GPO doubles congressionally mandated reports on govinfo. A policy commentary

This morning, I received a press release from the Government Publishing Office (GPO) “GPO Doubles Congressionally Mandated Reports on GovInfo.” This is great news indeed, and something that we’ve been advocating for and tracking on for over 10 years. These reports have long been largely “unreported” and difficult for the public to find and use despite them being required by law to be submitted to Congress as part of its oversight duties. It wasn’t until 2023 that the Congressionally Mandated Reports Act passed which requires that GPO create an online database for free public access to reports that agencies are required by law to submit to Congress (For GPO’s technical requirements for CMRs, see “Congressionally Mandated Reports Submission Guidelines”).

This is a huge step forward for 2 reasons:

1. Congressionally Mandated Reports are now deposited to GPO and GPO staff catalog and preserve them and make them available in one central place, Govinfo.gov; and
2. More importantly, the legislation requiring the collection, description, preservation and public access of an important swath of the National Collection of U.S. Government Public Information shows that there is a proven policy avenue to assuring the preservation of “archive-ready” public information — see FGI’s Preservation of Government Information – a Call to Action and sign on if you agree! And critically, this legislation and the creation of GPO’s infrastructure has happened despite the Supreme Court’s 1983 Chadha decision — which upheld the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers between the 3 branches of government and has long been a barrier to GPO doing work to expand the amount of the National Collection under bibliographic control.

There’s still much technical and policy work to do to build a collaborative and public Digital Preservation Infrastructure (DPI) that Jim and I scope out part 4 of our book Preserving Government Information: Past, Present, and Future (2025). But today’s GPO press release gives us hope that we at least have a powerful example of public policy that moves us forward toward an ecosystem of “archive-ready” public information. And we can use this instance to scope out further policy updates to Title 44 and OMB Circular A-130. Onward!

U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) now makes more than 1,000 Congressionally Mandated Reports from 90 Federal agencies available on GovInfo, the one-stop site for authentic, published information for all three branches of the Federal Government. This total has doubled since GPO announced reaching 500 Congressionally Mandated Reports in October 2024 and has continued to grow since GPO first made Congressionally Mandated Reports available online in December 2023.

“Exceeding 1,000 Congressionally Mandated Reports—doubling the number that were available just 18 months ago—demonstrates our momentum in making these reports available,” said GPO Director Hugh Nathanial Halpern. “We thank our Federal agency partners for their continued efforts to comply with this requirement and GPO’s Library Services and Content Management and GovInfo teams for making the submission and discovery process easier for our partners and our patrons. This milestone reflects GPO’s continued commitment to our vision of an America Informed.”

Congressionally Mandated Reports offer information on a variety of topics, including Veterans’ medical care, health care coverage and access, marine and coastal resources, land use and conservation, and small business. Members of the public can browse the reports by agency or topic and may download a searchable table of the reports available. The reports are available for the public to access at https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/CMR.

Federal agencies are required by law to electronically submit Congressionally Mandated Reports to GPO after first submitting them to Congress or any required committee or subcommittee of Congress through existing processes.

• The reports are published and made available to the public on GPO’s online system of access, GovInfo.
• Agencies can sign up for a submission portal account to submit reports directly to GPO. To begin the process, authorized agency personnel should visit the Congressionally Mandated Reports Submission Portal at https://ask.gpo.gov/s/CMR.
• To learn more and view a guide for Federal agencies on complying with the Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act, visit https://www.gpo.gov/how-to-work-with-us/agency/congressionally-mandated-reports.

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