Legal Research

The Public Printer of the United States, Robert Tapella, today announced the public beta launch of the Government Printing Office's new information management tool for US documents, FDsys. An acronym for Federal Digital System, FDsys currently allows users to access these public documents:

• Compilation of Presidential Documents (1993 to Present)
• Congressional Bills (103rd Congress to Present)
• Congressional Documents (104th Congress to Present)
• Congressional Hearings (105th Congress to Present)
• Congressional Record (1994 to Present)
• Congressional Reports (104th Congress to Present)
• Federal Register (1994 to Present)
• Public and Private Laws (104th Congress to Present)

The  migration of all data to FDsys from the current system, GPO Access, is expected to be completed by mid-2009.

Two important features of the new system are preservation and version control.  FDsys will enable GPO to digitally preserve paper documents, and to maintain public access to all documents as technology changes. Version control will allow users to distinguish among several versions of the same document. GPO will also use FDsys to print documents on demand for Congress and federal agencies, and to distribute documents electronically to libraries in the Federal Depository Library Program.