Strategies for Identifying Reporting Requirements and Submitted Reporting to Congress

Strategies for Identifying Reporting Requirements and Submitted Reporting to Congress

Strategies for Identifying Reporting
December 10, 2021
Requirements and Submitted Reporting to
Kathleen E. Marchsteiner
Congress
Senior Research Librarian

Congress may direct federal and independent agencies, commissions, and the President to
prepare and submit required reports to Congress and its committees as a function of its oversight

of the executive branch and to obtain information for the purposes of enacting legislation. These
reporting requirements may be located in public laws, the United States Code, and committee reports.
Reporting requirements may vary widely in aspects such as deadlines, requested content, and congressional entities to which
the reports are to be submitted. The forms in which reports are delivered, including the submission of written materials or in-
person delivery through briefings or testimonies, also vary. Additionally, the purpose reporting serves varies and may include
facilitating oversight, ensuring compliance, and generally informing congressional study and decisionmaking.
For Congress, a first step in considering new or leveraging current reporting requirements may involve identifying what
reporting requirements exist, determining when submissions were due, and then locating the reporting that was submitted to
Congress or reasonably establishing that reporting was not submitted. However, identifying what reporting requirements are
due to Congress and which reporting has already been submitted is often difficult. Difficulties result from the need to
translate variations in the language Congress used in drafting, report types, and underlying purposes of reporting
requirements into search strategies.
As such, carefully constructing and systematically using search strategies to mitigate these difficulties may be helpful. These
strategies may include the following:
 Identifying authoritative sources with effective search engines in which to search the United States Code,
public laws, or committee reports;
 Selecting relevant search terms by considering report submitters, recipients, forms, and timing;
 Utilizing search engine rules in order to maximize positive search results and minimize negative results;
and
 Experimenting with different search strategies.
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Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Overview of Reporting Requirements to Congress: Statutory and Report Language ..................... 1
Searching for Reporting Requirements to Congress ....................................................................... 3
Selecting Search Terms ............................................................................................................. 3
Search Engine “Rules” .............................................................................................................. 4
Sources and Search Strategies ................................................................................................... 5
Strategies for Locating Submitted Reports .................................................................................... 10
How Reports Are Submitted to Congress ............................................................................... 10
Sources for Submitted Reports ................................................................................................ 10

Contacts
Author Information ........................................................................................................................ 12

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Strategies for Identifying Reporting Requirements and Submitted Reporting to Congress

Introduction
Congress may direct federal and independent agencies, commissions, and the President to prepare
and submit required reports to Congress and its committees as a function of its oversight of the
executive branch and to obtain information for the purposes of enacting legislation. These
reporting requirements may be located in public laws, the United States Code, and committee
reports.
When found in statutes, reporting requirements are legally binding directives by Congress to
federal entities. By contrast, when found in committee reports, reporting requirements do not
carry the force of the law. Nonetheless, because committee reports are authoritative records and
serve to establish congressional intent and need, federal entities may still choose to satisfy the
reporting requirements due to the significance Congress has imparted upon them and to preserve
their relationships with committees of jurisdiction.
Reporting requirements have a number of potentially valuable uses for Congress. These
requirements and the subsequently submitted reporting may serve to facilitate oversight, ensure
compliance, and inform congressional decisionmaking.1 Information contained in required
reporting could be used for developing questions in advance of a hearing, and submitted reports
themselves may confirm executive branch compliance with a previous requirement. Moreover, a
new reporting requirement may be considered on the basis of a perceived need for information
not addressed by currently existing reporting requirements of executive branch activities.
However, identifying what reporting requirements are due to Congress and which reporting has
already been submitted is often difficult. Difficulties result from factors such as differences in the
language Congress uses in drafting the reporting requirements, variations in the types of
reporting, and differences in the underlying purposes of reporting requirements. Because of these
difficulties, it is often not possible to comprehensively identify either all submitted reporting or
reporting requirements due from any given federal entity or on any given topic.
To facilitate overcoming such difficulties, this report describes a variety of search methods across
several databases that may be used to locate existing reporting requirements to Congress and
required reports that have previously been submitted to Congress. It identifies how reporting
requirements vary, explores how these variations make comprehensive searching on the topic
difficult, and provides strategies for attempting to overcome these difficulties. The report also
provides an overview of sources for reports submitted to Congress that may be of assistance to
staff researching this topic.
Overview of Reporting Requirements to Congress:
Statutory and Report Language
A statutory reporting requirement to Congress appears in law and directs an executive branch
entity to transmit specific information to Congress. The statutory language of reporting
requirements may be structured in various ways. Individual reporting requirements may differ in

