regarding events promoting specific pro bono legal services across each judicial district.
• 34 USC § 21711(c)(2): Instructing the Federal Trade Commission and the Attorney General to submit annual reports on enforcement actions targeting elder abuse to the House and Senate judiciary committees.

While some federal agencies have elected to make select reports available on their websites, historically, these materials have been difficult to locate. Apart from limited exceptions explained below, the Law Library of Congress does not collect congressionally mandated reports. The Congressional Record and Congress.gov’s Executive and Other Communications collection helpfully note when Congress receives these materials, but the contents of these communications are usually limited to a general description of the report’s subject, rather than the report’s full text. A couple examples of these communications are included below.

Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act

On December 23, 2022, Congress enacted the Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act through the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023. This law requires federal agencies to submit congressionally mandated reports to the Government Publishing Office (GPO), for subsequent online publication on GPO’s GovInfo website. GovInfo went live with this collection of reports in late 2023. Researchers are now able to browse this collection by committee or topic, or download data as either a CSV or JSON format file. More search tips are available on GovInfo’s Congressionally Mandated Reports help page.

Locating Older Reports

The vast majority of available reports on GovInfo were authored since 2023, and it appears that this collection will add new reports as they are published, but will not upload archival or historical reports. Researchers looking for older reports can sometimes find them on agency or program-specific websites, but they are more likely to be stored at the National Archives and Records Administration. CIS, a commercial service, published an annual index of reports from 1994-2002 entitled Reports Required by Congress: CIS Guide to Executive Communication, with accompanying microfiche of reports for 1994-1995 and 1997-1998. The Law Library of Congress has copies of these annual indexes and the microfiche for the years indicated.

Various libraries also collect copies of reports to Congress, either from the agency itself or from the congressional committee to which the report was submitted. Researchers may want to search WorldCat.org to determine whether any GPO federal depository or local libraries hold copies of a certain report.

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