[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 51 (Wednesday, March 28, 2012)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E461]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TRIBUTE TO GPO ACCESS

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. ROBERT A. BRADY

                            of pennsylvania

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, March 28, 2012

  Mr. BRADY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, on Friday, March 16, 2012, 
the U.S. Government Printing Office, GPO, officially retired GPO 
Access, GPO's online repository of federal government documents since 
1994. GPO has completed the transition from GPO Access to its 
successor, GPO's Federal Digital System, FDsys, which was first 
launched in 2009 and became GPO's official system of record in December 
2010.
  GPO Access was established pursuant to Public Law 103 40, Government 
Printing Office Electronic Information Access Enhancement Act of 1993. 
In President Clinton's statement upon signing the Act on June 8, 1993, 
he remarked:

       It is with great pleasure that I sign into law S. 564, the 
     ``Government Printing Office Electronic Information Access 
     Enhancement Act of 1993,'' which will enhance electronic 
     access by the public to Federal information. Under this Act, 
     the public will have on-line computer access to two of the 
     major source documents that inform us about the laws and 
     regulations that affect our daily lives: the Congressional 
     Record and the Federal Register . . .
       This important step forward in the electronic dissemination 
     of Federal information will provide valuable insights into 
     the most effective means of disseminating all public 
     Government information . . .

  Upon its release, GPO Access ushered in an era of unprecedented 
access to Federal government information. Never before had American 
citizens from one end of this great country to the other been able to 
access the Congressional Record, Federal Register, bills and 
resolutions, and a host of other Federal government publications 
literally hours after their release. GPO Access marked a quiet 
revolution in government transparency on the same scale as C SPAN. With 
hundreds of thousands of Federal government titles posted online and 
millions of downloads every month, GPO truly embodied the spirit of the 
Thomas Jefferson quotation: ``wherever the people are well informed 
they can be trusted with their own government'' and the James Madison 
quotation: ``A popular Government without popular information, or the 
means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or 
perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who 
mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power 
which knowledge gives.'' However, even our Founding Fathers could never 
have imagined the era of access to government information which we have 
come to enjoy since the advent of GPO Access, and the story only gets 
better.
  GPO's FDsys, www.fdsys.gov, provides the American public with free 
online access to about 50 different collections of authenticated U.S. 
Government information ranging from public and private laws to U.S. 
court opinions to the President's annual budget. It allows users to 
search easily across multiple government publications; perform advanced 
searches against robust metadata about each publication; construct 
complex search queries; refine and narrow searches; access metadata in 
standard XML formats; download content and metadata packaged together 
as a single ZIP file; and browse alphabetically by collection, by 
congressional committee, by date, and by government author.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in commending the hard-
working men and women of GPO on their remarkable achievement with GPO 
Access. I look forward to GPO's continuing contribution to ``Keeping 
America Informed'' through its successor, FDsys.

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