I.

INTRODUCTION

LEGIS is a browser-based system that allows a user connected to the Internet to access, retrieve, print
or save structured bills information and status as well as download full texts of bills, republic acts, House
Journals, House publications and other published legislative materials and documents.

LEGIS is a collaboration among the different information centers in the House legislative mill. The
table below shows the different information centers and the information provided accordingly

Source of Information Information Provided

Plenary Affairs Bureau • Structured data pertaining to House bills/resolutions, Senate
(PAB) bills/resolutions transmitted to the House and privileges speeches
• Bill updates based on the House Journal
• Full text of bills, resolutions and republic acts
• Full text of House Journal
• Voting Records
Committee Affairs • Committee General Information
Bureau (CAB) • Committee memberships
• Referrals of bills and resolutions
• Schedule of committee meetings
• Full text of Committee News
• Committee actions
Reference and Research
Bureau (RRB) • Legislative Researches
House Members Office • House Member Information including Curriculum Vitae
CPBD • CPBD Materials

These information are entered into the system via a backend interface accessible only through a
system-validated username and password. Status of bills and resolutions are automatically determined by
the system through a user-triggered update program run intermittently by the Bills and Index Service. At
any one time, a complete information on the bill/resolution may be generated through the Bill History
Feature of the LEGIS, which dynamically encapsulates updates from the Plenary and Committee Affairs
Bureau.

The heart of the LEGIS is the On-line Query, which is designed to be a flexible query system for
House bills/resolutions, privilege speeches and transmitted Senate bills. Through this module, users can do
a bill/resolution search in various ways: by number, author, committee referral, title, etc. Users may also
further limit search by specifying type, significance, status and period covered as well as defining specific
data outputs. Another important feature is that users can have query results disposed in several formats:
either in link-enabled (HTML), printable, save (text) or even columnar format which is suitable for export
to EXCEL and other similar structured data types such as databases.

LEGIS is also equipped with a Download Center conveniently accessible at the Home Screen where
various documents such as full text bills/resolutions, Republic Acts, and House Journals may be
downloaded in PDF format.

LEGIS is designed to be a user-friendly system which utilizes standard browser interfaces and thus,
even new users would find using the system hardly difficult at all. This is because the system utilizes
standard controls such as buttons, navigation bars, text boxes, list boxes and option buttons one would
normally encounter in browsing the internet.
II. ACCESSING THE LEGIS

LEGIS can be accessed using your desktop computer connected to the internet through the official
website of the House of Representatives (www.congress.gov.ph). LEGIS is a browser-based system, your
desktop must have a browser installed such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, etc. To access
the LEGIS, perform the following steps:

ƒ Click on Internet Explorer desktop icon.

ƒ Type “http://www.congress.gov.ph” at the browser line and press [ENTER]

ƒ To access LEGIS through the congress website, click on the “House Bills & Resolutions”
link.
ƒ After clicking on the “House Bills & Resolutions”, we should see this screen on a new
window.
III. THE LEGIS AT A GLANCE

Notice that the LEGIS Home Screen is divided into several modules as identified by highlighted tabs:
Advanced Search, Committee Info, Download Center, Links to WWW.Site, and Access WebMail.

A. ADVANCED SEARCH

ƒ HOUSE BILLS ONLINE QUERY. This is the heart of the LEGIS. It is through this module
where users can freely search for desired House bills, resolutions and privilege speeches.
The current database contains bills and resolutions since the 8th Congress (July 1987) up to
the present.

ƒ SENATE BILLS ONLINE QUERY. This is similar to the HOUSE BILLS ONLINE
QUERY except that this contains Senate bills and resolutions transmitted to the House for
concurrence. Its functionalities, features and screen interface are exactly the same as with the
House Bills Online Query. The current database contains transmitted senate bills since the
10th Congress ( July 1995) up to present.

ƒ BIS STATISTICAL REPORTS. This is a statistical reporting system for bills and
resolutions, committee referrals, third reading approvals, enacted laws and floor deliberations
for comparative analysis.

