March 2019 Release Notes
Published: April 15, 2019
Jump to: ISO 16363 Certification | Linked References in History of Bills | New Article Series | New Webcasts | Easy Access to Popular Resources | Developer Tool Enhancements | Fixes and Enhancements | Recently Added Content | Feature Article Highlights | Coming Soon
About Release Notes - Changes to govinfo components are made through code deployments on a quarterly release cycle. Release Notes are published after each deployment to highlight the changes. This includes updates about content, features, enhancements, bug fixes, and more. Read past Release Notes
GPO's govinfo Makes History by Earning Global Certification for Trustworthiness
GPO made history in January by becoming the first organization in the United States and second organization in the world to achieve the highest global standard of excellence for digital repositories. The Primary Trustworthy Digital Repository Authorization Body Ltd. awarded GPO ISO 16363:2012 for govinfo, the one-stop site to authentic, published Government information. GPO achieved the certification by meeting official criteria for trustworthy repositories as defined by experts in the field. Learn more about the certification and digital preservation on govinfo.
Linked References in History of Bills
For new History of Bills text documents, references for bills and pages in the Congressional Record will be hyperlinked to the corresponding document in govinfo. The daily updates to the History of Bills will include these links going forward and some previous editions will be updated to include links as well. Bill references will link to the most recent version.
View current and previous editions of the History of Bills.
Learn more about the History of Bills.
New Series for Help Finding Publications
This new series of articles, Finding Publications, will highlight search and browse tips and tricks for various publications and types of content on govinfo. Send us feedback on what topics we should cover in future articles.
The first article in this series, Searching the Federal Register, guides you through searching both the digitized and more recent volumes of the Federal Register, finding full issues or information within an issue, and locating frequently searched for items like the Physician Fee Schedule.
Did you know that each collection on govinfo has a help page where you can learn more about the publication, see sample URLs and metadata fields and values, and more? Other help pages contain general search tips, help working with search results, information on the structure of URLs, and more.
This new series joins the News, Featured Content, and Release Notes categories of articles already available. At the end of each Release Notes article, we feature some of our favorite articles since the previous release.
New Tutorial Webcasts
Fifteen webcasts are available as part of a series of tutorials that offer users introductory guidance in navigating govinfo, performing various types of searches, narrowing search results, browsing, and using Help features. Recordings are brief; from two to seven minutes in length. No prerequisite knowledge is required, and more webcasts will be posted and announced throughout 2019.
A variety of handouts are also available.
Easy Access to Popular Resources
By user request, we added links to the most popular resources on the left side of the homepage. The links will take you to the Browse page for each publication except for the link to the e-CFR.
The e-CFR is a popular resource provided separately from govinfo by the National Archives and Records Administration's Office of the Federal Register. It is an unofficial web version of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) that is updated daily to better reflect the current status.
What is the difference between the CFR on govinfo and the e-CFR?
The CFR available on govinfo is the annual edition comprised of 50 subject matter titles that each contain one or more individual volumes and are updated once each calendar year, on a staggered basis. Learn more about the CFR on govinfo.
The e-CFR is provided separately from govinfo by the Office of the Federal Register (OFR). It is an unofficial web version of the Code of Federal Regulations that is updated daily to better reflect the current status. It is not an official legal edition of the CFR. The e-CFR is an editorial compilation of CFR material and Federal Register amendments. The OFR updates the material in the e-CFR on a daily basis. Learn more about the e-CFR.
Developer Tool Enhancements
API
- E-CFR and Congressional Bill Status bulk data content can now be accessed using the API – use ECFR and BILLSTATUS in the collections request. GitHub API Issue #4)
- For the Congressional Record Index and History of Bills collections, an md5 value was added to the granules response which will allow for determining whether the granule text has changed by comparing against the previously retrieved version's md5 hash value. (GitHub API Issue #10)
- Documentation was updated to include congress as an optional query parameter in collections requests.
Visit the API or take a tour.
Link service
Now create links to the most recent House and Senate Calendars, Congressional Record, U.S. Code, and Federal Register. For example, use this URL to always link to the PDF for the most recent issue of the Federal Register: www.govinfo.gov/link/fr/latest?link-type=pdf (GitHub Link Service Issue #4)
Visit the link service or learn more.
See all available developer tools.
Miscellaneous Fixes and Enhancements
Please note that certain fixes and enhancements listed below may require content to be re-processed or re-published for the updates to take effect. This will be completed over a period of time. Content made available after these fixes and enhancements have been implemented will reflect the updates.
Below are the miscellaneous fixes and enhancements made in the release in addition to various minor component upgrades, security enhancements, code to support future availability of additional digitized content and beta USLM XML for certain collections, and improvements to the content management system.
- Many browsers will automatically open files (for example, PDFs) from the internet within the browser instead of downloading to your device for opening in the applicable software. We noticed many large files on govinfo were causing browsers to freeze and crash so an update was made to configure automatic download for files over 200MB in any collection. See an example of a PDF that opens in your browser versus one that will automatically download for viewing in Adobe software. Please note you can choose the option in your browser settings to download all files regardless of size rather than opening in the web browser.
- Fixed parsing of held dates for Congressional Hearings when the dates span more than one month or year. See example of a hearing with held dates in two different years.
- Fixed parsing of Congressional Committee for some hearings that were being misidentified as House Appropriations Committee hearings and were therefore displaying incorrectly on the committee page.
- Fixed parsing of roll call vote information that was missing from MODS and Details pages for certain Congressional Record documents. See example of such a document with roll call vote information displayed on the Details page.
- Fixed the Sponsor and Co-sponsor search filter to include cosponsors correctly when searching bills, and fixed display of duplicate values in the Sponsors and Co-sponsors search filter when searching History of Bills.
- Made updates to display the new Consensus Calendar section in House calendars starting with the 116th Congress. See example of a Consensus Calendar.
- Fixed submission issues with the Compilation of Presidential Documents collection.
- Fixed parsing short titles from bills when varying language is used in the bill text. For example, short titles may be identified in bill text with "This Act may be referred to as...", "This Act may cited as...", or other similar variations.
- Fixed parsing names of members of congress in the Congressional Directory when a nickname is used. See, for example, Henry C. "Hank" Johnson, and Earl L. "Buddy" Carter.
- Added Title 34 as an option to citation search for the U.S. Code. Title 34, Crime Control and Law Enforcement, is a recent addition to the U.S. Code.
Recently Added Content
Economic Report of the President
March 19, 2019 - GPO and the Council of Economic Advisers Release the Economic Report of the President
Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2020
Updated March 18, 2019 - GPO and OMB Release President Trump's Budget
President's State of the Union Address
Updated February 6, 2019 - As printed in the Congressional Record and previous presidential addresses
Feature Article Highlights
115th Birthday of Dr. Seuss
March 1, 2019 – Yertle the Turtle in the Congressional Record and more!
Centennial of Grand Canyon National Park
February 26, 2019 – Grand Canyon National Park was officially designated as a national park 100 years ago
Anniversary of the First Live Televised Presidential News Conference
January 25, 2019 – 58 years ago, President John F. Kennedy held the first live televised presidential news conference
Coming Soon
Some things we're working on next.
- API enhancements
- Search and display fixes and enhancements
- Additional digitized content