Congressional Research Service Fiscal 2015
The Director’s Message:
From international conflicts and humanitarian crises, to immigration, transportation, and secondary education, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) helped every congressional office and committee navigate the wide range of complex and controversial issues that confronted Congress in FY2015.
We kicked off the year strongly, preparing for the newly elected Members of the 114th Congress with the tenth biannual CRS Seminar for New Members, and wrapped up 2015 supporting the transition to a new Speaker and the crafting of the omnibus appropriations bill. In between, CRS experts answered over 62,000 individual requests; hosted over 7,400 Congressional participants at seminars, briefings and trainings; provided over 3,600 new or refreshed products; and summarized over 8,000 pieces of legislation.
While the CRS mission remains the same, Congress and the environment in which it works are continually evolving. To ensure that the Service is well positioned to anticipate and meet the information and research needs of a 21st-century Congress, we launched a comprehensive strategic planning effort that has identified the most critical priorities, goals, and objectives that will enable us to most efficiently and effectively serve Congress as CRS moves into its second century.
Responding to the increasingly rapid pace of congressional business, and taking advantage of new technologies, we continued to explore new and innovative ways to deliver authoritative information and timely analysis to Congress. For example, we introduced shorter report formats and added infographics to our website CRS.gov to better serve congressional needs.
It is an honor and privilege to work for the U.S. Congress. With great dedication, our staff creatively supports Members, staff and committees as they help shape and direct the legislative process and our nation’s future. Our accomplishments in fiscal 2015 reflect that dedication.
All true but also true that the funders of all those wonderful efforts, taxpayers, have spotty and/or erratic access to those research goodies.
Perhaps that will change in the not too distant future.
But until then, perhaps a list of all the new CRS products in 2015, which runs from page 47 to page 124 may be of interest.
Not all entries are unique as they may appear under different categories.
Sadly the only navigation you are offered is by chunky categories like “Health” and “Law and Justice.”
Hmmm, perhaps that can be fixed, at least to some degree.
Watch for more CRS news this coming week.