1 For more general information on congressionally mandated reports, see CRS Report R46357, Congressionally
Mandated Reports: Overview and Considerations for Congress, by William T. Egar; CRS Report R42490,
Reexamination of Agency Reporting Requirements: Annual Process Under the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010
(GPRAMA), by Clinton T. Brass; and CRS Report RL30240, Congressional Oversight Manual, coordinated by
Christopher M. Davis, Walter J. Oleszek, and Ben Wilhelm. The report by William Egar (R46357) has been archived
but it is available to congressional clients upon request.
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the naming of submitters and recipients, forms of submissions, types of actions that need to be
taken to transmit the information, and in the listing of timing mechanisms that trigger the report
submissions. Such language may include the following categories of information:
 Report submitters. Congress often mandates the submission of reports to itself
from the President, executive agencies, independent agencies, commissions, and
other federal departments and entities. In some cases, reporting requirements may
not make explicit reference to an agency or government entity as the transmitter
of a report, but rather may require a senior official or other delegate within an
agency to be the one to submit the report to Congress.
 Report recipients. Recipients may be Congress in general, congressional
committees, committee chairs and ranking members, or congressional leaders
such as the Speaker of the House or the President Pro Tempore of the Senate.2
Some statutory reporting requirements may not identify Congress as the specific
recipient, because Congress may intend for other audiences to use the
information as well.3
 Report forms. Forms of submissions may include physical documents, such as
reports, studies, assessments, notifications, or audits. However, in-person
meetings, testimonies, or briefings may also be considered forms of reports to
Congress and may serve as a means of satisfying certain reporting requirements.
In addition, a reporting requirement comprising a single sentence may necessitate
multiple actions by an agency and so the number of reporting requirements for
any given agency may not necessarily equal the number of actions taken or
documents delivered to satisfy these requirements. As a consequence, counting
reporting requirements may be difficult and results may depend on the
methodology used to execute the count.
 Report timing. Timing of submissions may also vary depending on the statutory
language: reports and other information might be required to be submitted once
(e.g., by a specified date), on a recurring basis (e.g., annually), or as specified
circumstances arise (e.g., each time the agency head takes a particular action).4
That reporting requirements appear in statutes and public laws imparts the reporting requirements
in these documents the force of law. However, in many cases, reporting requirements also may be
found in congressional documents that are not law. For instance, reporting requirements found in
congressional committee reports do not by themselves carry the force of the law,5 though they are
authoritative records and may serve to establish congressional intent and need.6 Additionally,

2 This report focuses on reporting requirements to be made to Congress, but some reporting requirements may also
specify the President or other executive agencies as recipients for agency reporting.
3 For discussion, see CRS Report R42490, Reexamination of Agency Reporting Requirements: Annual Process Under
the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRAMA), by Clinton T. Brass.
4 In the latter cases, depending on how often varied “specified circumstances” arise, some reports may be required to be
submitted zero, one, or multiple times. An example of a reporting requirement provision that illustrates a specified
circumstance is the following excerpt from 42 U.S.C. §247d-6d(b)(9): “Within 30 days after making a declaration
under paragraph (1), the Secretary [of Health and Human Services] shall submit to the appropriate committees of the
Congress a report that provides an explanation of the reasons for issuing the declaration and the reasons underlying the
determinations of the Secretary with respect to paragraph (2).”
5 For more information on committee reports, see CRS Report 98-305, Senate Committee Reports: Required Contents,
by Elizabeth Rybicki; and CRS Report 98-169, House Committee Reports: Required Contents, by Judy Schneider.
6 Note that if a statute incorporates committee report language by reference and that incorporated language includes a
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reporting requirements may appear in formally introduced legislation that simply does not
become law. In both these instances, agencies may still choose to submit reports to Congress due
to the significance Congress has imparted upon them or to preserve their relationships with
committees of jurisdiction.7 Alternatively, there may be informal understandings between
congressional committees and agencies on which report language is relevant that will affect how
an agency chooses to respond to a reporting requirement.
All of these variations serve to complicate the process of devising a strategy to search for both
existing requirements and reporting already submitted to Congress.
Searching for Reporting Requirements to Congress
Reporting requirements are, typically, sections of text that are embedded in much larger
documents, such as provisions in public laws and committee reports. Isolating the relevant
sections of text (i.e., reporting requirements) from the larger documents may be difficult; thus, the
following are three key considerations for searchers developing a search strategy:
 Searches that attempt to be comprehensive are expansive and may yield more
nonrelevant results than can be reasonably sifted through to isolate relevant
reporting requirements.
 Searches that attempt to be precise are narrow and may exclude relevant
reporting requirements from the search results.
 Searchers may expect to experiment with changes to their search strategies to
balance the sometimes competing needs to be both comprehensive and precise to
return the best results within the time available.
Searching techniques that can help mitigate difficulties include selecting relevant search terms
and leveraging search engine “rules” such as proximity searching. The selection of search terms
is facilitated by taking an inventory of what is known both generally and specifically about the
particular reporting requirements being researched. To assist with this task, a selection of
common elements that may be known about existing reporting requirements is included below.
Proximity searching is discussed as a technique for lessening the number of search results when a
search with relevant terms returns results too large for the purposes of a project.
Selecting Search Terms
Search terms—also known as keywords—are words relating to the topic or subject at hand that
can be typed into a search engine or database to find relevant information. Depending on a
searcher’s level of familiarity with a subject area, a first step may involve contacting subject
matter specialists, who might assist in identifying relevant terms of art to include as search terms.
Individual terms, and synonyms for those terms, may be searched using word variants, including
forms of the same word with prefixes, suffixes, and plurals. Terms can also be searched in various
combinations with each other. By applying these techniques and experimenting with different
variations of a search strategy, the number of results in a search may be narrowed or expanded.8

