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DESIGN OF AUTOMATED PROCEDURES FOR THE LEGISLATIVE REFERENCE SERVICE

Mr. ANDREWS. Your next project is design of a related system. You are requesting an increase of $280,000. Place in the record at this point the total amount spent and available through 1968, if this request is granted for this project.

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes, sir.

(The information follows:)

Design of related systems:

Fiscal year 1967

Request for fiscal year 1968

Total spent or available through fiscal 1968.

Mr. ANDREWS. Describe that project briefly.

$280,000 280,000

Dr. MUMFORD. This project is directed primarily-almost entirelytoward studying the Legislative Reference Service and the possibility of using automated procedures and techniques in providing information to the Congress.

Mr. ANDREWS. Describe that. What will this project do? What do you hope to accomplish by this system?

Dr. MUMFORD. We hope to be able to speed up service to the Congress to provide them with various data that are needed quickly. Mr. ANDREWS. How would you do it?

Mr. JAYSON. May I reply to that?

Mr. ANDREWS. Do you need machines, computers, or hardware? Mr. JAYSON. About a year ago we put on the Legislative Reference Service staff an expert in information systems to serve two purposes: His first purpose was to act as our expert in responding to congressional inquiries relating to automation. You know there has been a great deal of interest by Members of Congress and the committees in the subject of automation, which is a very technical one. The first role of our expert in the field was to respond to these inquiries from Members. His second purpose was to actually make a survey, of a very initial and preliminary type of LRS's own operations with a view toward seeing which of our operations might be automated so that our service to the Congress would be better.

During this past year

Mr. ANDREWS. Explain what you mean by automated.

Mr. JAYSON. I might explain a little what he has been doing in this past year. On the first role he has spent a great deal of time briefing Members and their staffs, explaining what automation can do broadly speaking. He has written a good many papers which have been multilithed and distributed in response to inquiries from Members on the subject of automation for the Congress.

In connection with the LRS role vis-a-vis the Congress, he has made a broad preliminary survey and has identified some two dozen areas of our operations which could, he thinks, be automated. We have refined these areas down to about a half a dozen of highest priority from the point of view of simplicity, et cetera. Among that half dozen is "The Digest of Public General Bills." This could be printed out automatically and would save not only staff time, but we would hope it would provide more comprehensive information for the Congress on a prompter basis.

Additionally, under the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1967, which is pending, one of the additional services that LRS would have

to provide to the Members would be legislative histories and backgrounds of bills prior to every committee hearing. You may be aware that one of the provisions of the original bill is that committees to the extent feasible-shall make a public announcement of hearings 2 weeks before the hearing takes place. The bill further provides that at that point LRS will prepare and distribute to the Members a legislative history of the bill which is the subject of the hearing, will indicate its purpose and effect, and whether there were any bills like it in prior Congresses, and if so, what happened to them. The records we would need for this type of service would be similar and closely related to those needed for our bill digest type of service, where we abstract the bills. One of the priority automation items would be to arrange for the printout of these legislative histories so that the moment a committee announces that it is going to hold a hearing on H.R. so-and-so, we could, through the machines, pull out information as to whether prior Congresses have considered similar bills and what happened to them in the prior Congresses.

Mr. ANDREWS. Do you look forward to the day when this automated program will enable you to get your job done with fewer employees? Mr. JAYSON. I would hope so.

Mr. ANDREWS. When will that day come, if all goes well with the program?

Mr. JAYSON. I could not make any estimate of that kind, Mr. Andrews, not being a computer expert. I would think that the primary elements to look for are efficiency and time as well as the completeness of the work. Whether or not there will be a saving in manpower, I do not know. In the overall library operation, no estimate has as yet been made of that. All we have done in this very preliminary survey of LRS's operations is to identify what seems to be feasible to automate. Mr. ANDREWS. How much have you spent on this program to date? Mr. JAYSON. To date in the Legislative Reference Service, we have this one man who is an expert in the field at a grade 15. Just recently, about a month ago, we added another information systems man to do some preliminary work with a view toward the study that Dr. Mumford outlined for next year.

