Comparison of U.S. Legislative Resources on Government and Non-Government Web Sites

GPO Access, a U.S. federal service that provides free electronic access to government information, has produced a comparison of American legislative resources available on various government and non-government websites.

The analysis compared the availability, scope and coverage of legislative resources on 4 government websites (GPO Access, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Congressional site THOMAS) and on 4 commercial services (CQ.com, HeinOnline, Lexis-Nexis Congressional, and Westlaw):

"The comparative analysis yielded the following key findings:

• GPO Access has the largest total number of legislative resources among those evaluated.
• All Government Web sites, with the exception of GPO Access, utilize at least some external content by linking to other Web sites.
• On House.gov and Senate.gov, most of the legislative resources link to other Web sites to supplement their information.
• House.gov and Senate.gov mostly link to GPO Access rather than THOMAS to supplement their information, and in some cases link to both external services.
• THOMAS links to House.gov for a very small amount of resources.
• The scope (number of years covered) of most resources on GPO Access is exceeded by the following: House.gov;THOMAS; Lexis-Nexis; HeinOnline; CQ.com
• Non-Government Web sites possess their own content, but in a very small number of cases will supplement that information with a link to GPO Access, and in one case, a link to a Library of Congress site.
• Lexis-Nexis, CQ.com, Senate.gov, and THOMAS offer a significant amount of additional legislative resources and features not offered on GPO Access."

[Source: beSpacific]