ANNOTATED_FECA_SOW.docx

Annotated Federal Election Campaign Act and Annotated Title 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations

RFI Document

Federal Election Commission

Statement of Work:

Annotated Federal Election Campaign Act and Annotated Title 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations

Revision Date: 4/8/2015

Version 3.0

Federal Elections Commission Functional Requirements FOIA Case Management Requirements

1.

1.0 Page 3 of 9

Revised Date: 03/03/2005 Table of Contents

Annotated Federal Election Campaign Act and Annotated Title 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations RFI Document Annotated Federal Election Campaign Act and Annotated Title 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations

RFI Document

6.3. Related Past Performance………………………………………………………….8

2. Purpose The purpose of this document is to disclose the current need of the Federal Election Commission (“Commission” or “FEC”) to create (1) an annotated version of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended (“FECA” or the “Act”) and (2) an annotated version of Title 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations (“FEC Regulations”). Included in the scope of this project is both a printed format and a digital format of the annotated Act and the annotated FEC regulations incorporating selected relevant references to: court cases, Commission advisory opinions, Commission enforcement actions (“Matters Under Review” or “MURs”), Commission Audit Reports, Commission Explanations and Justifications of its regulations, legislative history, challenges to Administrative Fines, Alternative Dispute Resolution matters, Commission Policy Statements, Public Notices, and Interpretative Rules. The annotated versions of the Act and the FEC regulations must also be capable of efficient and economical updating to incorporate future matters into the annotations. The Commission requests industry to suggest the best practices for the Commission to pursue in order to achieve economical and user-friendly annotations.

3. Background The Commission is an independent regulatory agency whose mission is to prevent corruption in the Federal campaign process by administering, enforcing and formulating policy with respect to Federal campaign finance statutes. The primary objectives of the FEC are: (1) to facilitate transparency through public disclosure of campaign finance activity; (2) to encourage voluntary compliance by providing information and policy guidance to the public, media, political committees and election officials on the FECA and Commission regulations and to enforce the FECA through audits, investigations and civil litigation; and (3) to administer and interpret the FECA as well as the Presidential Election Campaign Fund Act and the Presidential Primary Matching Payment Account Act.

The Commission’s website is its most important source of instantly accessible information about the Act, Commission regulations and Commission proceedings. Members of the public can use the website to (1) search and track Commission rulemakings; (2) search advisory opinions, completed audits and closed enforcement matters, including Alternative Dispute Resolution and Administrative Fines matters; (3) view campaign finance data and (4) find reporting dates. The Commission’s website hosts several independent databases containing documents that are for the most part in Portable Document Format (PDF), upon which Optical Character Recognition has been performed.

3.1. Enforcement:

The FEC has exclusive jurisdiction over the civil enforcement of the federal campaign finance law. Commission enforcement actions originate from a number of sources, including external complaints, referrals from other government agencies and internal referrals from the Audit or Reports Analysis divisions. Instances of non-compliance may lead to an FEC enforcement case or an audit. In some cases, respondents may be given the option to participate in the Commission’s Alternative Dispute Resolution program, which seeks to resolve matters more swiftly. By law, all these matters must remain confidential until they are closed. Violations involving the late submission of FEC reports or failure to file reports are subject to the Administrative Fines program. Documents related to closed enforcement matters are available online through the Commission’s Enforcement Query System at http://eqs.sdrdc.com/eqs/searcheqs and the MUR Archive System at http://www.fec.gov/MUR/. There are roughly 7,000 MURs.

3.2. Law and Regulations:

3.2.1. Litigation:

The Commission represents itself in litigation before the Federal district and circuit courts and before the Supreme Court with respect to cases involving publicly financed Presidential candidates. It also has primary responsibility for defending the Act and Commission regulations against court challenges. In addition, the FECA authorizes the Commission to institute a civil action in enforcement matters that cannot be resolved through voluntary conciliation.

3.2.2. Advisory Opinions:

The Commission provides interpretations of the Act through the issuance of advisory opinions (AOs), which are official Commission responses to questions regarding the application of Federal campaign finance laws to specific factual situations. There are 1,927 AOs as of December 2014.