reporting requirement, then the reporting requirement becomes legally binding.
7 For additional information, please see CRS Report R45442, Congress’s Authority to Influence and Control Executive
Branch Agencies, by Todd Garvey and Daniel J. Sheffner.
8 Congressional Research Service (CRS) subject matter experts are available to provide assistance to congressional
clients identifying search terms and developing search strategies.
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In addition to identifying terms of art, relevant terms in a search for reporting requirements could
also include instances of one or all of the following categories of terms: report submitters and
recipients; forms of report submissions; and timing mechanisms that trigger the report
submissions.
Report Submitters
Congress often mandates the submission of reports from the President, Office of Management
and Budget, executive agencies, independent agencies, commissions, and other federal
departments and entities. As such, relevant search terms related to report submitters could include
specific names of departments, their agencies or their bureaus, such as the Department of Health
and Human Services or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In some cases, reporting
requirements may not make explicit reference to an agency or government entity itself as the
transmitter of a report, but rather may require a senior official or other delegate within an agency
to be the one to submit the report to Congress. In these cases, relevant search terms for these
senior officials might include keywords such as Secretary, Administrator, or Director.
Report Recipients
Report recipients may be Congress in general, congressional committees, committee chairs and
ranking members, or congressional leaders. Relevant search terms related to report recipients
could include specific congressional committees, such as the House Committee on the Budget (or,
synonymously, the House Budget Committee) or specific leadership titles, like the Speaker of the
House. Alternatively, “Congress” itself could be a potential search term to use in concert with
other terms if seeking a report or reports submitted to Congress as a whole.
Report Forms
Reports may be submitted to Congress in various forms, from physical documents to in-person
meetings. Depending on the information being sought, relevant search terms related to the
physical forms could include reports, studies, assessments, notifications, or audits. Alternatively,
to search for reports submitted in-person or verbally to Congress, search terms such as meetings,
testimonies, or briefings could be used. Searching for the verb forms of these words—such as
meet, testify, or brief—may also yield relevant results.
Report Timing
The timing of the submission of reports and other information can vary. Some reports might be
required to be submitted once (e.g., by a specified date), on a recurring basis (e.g., annually), or
as specified circumstances arise (e.g., each time the agency head takes a particular action).
Relevant search terms related to timing could include keywords or phrases such as “annual,”
“biannual,” “biennial,” “not later than,” or “each time.”
Often, identifying relevant search terms alone may not sufficiently narrow the search results. For
instance, a frequent challenge is that relevant search terms may be composed of common terms
that appear throughout both relevant and nonrelevant parts of the searched text. To overcome this
challenge, combining key word searching with other search tools can help.
Search Engine “Rules”
Searching websites often means searching a database using the search engine provided by the
website owner. Search engines have “rules” specifying how letters and symbols typed into the
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search box on the website generate search results. These search engines can differ, and while one
website may include boxes labeled to indicate what rules may be applied to a term being entered,
others may be composed of a simple search box without a label of any sort. Some websites offer
both labeled boxes and simple search boxes. Most websites also provide instructions for using
search engine rules that are variously labeled “help,” “tips,” or “tools.”
Learning to apply these rules in combination with knowledge about reporting requirements can
lead to more effective searching. Two of these rules that are particularly useful—quotation marks
and proximity searches—are available for use in the key sources discussed below.
 In many search engines, quotation marks around a phrase instruct the website to
return only results that contain the phrase as a whole and not the individual
words. For example, a search on “Department of Education” will return only
results that include the entire phrase and not each time “department” or
“education” appears individually.
 Proximity searches are used to identify instances within a document in which two
or more search terms (either words or phrases) appear within a specified number
of other words from each other.9 Varying the number of words specified between
search terms in a proximity search allows a searcher an enhanced ability to
expand or narrow search results than would otherwise be allowed by the Boolean
operator “and.”
Sources and Search Strategies
This section identifies important sources that contain reporting requirements, briefly discusses
search strategies, and provides sample searches that employ quotation marks and proximity
searching.
Congressional reporting requirements can be found in the United States Code (U.S. Code), public
laws, congressional committee reports, and in “Reports to be Made to Congress,” an annually
published House report. Search strategies within these sources may be developed with the
specific goals and resource constraints (e.g., time or people) of a project in mind. For example, a
search strategy seeking to identify as many reporting requirements as possible on a topic will be
different than a search strategy identifying one example of a reporting requirement on a topic.
Regardless of the source being searched, important general considerations when developing
search strategies are as follows:
 The development of search strategies typically is an iterative process; search
strategies may be repeatedly adjusted based on the results of prior (i.e., actual)
searches.
 Careful, systematic documentation of search strategies used for a project will
help ensure these adjustments effectively meet the goals of a project.
 An effective search strategy may lessen the work of reviewing search results but
seldom eliminates it.

