Beta USLM XML

Beta United States Legislative Markup (USLM) XML is now available on govinfo for a subset of enrolled bills, public and private laws, and Statutes at Large.

How to Access

Beta USLM XML is available for enrolled bills and public laws from the 113th Congress (2013) forward and for the Statutes at Large from the 108th Congress (2003) forward.

Download Beta USLM XML files in bulk on GPO’s Bulk Data Repository.

• Beta USLM XML for Enrolled Bills from the 113th Congress Forward
• Beta USLM XML for Public and Private Laws from the 113th Congress Forward
• Beta USLM XML for the Statutes at Large (at the full volume level) from the 108th Congress Forward
• Beta USLM XML for the Statute Compilations

Download individual Beta USLM XML files by clicking the USLM button from:

• Browse pages: Congressional Bills, Public and Private Laws, Statutes at Large or Statute Compilations (Expand the nodes to see available content and files)
• Details pages: see example of a bill, public or private law, Statutes at Large, or Statute Compilations Details page (Beta USLM XML is also available in the Zip file download from Details pages)
• Search results: see examples of bills, public and private laws, or Statute Compilations
  Note: Beta USLM XML will not appear in basic searches over the Statutes at Large because USLM is available only at the full volume level for Statutes and basic searches display only the smaller section level documents.

Enrolled bills with Beta USLM XML files will also have the existing “BILL DTD” XML available. For example, this enrolled bill has text, PDF, "BILL DTD" XML, and USLM XML files available:

What is USLM?

United States Legislative Markup (USLM) is a 2nd generation XML schema and is a derivative of the international LegalDocML (Akoma Ntoso) standard. The USLM schema extends the international standard to handle U.S. legislative and regulatory documents.

The Draft 2.0 USLM schema is available through GPO’s GitHub account along with sample files, CSS files, schema required for validation, and a review guide outlining differences from version 1.0.18 of the schema. Comment on the Draft 2.0 USLM schema on GitHub by opening an issue.

USLM offers a standard XML schema to promote interoperability among documents as they flow through the legislative and regulatory processes. USLM also promotes international interoperability with documents produced by parliaments world-wide.

About the USLM Project

In support of the Legislative Branch Bulk Data Task Force, GPO, the Clerk of the House, and the Secretary of the Senate are working on projects to convert legacy file formats into USLM XML.

The goal of the project is to provide a uniform set of laws in Beta USLM XML to enable downstream processes and increase efficiencies. The first step of converting and making available a subset of enrolled bills, public and private laws, and Statutes at Large is complete.

In parallel, GPO worked with NARA’s Office of the Federal Register on a project to convert subsets of the Code of Federal Regulations (Titles 5, 12, 27, and 40 from 2016 forward) and the Federal Register (2015 forward) into Beta USLM XML. Sample files are available on GitHub. The goal of the pilot project was to promote interoperability among documents as they flow through the regulatory cycle, increase the efficiency and accuracy of updating the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) from regulations published in the Federal Register (FR), provide a Beta USLM XML data set for advanced delivery and presentation methods, and provide an initial prototype tool to evaluate working with the FR and CFR in Beta USLM XML.