InfoGuides: Researching Congress, Federal Agencies &amp; Virginia Legislation: Research an Agency

Step 1 (A & B): Find Basic Information about Your Agency

A: Leadership, Mission, Structure/Org Chart

There's always the agency website, but you should also go to the U.S. Government Manual for a concise profile of your agency.

United States Government Manual (with tutorial)
Brief profiles of every federal government agency, department, commission, etc. Includes leadership & a brief description. Some entries include org charts, missions statements, agency history, and more. NOTE: the link includes a "guide on the side" tutorial to help you locate an agency. Note: the tutorial is from a class exercise, so disregard the class-specific comments!

B: Core Statutory Law

To understand an agency's statutory mandate, you'll want to read the law that created your agency. You should have found the U.S. Code citation in the U.S. Goverment Manual. Now look up the law itself.

United States Code
Jump to your citation or browse to the right title and section.

Step 2: Find your Agency's Rules & Regulations

A: Learn about your agency's current & recent regulatory action

Federal Register
The Federal Register is the official daily publication containing rules, proposed rules, and notices from federal agencies.
1) At the top of the page, click Browse, then Agencies
2) Select your agency
3) Scroll down to see a listing of "Recently Published Documents"
Justitia Regulations
A search interface ideal for asking "what rules/regulations has my agency proposed or promulgated recently?"
The Unified Agenda or Semiannual Regulatory Agenda
Departments/agencies are required to publish a semiannual overview of regulatory actions in development or completed. In Fall, look for the entire Regulatory Plan, published in the Federal Register.
more...less...
Made available by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the Office of Management and Budget. Example: Department of Energy's Semiannual Regulatory Agenda, December 2016

B: Find your agency's regulations, by topic

Agencies' rules and regulations are codified (organized by topic) in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The easiest way to find your agency's rules is in the electronic CFR (eCFR) using the Agency List.

Step 3: Find Congressional Hearings about your agency

Congressional Hearings

Consider looking for two kinds of hearing

Appointment confirmation hearings for agency heads and
Recent hearings involving your agency (at the beginning of a new administration, those will often be the same thing!).

ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
This subscription resource is popular because it's like Google for congressional documents.
1. Search for your agency's name, or the agency head's name
2. Use the left margin facets to limit results to hearings
3. Limit results to the current Congress or any relevant date range

GovInfo.gov
A free resource currently in Beta, and very promising.
1. Search for your agency name
2. Use the left margin under "Collections" to select "Congressional hearings"
3. Again in the left margin, limit to this year or relevant date range

Step 4: Find Budget Authority

Departmental Budget Appropriations or Authority

What is your agency's budgetary history? You can get to appropriations figures by looking at President's Budget. Try pulling up the last few years' budgets, and check the actual appropriation for your agency in each of these years (see handout).

Note: You may find conflicting numbers in agency Green Books, or other documents produced by the agency. That's plausible. Think about why this might be the case. Also ask whether the numbers contradict each other substantively (i.e. do they suggest different trends over time, or just different specific figures within overall similar trends?).

The Budget of the United States (with pop up tutorial)
Find your agency's budget appropriations in the Appendix to the Budget. Open this tutorial in another browser window for step-by-step instructions.

Researching Congress, Federal Agencies & Virginia Legislation

Ask A Librarian

Step 1 (A & B): Find Basic Information about Your Agency

Step 2: Find your Agency's Rules & Regulations

Step 3: Find Congressional Hearings about your agency

Step 4: Find Budget Authority