ƒ HOUSE MEMBERS INFO. This is mirror image of the House Members Information Page
as contained in the www.congress.gov.ph web site. This is a convenient way to access
members and committee information when your desktop is unable to secure an internet
connection.
B. COMMITTEE INFO

This is an alternative way to access committee information which can be found inside the House
of Representatives website (www.congress.gov.ph/committees). This module contains general
committee information and their bill referrals, schedule of meetings and committee news, which
are mirror images of their counterpart links in the House website.

ƒ Committees. This link contains a mirror image of the Committee Information Page of the
House website (www.congress.gov.ph) at the local server and contains general committee
information with further links to bill referrals, schedule of meetings and Committee News.

ƒ Schedule of Meetings. This link contains a mirror image of the Schedule of Meetings Page of
the House website at the local server and contains schedule of meetings for the week and the
previous weeks’. The current month’s schedule of meetings can likewise be accessed by
clicking on the calendar.

ƒ Committee News. This link contains a mirror image of the Committee News page of the
House website at the local server and contains the Committee News searchable by volume
and number.

C. DOWNLOAD CENTER

Like the committee info module, this module allows for convenient downloading of full text of
bills/resolutions, Republic Acts, Journals of the House, and CPBD Materials
(www.congress.gov.ph/downloads).

ƒ Republic Acts. This link contains a mirror image of the Republic Acts Download Center of
the House website at the local server. Republic Acts since the 8th Congress can be searched by
number and by title and downloaded in pdf format.

ƒ Text of House Bills and Resolutions. This link contains a mirror image of the Bills and
Resolutions Download Center of the House website at the local server. Full text of house bills
and resolutions since the 13th congress, whenever available, can also be searched by number
and title and downloaded in pdf format.

ƒ Journals of the House. This link contains a mirror image of the Journals of the House
Download Center of the House website at the local server. The House Journals since the 12th
Congress can be searched by number and keywords and downloaded in pdf format.
 ƒ CPBD Materials. This link contains a mirror image of the CPBD Publications Download
Center of the House website at the local server. CPBD materials that may be downloaded
include policy advisories, facts-in-figures, briefers, books, memorandum, occasional papers
and newsletters.

D. LINKS TO WWW SITE AND ACCESS WEB MAIL

Links to WWW site contains website links to House Members Information, Press Releases and
Legislative Documents from past congresses. This feature is only available for computers with
internet connection.

Access Web Mail allows users to access web mails (SQUIRREL) by redirecting them to the
House Web Site where the Web Mail Program can be directly accessed. For a detailed explanation
on the use and operations of the Web Mail, a separate Web Mail User’s Manual is available for
reference. Again, this feature is only available for computers with internet connection.
IV. THE HOUSE BILLS ONLINE QUERY

This module is considered the bread and butter of legislative bills information at the House since this is
the main and only repository of bills information for the various legislative units. The Bills and Index
Service of the Plenary Affairs Bureau, being the data keeper of legislative bills information, captures
these structured data from the time of bill filing up to the time the bill is enacted into law.

Sources of structured data initially comes from the bill as filed, such as the bill number, title, principal
author and the date of filing, others from legislative units like the CAB, such as committee referrals,
bill substitution/consolidation, committee actions and committee report information, while the majority
are sourced from the House Journal such as co-authorships, milestone dates in various plenary stages,
sponsorships, debates and interpellations, and the rest comes from Messages from the Senate and the
Office of the President.

All these information are meticulously culled from these sources and painstakingly entered into the
system on a field per field basis in the file maintenance modules by the indexers. This mechanism,
though elaborate and tedious, allows for a comprehensive bills information system that is queriable at
each field level..

A. THE BILLS ONLINE QUERY SCREEN

To activate this module, perform the following steps:

ƒ Open the LEGIS application.

ƒ Click on the “HOUSE BILLS ONLINE QUERY” link under Advanced Search.
ƒ Select the Congress for the desired search (8th to present ). This is necessary since bills for
each congress are intentionally stored separately, one database for each congress, which
allows for reduced search times for user queries since database search time grows
exponentially as the database reaches a certain threshold size.
ƒ Choose the desired congress to search (14th Congress).
ƒ Click the Submit button.
 ƒ Choosing a particular congress will lead you to a screen as partially shown below. You would
notice that vertically scrolling the screen will lead you to the other steps in performing your
query, a total of 4 steps: Select Query Type, Define Query Scope, Select Output Data and
Choose Display/Save Format. By

B. STEP 1. SELECT QUERY TYPE

The first step is for you to select a particular query type. Notice that the selections are presented as
option buttons, which means that only one option can be selected at a time. For instance, clicking
the “Number Searches” option will activate it and clicking “Authorship” option afterwards will
activate this option but deactivates the previously chosen “Number Searches” .