Mr. ANDREWS. How much money have you had through 1967 for this project, design of related systems?

Mr. JAYSON. We had this one position in the Legislative Reference Service.

Mr. ANDREWS. How much have you spent on this program?

Mr. JAYSON. Nothing other than this man's salary, which is, as I have emphasized, not aimed at this program as such.

Mr. ANDREWS. You are requesting an increase of $280,000 for this item, which is the design of related systems. $280,000 increase. Mrs. HAMER. That is a new item, sir. It is brandnew.

Mr. ANDREWS. How do you propose to spend this $280,000?

Mr. JAYSON. The $280,000 would be spent, first, to bring in a team. of experts just as we did on the Library program as a whole. We will bring in a team of consultants to make a study based upon the initial survey we have already done, to look at the informational services and the operations we are presently engaged in, and actually to lay out specifications and plans for a long-range automated operation.

Mr. ANDREWS. All of this $280,000 is an increase for this project; is that right.

Mr. JAYSON. No, sir. The Library has its own automation program going with reference to Library operations which are quite apart from the LRS operations. That is the one Dr. Mumford explained.

Mr. ANDREWS. We are talking only about this item here, "Design of related systems."

Dr. MUMFORD. Mr. Chairman, may I report on the estimated figures as to how that $280,000 would be spent?

Mr. ANDREWS. All right.

Dr. MUMFORD. We would expect to spend approximately $250,000 for contracts, systems design, and the Bill Digest Mr. Jayson mentioned, and for temporary personnel, two additional positions which would cost $30,000.

Mr. ANDREWS. Just what kind of contract would you expect to get here for these experts?

Dr. MUMFORD. Our information systems office would, in conjunction with the Legislative Reference Service, draw up a request for a proposal pointing out the kinds of things that we wanted them to address themselves to. They in turn would undertake to recommend a design of a system that would achieve these ends.

Mr. ANDREWS. All of this $250,000 would be spent for contracts? Dr. MUMFORD. Yes, sir.

Mr. ANDREWS. Doctor, that is a lot of money.

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes, sir. The companies who do designing of automation systems are expensive.

Mr. ANDREWS. What kind of companies are they? Are any of them these so-called nonprofit companies?

Dr. MUMFORD. Most of them are in the profit category-IBM is one of them. The Systems Development Corp. in California is a nonprofi* company.

Mr. ANDREWS. Would they be invited to bid on this contract?

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes; they would. The United Aircraft, Computer Division, is another. There are a number of large companies in this field that have experts on their staff who can come in and look at operations and decide whether or not it is feasible to apply computer techniques to them.

Mr. ANDREWS. Would you expect to have this work done within the fiscal year 1968 ?

Dr. MUMFORD. We would hope to complete it within 1 year from the effective date of the contract.

Mr. ANDREWS. I still say that is a lot of money to spend on a contract for advice, and that is about what you would get-advice.

Dr. MUMFORD. It is more than advice. It is actually drawing up a design for a system.

Mrs. HAMER. What we are buying is highly technical know-how, which it simply is not feasible or economical for the Library to try to recruit. We would only need certain kinds of services for a very short while.

Mr. ANDREWS. I have watched a lot of those high-powered advisers in the military department, these so-called nonprofit organizations. I think it is a misnomer if there ever was one. They pay their presidents fabulous salaries, plus bonuses.

Mr. Casey, do you have a question?

Mr. CASEY. You asked part of what I had in mind, who the experts were. Are you using the companies you named or are you using them as examples of the type of experts you mentioned?

Dr. MUMFORD. We currently have a contract for this central bibliographic system with the United Aircraft people.

Mr. CASEY. Do you anticipate continuing to use them?

Dr. MUMFORD. No, not necessarily. We would issue a request for a proposal. We would, however, not rule them out from bidding. Certainly we do not propose to use them without issuing a request for proposals from other companies.

Mr. CASEY. This is a relatively new program. There are corporations that call themselves systems engineers, and they take on anything, and design systems of automation of anything from sewage treatment up and down.

