GPOAccess Out, FDSys In

Since 1995 GPO Access has been the online platform on which the federal government has made information accessible on the Internet. GPO Access relied on WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers), an antiquated pre-web technology that made it difficult for the average user to search and locate information. At the end of 2010, GPO will sunset GPO Access and migrate its content to the Federal Digital System (FDsys – pronounced effdeesis). FDsys, an advanced digital system that will enable GPO to manage Government information from all three branches of the Federal Government, will be a powerful tool to access online Federal information as well as a preservation repository for Federal agencies.

FDSys makes electronically accessible the Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations, the Compilation of Presidential Documents, Congressional Bills, Congressional Documents and Prints, the Congressional Record, the Congressional Directory, the Economic Report of the President, the Federal Budget, Public and Private Laws, and the United States Code, and more. The new platform will offer greater functionality than GPO Access, including the ability to search across multiple collections with keyword searches. GPO promises that all the data in FDSys will remain freely electronically accessible.

For information on how to use FDsys, select the Help link to the right of main search box or see the PDF copy of the 97-page Federal Digital System (FDsys) Search User Manual. There are also video tutorials on how to use FDSys:

• FDsys Overview - This video is a brief overview on the background of FDsys.
• FDsys Simple Search - This is a video tutorial on how to perform simple searches within the system and filter your results.
• FDsys Advanced Search - This is a video tutorial on how to perform advanced searches and citation searches within the system.
• FDsys Browse - This is a video tutorial on how to browse for government publications within FDsys.