9 Some search engines also allow a search specifying a number of characters between search terms. Others allow a
search specifying both the number of characters or words between search terms and the order in which the search terms
must appear to be included in the search results.
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More specifically, when developing a search strategy for reporting requirements:
 Read the instructions to the search engine rules for each source searched, because
most sources vary in their application of broadly similar types of these rules;
 Select relevant search terms, which often will include terms representing one or
more of the categories of search terms described above (submitter, recipient,
form, and timing) combined with terms of art related to the topic of the reporting
requirement; and
 Leverage search rules—such as quotation marks or a proximity search—to limit
the number of search results by more precisely targeting the information that is
required.
United States Code
Because reporting requirements in the U.S. Code are legally binding, it is perhaps the most
important source when searching for reporting requirements to Congress. The U.S. Code is a
consolidation and codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United
States.10 Some, but not all, reporting requirements enacted into law have been codified into the
U.S. Code.11 Some statutory reporting requirements are located in freestanding public laws
published in the Statutes at Large.12 Note that only general and permanent law is codified, so one-
time reporting requirements—such as those in the text of an annual appropriations act—may not
appear in this resource.13
Website and instructions
 Website: https://uscode.house.gov.
 Instructions for searching: https://uscode.house.gov/static/help.html.
Sample question and search example
 Question: What reports are listed in the U.S. Code as due to Congress from the
Small Business Administration (SBA)?
 Search example: “small business administration” near/8 report.
 Search results: 14.14
Search notes and results
 Quotation marks around “small business administration” instruct the database to
return only results in which all three words appear immediately next to one
another.
 The proximity operator “near/8” further instructs the database to search the
results returned by the “small business administration” portion of the search for