3.2.3. Regulations:

The Commission updates or adopts new regulations in response to Congressional action, judicial decisions, petitions for rulemaking, Commission initiatives or other developments in campaign finance laws. The text of final regulations and the corresponding Explanations and Justification are published in the Federal Register.

4. General Annotation Requirements

4.1. Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations

The Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations would include annotations of: Titles 52 and 26 of the United States Code and Title 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations.

4.2. Statutory Section

For each statutory section in Titles 52 and 26 of the United States Code, the corresponding regulatory citation(s) should be listed.

4.3. Regulations Section

For each regulation in Title 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations, the corresponding statutory citation(s) should be listed.

4.4. Annotation Section

For each statutory section and each regulation, an annotation should be provided that should include citation to and summary of all relevant (1) FEC enforcement actions, (2) litigation, (3) advisory opinions, (4) Commission Policy Statements, (5) Public Notices, and (6) Interpretative Rules. For each statutory section, the annotation should also include citation to and summary of any relevant legislative history. For each regulation, the annotation should also include citation to and summary of any relevant Commission Explanation and Justification of the regulation

4.5. Cross-Reference Tables

The Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations would include cross-reference tables to provide (1) cross-references between the statutory section citations and the regulatory section citations, (2) cross-references between current statutory section citations and superseded statutory section citations and (3) cross-references between current regulatory section citations and superseded regulatory section citations. For guidance, the Commission currently provides similar cross-reference tables on its website at http://www.fec.gov/law/cfr/ej_conversion.shtml Additionally, for example, a cross reference would need to include the September 1, 2014 amendment to the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended, which transferred from Title 2 of the United States Code to new Title 52 of the United States Code.

4.6. Relevant Annotations

The Commission anticipates that the industry will suggest best practice for determining which of the following types of FEC guidance should be annotated: (1) FEC enforcement actions, (2) litigation, (3) advisory opinions, (4) legislative history, (5) Explanations and Justifications, (6) Commission Policy Statements, (7) Public Notices, (8) and Interpretative Rules.

4.7. Updating and Editorial Control

The Commission anticipates that the vendor would have editorial control, but the FEC would retain the ability to review the publication prior to any release. The industry should suggest best practices for timelines and methodology of updating the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations. The Commission anticipates that there may be members of the public who would obtain a “subscription” for updates, and would also want to make the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations available at no cost. The Commission would like industry suggestions on the best practices for cost-effective, efficient and free dissemination of the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations.

4.8. Conformity

All annotations in the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations must be presented in the same order and format, to be determined by the FEC at the requirements stage. For instance: (1) FEC enforcement actions, (2) litigation, (3) advisory opinions, (4) legislative history, and (5) Explanations and Justification, and other matters would always appear in predetermined order.

5. Online Annotation Requirements The Commission anticipates that an online version of the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations would be available in both a Portable Document Format (PDF) and a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) format with hot links in both formats, which will launch the underlying documents, such as FEC Enforcement Actions, Litigation Cases, Advisory Opinions, Commission Policy Statements, Public Notices, and Interpretative Rules (see infra Section 4.6)., The Commission further anticipates that searching within the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations would have a similar user experience to that of other commercial digital databases such as Westlaw, CCH and BNA.

5.1. Online Version - Availability

The Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations must be able to load quickly. The Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations must always be available, even when it is being updated. Updating should occur quickly, and occur when an FEC staff person approves a change made to the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations.

5.2. Online Version - Sustainable Growth

Any electronic version of the Annotated FECA’s growth must be sustainable.

5.3. Online Version - Knowledge Transfer and User Guide

There must be knowledge transfer and a user guide created on procedures to update the online version of the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations.

5.4. Online Version - Help Page

The online version of the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations would need links to a Help Page, which would explain how the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations work (i.e., searching, definition of “relevant matters included,” etc.). A link to a video tutorial may also be required in the Help Page, as well as a Frequently Asked Question section.