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes; they have done it for insurance companies, for banks, and for various other types of organizations.

Mr. CASEY. I am slightly familiar with one, the TRW Systems Engineering. They got into the space program. I find they are also in some of the municipal programs, such as air and water pollution control and designing systems. That is what you had in mind.

This is a design. What they will do is actually have a blueprint, so to speak, as to what machines you should have.

Dr. MUMFORD. That is right, but our present contractor does not sell equipment.

Mr. CASEY. The next question was, If you start dealing with IBM I imagine would they recommend their equipment? I am not trying to throw any rocks at IBM.

Dr. MUMFORD. We would be quite aware and conscious of that, Mr. Casey.

Mr. CASEY. Some of these systems engineering companies design the equipment for you; in other words, the specifications.

Dr. MUMFORD. This is true.

Mr. CASEY. And then you get your bids from contractors who manufacture them.

Dr. MUMFORD. A number of companies that make this kind of study do not sell hardware.

Mr. CASEY. You have many companies now who make equipment for the Defense Department and the space agency on their specifications, and they use parts from different companies, such as IBM, or Remington Rand, or what have you.

Mrs. HAMER. Our requests for proposals are very widely distributed for responsive bids. I believe that for the central bibliographic system we sent them to about 75 companies; did we not?

Mr. LORENZ. Yes.

Mr. CASEY. As you told the chairman, you plan to have all your design completed by the end of fiscal 1968.

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes, sir: for this particular project—the Legislative Reference Service.

Mr. CASEY. What do you mean by related?

Dr. MUMFORD. The automation of certain operations in the Legislative Reference Service would be related to the Library's general automated system.

Mr. CASEY. "The design of related systems." Is that strictly directed to the Legislative Service?

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes; in this request. We would want any system that was developed for the Legislative Reference Service to be compatible with the general overall system that is being worked upon. That is what I mean by the word "related."

Mr. CASEY. But the amount you have here, this $280,000, is primarily, if not wholly, for the Legislative Service?

Dr. MUMFORD. That is right.

Mr. CASEY. Can we expect you to come in next year on some other section of your operation?

Dr. MUMFORD. It is possible that we may request funds next year for the Copyright Office.

There is a request here for some positions to study the business organization of the Copyright Office preparatory to having systems design people look at it. In addition, we have requested a relatively small amount of money to begin automation of our card distribution service.

Mr. CASEY. Do you plan a print out system on this? Is this what is contemplated now on your catalog cards?

Dr. MUMFORD. Let me make sure we are talking about the same thing. For the central bibliographic system we hope to have stored in computer form information which is available by random access.

A user queries the data base for the information he wants. It would be possible to obtain printouts for bibliographic or any related purpose. In the case of the Card Division, we plan first of all to address ourselves to the problem of arranging orders for cards and for billing for them. We get over 60,000 orders a day for catalog cards. Later on we would hope to give attention to the whole problem of filling orders upon demand, as I said yesterday, so we would not have to store very extensive stocks of cards. For the Legislative Reference Service, as Mr. Jayson has indicated, one thing in particular would be the printing out of the "Digest of General Public Bills," which we think could be done much more efficiently and effectively by automated procedures.

Mr. CASEY. Are your cards now handtyped?

Dr. MUMFORD. The catalog cards are typed as a preliminary copy and then set by the Government Printing Office for composition and printing.

Mr. CASEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Wyman?

Mr. WYMAN. Where did you get the idea of the $250,000 figure for the cost of this review? Did somebody give you a figure, or is this an educated guess, or what?

Dr. MUMFORD. It is the result of the best judgment of the people we have on our staff who would have expertise in the computer field. Mr. WYMAN. It might not be that much or it might be a little more. It does not necessarily mean it will be a quarter of a million for the study.

Dr. MUMFORD. If you were to give us this it could not be any more. It could be less.

Mr. WYMAN. Once this report comes back this does not buy anything. This just gets the report and recommends that you put a printer here and a computer there, and so forth.

Dr. MUMFORD. We would expect to get a systems design.

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