10 For more information on the United States Code, please see https://uscode.house.gov/about_code.xhtml.
11 For discussion, see U.S. House of Representatives, Office of the Law Revision Counsel, “About Classification of
Laws to the United States Code,” at https://uscode.house.gov/about_classification.xhtml.
12 Some of these freestanding statutes have been compiled unofficially by the House Office of Legislative Counsel. See
U.S. House of Representatives, Office of the Legislative Counsel, “Statute Compilations,” at http://legcoun.house.gov/
members/HOLC/Resources/comps_alpha.html.
13 For more information on federal statutes, please see CRS Report R45190, From Slip Law to United States Code: A
Guide to Federal Statutes for Congressional Staff, by Eva M. Tarnay.
14 As of December 1, 2021.
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instances in which the phrase “small business administration” appears within
eight words—either before or after—of the word report.
 Because the word report is not in quotes, the search engine searches for minor
variations of “report,” such as “reports.”
 There may be more than one relevant reporting requirement within each of these
14 results; for example, one result may identify a section of the U.S. Code that
has multiple distinct relevant entries within. The text of each result should be
examined.
 These 14 results may not be comprehensive of all reporting due to Congress from
the SBA. Additional searches using other terms could provide evidence for more
reporting. For example, the search element representing the form of a report
could be changed to an audit, briefing, or study.
Public Laws
Public laws may be searched for reporting requirements in order to identify requirements in laws
that have not been codified, such as in recently passed legislation or appropriations acts.15
Website and instructions
 Website: https://www.congress.gov/.
 Instructions for searching: https://www.congress.gov/help/search-tools-overview.
Sample question and search example
 Question: What reports are listed in public law as due to Congress from the U.S.
Fish & Wildlife Service?
 Search example: “fish wildlife report”~8.16
 Search results: 37.17
Search notes and results
 To conduct the search above, first, select the Advanced Search tab on
Congress.gov, under Congress options select the checkbox “1973-2022”,18 and
under the Words and Phrases options enter the search example exactly as shown
above into the search box.
 The proximity operator on Congress.gov is a tilde symbol, or “~”. Using it
instructs the database to search the results for instances in which the searched
words within the quotation marks appear near each other in the text.
 The default search on Congress.gov only searches bill titles and summaries. To
find reporting requirements, change the default and search the full bill texts. To

15 For information on currency and updating of the U.S. Code, https://uscode.house.gov/currency/
currency.shtml;jsessionid=BCD3BD81F147E96D3BC6462E715A252E.
16 When creating a proximity search on Congress.gov, it may be helpful to eliminate articles (e.g., “the”), prepositions
(e.g., “of”) and conjunctions (e.g., “and”) in order to streamline the search.
17 As of December 1, 2021.
18 The “1951-1972” and “1799-1811, 1813-1873” Congress checkboxes are also available when constructing
Congress.gov searches of public laws, though available data on legislation in these historical Congresses varies. For
more information on the scope and coverage of legislation on Congress.gov, please see https://www.congress.gov/help/
legislation. You may consider searching these historical Congresses separately. In any case, the needs of your specific
project may be helpful in deciding how many years of legislation to search.
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do this, after selecting the Advanced Search tab, find the Words and Phrases
options, select “Only these fields,” deselect “Titles” and “Summaries,” and select
“Bill Text.”
 To search only bills that have become law, under Actions/Status find the Quick
List options, and select “Laws” (the last option in the list).
 Select search in the far right column to query the Congress.gov database.
 Review the results to identify which of the results are relevant and consider
whether there may be more than one relevant reporting requirement within the
laws returned by this search.
 These 37 results may not be comprehensive of all reporting due to Congress from
the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Additional searches using other terms could
provide evidence for more reporting. For example, the search element
representing the form of a report could be changed to an audit, briefing, or study.
Committee Reports
Reporting requirements may also be located in committee reports. Although these reports may not
have equivalent significance as those requirements included in public laws, they are nonetheless
authoritative records and serve to establish congressional intent and need.19
Website and instructions
 Website: https://www.congress.gov/.20
 Instructions for searching: https://www.congress.gov/help/search-tools-overview.
Sample question and search example
 Question: What notifications due to Congress from the Department of the Interior
are listed in congressional committee reports?
 Search:—“interior notify”~8.21
 Search results: 112.22
Search notes and results
 To conduct the search above, click the Committee Reports tab on Congress.gov
and type the search string in the Words & Phrases search box. Select “All
Congresses (1995-present).”
 The proximity operator on Congress.gov is a tilde symbol, or “~”. Using it
instructs the database to search the results for instances in which the searched
words within the quotation marks appear near each other in the text.
 To narrow the search to exclude executive reports—a kind of committee report
issued by Senate committees reporting on treaties and nominations—select
“House” and “Senate” only under Report Types in the search box.