5.5. Online Version - Search Functionality

There should be a mechanism to search the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations for specific text, United States Code number, Federal Code of Regulations number, and matter annotations (including matter name, matter number).

5.6. Online Version - Links to External Document Repositories/Search Systems The online version of the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations would include hotlinks to the public documents noted in the annotation that are already available on the FEC’s website. These links may have to coordinate with already existing Commission searchable databases such as, but not limited to, the Enforcement Query System (EQS) (http://eqs.nictusa.com/eqs/searcheqs), Matter Under Review Archive (MURA) (http://www.fec.gov/MUR/), Searchable Advisory Opinion System (SAOS) (http://saos.nictusa.com/saos/searchao), and the Searchable Electronic Rulemaking System (SERS) (http://sers.nictusa.com/fosers/).

5.6.1. In order for Online Version to draw from EQS and MURA, the databases must be integrated. Such integration would require a uniform metadata and high-level character recognition in all documents.

5.6.1.1. MURA contains documents scanned at low level from microfiche and would require additional metadata and high-level OCR text quality. In some cases, document recreation may be necessary. MURA documents would need to be divided into subcategories in a manner consistent with EQS.

5.6.1.2. EQS would need to be similarly reviewed for level of text quality, and to conform to the metadata found in the MURA.

5.7. Online Version - Real-Time Updates of Links

To the extent citations or other elements are updated in already existing FEC systems that feed the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations, linkages in the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations need to pull or link to current information sets, without the need for the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations to be refreshed or republished.

5.8. Online Version - Legal Researching Tool

For each statutory section and each regulation, users of the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations should be able to access linkages to all annotations and other system information for that reference.

5.9. Online Version - Adaptability Due to Changing Needs

To the extent that there are changes made in the FECA or the FEC Regulations, the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations should support making any necessary modification as well as preserving accessibility to historical annotations. For example, on September 1, 2014, the Federal Election Campaign Act, as amended, was transferred from Title 2 of the United States Code to new Title 52 of the United States Code. All searches would need to incorporate changes like this.

5.10. Online Version - Login Security

The Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations should use an integrated login security.

5.11. Online Version - Users

The Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations should be available to internal users (FEC staff) and external users (the public). The Data Entry Mask and Web Publishing duties must be maintained inside the FEC’s firewall.

6. Printed Annotation Requirements The Commission anticipates that a printed version of the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations would be created, which will contain references to: (1) FEC Enforcement Actions, (2) Litigation Cases, (3) Advisory Opinions, (4) Commission Policy Statements, (5) Public Notices, and (6) Interpretative Rules. The Commission further anticipates that searching within the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations would have a similar user experience to that of other annotated services, such as the United States Code Annotated (see e.g., Thomson Reuters USCA at: http://legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.com/law-products/Court-Rules/United-States-Code-Annotated/p/100028559)

6.1. Printed Version - Presentation and Updates

Industry should suggest best practices for timelines and methodology of updating the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations. Consideration should be given to cost efficiency and method of delivery. For example, comparisons between a yearly, biannual, or quarterly soft-bound edition versus a periodic hard-bound addition with inserts or a 100% loose leaf edition.

6.2. Printed Version – Synergy

Both the FECA and FEC Regulations are published periodically by the Government Printing Office in soft-bound editions. Industry should suggest possible methods in which the current production of these editions may be expanded into an annotated form. Industry should consider the practices of other similarly situated administrative agencies.

6.3. Printed Version - Sustainable Growth

Any printed version of the Annotated FECA’s growth must be sustainable.

6.4. Cross-Reference Tables

The printed version of The Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations would include cross-reference tables to provide (1) cross-references between the statutory section citations and the regulatory section citations, (2) cross-references between current statutory section citations and superseded statutory section citations and (3) cross-references between current regulatory section citations and superseded regulatory section citations.

6.5. Printed Version - Viability of Free and Paid-For Subscription Services Industry should suggest best practices in order to achieve a no-cost and/or low cost dissemination of the Annotated FECA and Annotated FEC Regulations. This paper subscription service would be in addition to the online annotation (see supra Section 3.7).

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