Robert Ambrogi Blog
The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) has launched the beta version of a website it is calling the “next generation” of access to information from the three branches of the federal government. Called govinfo.gov, the site is a more modern alternative to FDsys, the seven-year-old federal digital research site it will fully replace in 2017.
“Govinfo is a user-friendly, modernized site that provides an easy to use navigation system accessible on smartphones, tablets, laptops and personal computers,” said the GPO’s announcement of the new site.
Everything that is available on FDsys is also available on govinfo. It contains more than 1.5 million titles, covering:
- Bills and statutes.
- Budget and presidential materials.
- Congressional committee materials.
- Congressional rules and procedures.
- Directories of organizations and officials.
- Executive agency publications.
- Judicial publications.
- Legislative agency publications.
- Proceedings of Congress and general congressional publications.
- Regulatory information.
Among the enhancements to the site over the older FDsys site are:
- More modern look and feel.
- Capability to link related content.
- Two new ways to browse content: alphabetically and by category.
- A new open-source search engine.
- Enhancements to the search filters.
- More options for sharing pages and content on social media.
The two sites will run in parallel for a period of time while govinfo remains in beta. Once all the kinks are worked out, the GPO will sunset FDsys.