19 For additional information, please see CRS Report R45442, Congress’s Authority to Influence and Control Executive
Branch Agencies, by Todd Garvey and Daniel J. Sheffner.
20 For more information on congressional committees, please see https://www.congress.gov/committees.
21 When creating a proximity search on Congress.gov, it may be helpful to eliminate any articles such as “the,” “of,”
and “and” in order to streamline the search.
22 As of December 1, 2021.
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 To narrow the results to reports from a certain committee (or a certain set of
committees), select “committees” from the drop down menu on the right side of
the search box.
 There may be more than one relevant reporting requirement within each of these
112 results. The text of each result should be examined for relevance.
 These 112 results may not be comprehensive of all mandated notifications due to
Congress from the Department of the Interior. Additional searches using other
terms could provide evidence for more reporting. For example, the search
element representing the form of a report could be changed to an audit, briefing,
or study.
 If the goal is to search specifically for committee activity reports, which provide
an overview of a committee’s work the previous Congress, a Congress.gov
search like the following may help: “activity report”~8. The search can be
narrowed by selecting the committee of choice as described previously.
Committee activity report content varies, so some may include information on
reporting requirements and others may not.
“Reports to Be Made to Congress” Publication
Pursuant to Clause 2(b), Rule II of the Rules of the House of Representatives,23 the Office of the
Clerk of the House annually publishes the “Reports to Be Made to Congress” report.24 Prepared
by the Legislative Resource Center within the House Clerk’s office, this publication contains a
list of reports from federal entities or “reports which it is the duty of any officer or Department to
make to Congress.”
The “Reports to Be Made to Congress” publication is intended to provide reporting requirements
to be made to Congress in general by federal entities. It does not include reports that agencies
may be required to submit specifically to congressional committees or individuals. As in
evaluating any reporting requirement, checking the expiration dates of the reporting requirements
is helpful.
The publication lists the reports due to Congress in the following order:
 Reports by the Legislative Branch;
 Reports by the Judicial Branch;
 Reports by the President of the United States;
 Reports by Cabinet Level Departments;
 Reports by Multiple Executive Agencies and Departments;
 Reports by Independent Agencies, Boards, and Commissions; and
 Reports by Federally Chartered Private Corporations.

23 U.S. Congress. House Rules of the 117th Congress, prepared by The Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives, 117th
Cong., 1st sess., available at https://rules.house.gov/sites/democrats.rules.house.gov/files/117-House-Rules-Clerk.pdf.
24 The most recent report was published in January 2021. See U.S. Congress, Reports to be Made to Congress, prepared
by The Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives, 117th Cong., 1st sess., H.Doc. 117-4 (Washington: GPO, 2021), available
at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-117hdoc4/pdf/CDOC-117hdoc4.pdf.
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For each reporting requirement identified, the publication lists the nature of the report, federal
authority, and date or frequency by which the report submissions are due.25 If interested in reports
due to Congress from a specific entity, use the Table of Contents to identify the page where that
information can be found. Alternatively, the publication can be searched for relevant keywords,
such as the report submitter or subject matter.
The publication also provides a list of reporting requirements with “sunset provisions.” In this
section, the included reporting requirements have dates by which the individual requirements
expire or will be terminated.
Strategies for Locating Submitted Reports
How Reports Are Submitted to Congress
Reports may be submitted to Congress in several ways.
 Agencies may submit physical copies of required reports to congressional
committees, committee leadership, or to Congress in general without a specified
recipient.
 In cases where the required reporting is described in statute as a testimony,
meeting, briefing, or other in-person or oral report, the report may be delivered
in-person before the respective recipients (i.e., committees, individuals, or to
Congress in general) with or without an accompanying written report.
 Timing of submissions may vary; reports and other information may be required
to be submitted once (e.g., by a specified date), on a recurring basis (e.g.,
annually), or as specified circumstances arise (e.g., each time the Secretary takes
a particular action).26
Sources for Submitted Reports
There is no single repository for reports submitted to Congress; as such, copies of these reports
may be difficult to obtain. In some cases it may be easier to verify that a report was submitted
than to locate a copy of the report.
Congressional Record
Written reports due to Congress in general are typically submitted as Executive Communications
(ECs). The House and Senate Executive Clerks’ Offices record the EC submissions and create an
abstract to be published in the Congressional Record.27 The actual documents are then given to
the congressional committees to which they have been referred by the House or Senate
Parliamentarian’s Office. The House and Senate Parliamentarians’ Offices and the House and
Senate Executive Clerks’ Offices do not retain copies of submitted written reports. Thus, the full-
text versions of reports are generally available in internal committee records or if the respective
committee or the executive branch agency publish them online or elsewhere.

