Appendix (OAM24062S).docx

Appendix Legislative workflow: https://usgpo.github.io/innovation/resources/2019-legislative-workflow.pdf Reports related the USLM schema: https://usgpo.github.io/innovation/reports/ Repository and User Guide: https://github.com/usgpo/uslm Public mention of this project:

· Quarterly report 12: https://usgpo.github.io/innovation/resources/reports/Clerk-QR12-Standardized-Formats.pdf

“Editing in XML: As described in previous reports, the House and Senate use XML editors with a generation one schema that was implemented 25 years ago to draft legislation in a common data format. As you know, Clerk, House Office of the Legislative Counsel (HOLC), and GPO staff met with the Members of the Subcommittee on Modernization on September 13, 2023, to discuss needs and challenges for bill drafting, processing, and publishing. More recently, appropriate stakeholders, including this Committee, approved our request to use funds from the fiscal year 2023 Modernization Initiatives Account to work with vendor partners to develop a project vision, which will include user discovery, a market review, and a feasibility study of available tools and approaches for improving legislative drafting and the collaborative work required. Outsourcing this work will engage industry experts, reduce the impact on existing Clerk projects, and ensure that all deliverables conform to House standards and meet long-term sustainment needs for legislative systems.”

· Written statements by the Acting Clerk and the Legislative Counsel for the April 17, 2024 hearing before the Subcommittee on Legislative Branch (Committee on Appropriations): https://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=117121

· The Acting Clerk “Collaborative Legislative Drafting: Our request builds upon efforts to improve legislative drafting tools and facilitate collaborative drafting among Leadership, Members, Committees, and the House Office of Legislative Counsel. The funding supports our response to the recommendations of the ongoing study on legislative drafting and its ecosystem, which includes an exhaustive market review of available tools and will culminate in recommendations and a roadmap for improving and modernizing drafting tools and systems.”

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AP/AP24/20240417/117121/HHRG-118-AP24-Wstate-McCumberK-20240417.pdf

· The Legislative Counsel Collaboration: In response to a request by the Committee on Appropriations, our Office, together with the Clerk of the House, submitted a report on collaborative legislative drafting on October 19, 2022. We requested funding from the House Modernization Initiative Account in March of 2023 to conduct a collaboration study to help us better plan for the adoption of tools and approaches for improving legislative drafting and the collaborative work required. This funding was approved in February 2024. Our next steps include advertising for and awarding a contract for this study, and we support the Clerk’s office request for FY 2025 funding to continue the work implementing the expected recommendations of the study. As we undertake this work, we must ensure that the developed capability must do the following: 1) Complement the existing workflow and responsibilities of the Office, the Clerk, and GPO. 2) Preserve document integrity so that the only changes made to a document are those authorized by the Member or committee on whose behalf the document is prepared. 3) Maintain the quality of the legislative language submitted to the Hopper and at other points in the legislative process. 4) Ensure that the document reflects a clear, faithful, and coherent expression of the intended policy.

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AP/AP24/20240417/117121/HHRG-118-AP24-Wstate-BallouE-20240417.pdf

· Written and verbal statements by the Acting Clerk before the Committee on House Administration, May 8, 2024.

https://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=117248