25 More details on each report listed in “Reports to be Made to Congress” can be found in the associated federal
authorities as listed in the document.
26 In the latter cases, depending on how often varied “specified circumstances” arise, some reports may be required to
be submitted zero, one, or multiple times.
27 The full text of executive communications is never included in the Congressional Record.
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Member, Committee, or Agency Websites
Some congressional committees and federal agencies may make certain reports available on their
public websites. Others may send copies to interested professional organizations or advocacy
groups. The public release of such reports is up to the discretion of the entities receiving or
issuing them (and in some cases depends on the classified nature of the report). On occasion,
however, Congress includes in statute a requirement for a report to be posted on a publicly
accessible website.
Agency compliance with reporting requirements can also be difficult to determine. As mentioned
previously, reports that are submitted to Congress in general are recorded by the House and
Senate Executive Clerks’ Offices; these abstracts are inserted in the Congressional Record and are
searchable in the respective House and Senate Communications tab on Congress.gov.28 However,
if agencies submit their reports directly to committees instead, the transmission may not be
recorded and there may not be a public record of the transmission outside of internal committee
records and internal agency records.
Committee Clerks
Congressional committee clerks may be able to assist congressional staff in determining the status
of reporting submitted or referred to their committees. They may also be able to assist in locating
copies of transmitted reports. The release of information related to this reporting is at the
discretion of each committee.
Hearings
In some cases, reports that are required to be submitted to Congress or to a specific committee
may be included in hearings and as such may be found in hearing transcripts. For example, if a
report is required to be submitted in person, the transcript of the relaying official’s remarks may
be included in the hearing record. This also may be the case if the record of a submitted written
report is included in the hearing transcript. Hearing transcripts may be located on a multitude of
platforms, including congressional committee websites, the Government Publishing Office’s
(GPO’s) GovInfo website,29 and the ProQuest Congressional database.30
Congressional Liaisons for Federal Agencies
In some cases, the congressional liaison offices for federal agencies may be able to assist in
locating copies of reporting their agencies have submitted to Congress. Congressional liaison
contact information is available to congressional staff at https://www.crs.gov/Resources/
LiaisonOffices.

28 Executive Communications (ECs) are listed by communication number in the Congressional Record, which is
available online from 1989 to present at https://www.congress.gov and in printed form for previous years. In addition,
the online version of the Daily Digest on Congress.gov provides a link to the Congressional Record page(s) that list
that day’s executive communications. ECs within House and Senate Communications are also available for searching
and browsing on Congress.gov at https://www.congress.gov/.
29 GPO’s GovInfo hearing transcript collection is available at https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/chrg/87.
30 ProQuest Congressional is a database available to congressional staff on congressional devices at
https://congressional.proquest.com.
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Strategies for Identifying Reporting Requirements and Submitted Reporting to Congress

Freedom of Information Act
Congressional staff in their personal capacity, members of the public, and constituents may also
be able to obtain copies of transmitted reports by submitting a Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA). The submitted reports may be provided if the release of such information is not
prohibited under an exemption in statute.31

Author Information

Kathleen E. Marchsteiner

Senior Research Librarian

Acknowledgments
The following individuals provided valuable input on this report: Clinton Brass, Specialist in Government
Organization and Management; Todd Garvey, Legislative Attorney; Michael Greene, Analyst on Congress
and the Legislative Process; Jennifer Manning, Senior Research Librarian; and Ben Wilhelm, Analyst in
Government Organization and Management.

Disclaimer
This document was prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). CRS serves as nonpartisan
shared staff to congressional committees and Members of Congress. It operates solely at the behest of and
under the direction of Congress. Information in a CRS Report should not be relied upon for purposes other
than public understanding of information that has been provided by CRS to Members of Congress in
connection with CRS’s institutional role. CRS Reports, as a work of the United States Government, are not
subject to copyright protection in the United States. Any CRS Report may be reproduced and distributed in
its entirety without permission from CRS. However, as a CRS Report may include copyrighted images or
material from a third party, you may need to obtain the permission of the copyright holder if you wish to
copy or otherwise use copyrighted material.

31 The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), codified at 5 U.S.C. §552, provides the public a right to access federal
agency information. For more information on FOIA, see CRS In Focus IF11450, The Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA): An Introduction, by Daniel J. Sheffner.
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