This step is not mandatory since you may not want to select any query type at all, which presumes
that you are interested to select all the bills for the chosen congress, at least for the time being.
Querying all national bills, all bills enacted into laws and other similar queries are some of the
most common examples where you do not need to select a query type.
Illustrated below are the six(6) query types available at the Online Query:

ƒ NUMBER SEARCHES

Select this query if the bill number/s for which bill information is desired are known.

To perform the query, simply type the bill number/s in the text box provided as shown. In
case of multiple bills, separate each bill with a comma. Note that the bill prefix may be typed
in lower or upper case.

The pull-down menu below the text box as shown above indicates the entity representing the
numbers typed. For instance, since the numbers typed are bill numbers, select “House
Bill/Resolution Number” from the pull-down menu, which was already selected by default.

Shown below is another illustration of number searches, this time for Republic Acts. Notice
that “Republic Act Number” was selected in the pull-down menu since the numbers typed
were republic acts.

Take note of the conventions in typing bill numbers by looking at the examples as shown in
the pull down menu corresponding to each selection. The Online Query will not be able to
search for numbers that are wrongly specified. Another restriction is that you cannot specify
 numbers of mixed entities under a single search. For example, you cannot mix a bill and a
republic act under a single number search.

All the remaining steps are skipped since this query does not require any other parameter and
is thus ready for execution. To execute the query, click the submit button located at the
bottom of the screen.

ƒ AUTHORSHIP

Select this query if you want all the measures authored/co-authored by a particular member.

For instance, to find all the measures authored and co-authored by Hon. Rodolfo G. Biazon,

a Select Authorship option box

b Select “Biazon, Rodolfo Gaspar” from the list box. Note that the members are
arranged alphabetically. A quicker way of locating “Biazon” from the list box is to
simply press “B” representing the first letter of the name, which will locate the first
entry with a name starting with letter “B”, “Bag-ao” in this case. Press the down
arrow key a number of times until “Biazon” is highlighted and click on it to select.
c Choose “Both” (default) from the sub-option boxes below the list box to indicate
that both authorship and co-authorship are desired.
d Click Submit button to execute query.

Note that “Include final authorship” checkbox is checked by default, which means that the list
will likewise include all measures for which the particular member was made a final author.
Final authorships are normally manifested in the Journal. If you do not want to include final
authorships, simply uncheck this box.

ƒ COMMITTEE

Select this query if you want to know all the measures primarily/secondarily referred to a
particular committee.

For instance, to find all the measures referred to the Committee on Appropriations,

a Select Committee option box.

b Select “APPROPRIATIONS” from the list box. Note that committees are arranged
alphabetically. As in the previous case and in all subsequent list boxes, you may
simply press the first letter of the desired committee and press the down arrow a
number of times until it is located.
c Choose “Both” (default) from the sub-option boxes below the list box to indicate that
both primary and secondary referrals are desired.
d Click Submit button to execute the query.
 Note that “Include RULES-referred bills” checkbox is checked by default, which means that
the list will likewise include all measures that have been transmitted by the Committee on
Rules to the specified committee. This normally applies to resolutions that have been adopted
and transmitted by Rules to the appropriate committee. If you do want to include them, simply
uncheck this box.

ƒ SUBJECT

Select this query if you want to know all the measures classified under a particular
subject/subjects. The subjects are devised and bills are individually classified under these
subjects by an indexer at the Bills and Index Service.

For instance, to find all the Maritime-related measures,

a Select Subject option box.

b Select “MARITIME DISASTERS” from the first list box.
c Select “MARITIME INDUSTRY” from the second list box.
d Select “MARITIME SAFETY” from the third list box.
e Click Submit button to execute the query.

Note that searching by subject can be quite confusing since the researcher is expected to be to
familiar with the subjects as classified by the Bills and Index. It can also provide fewer than
expected results due to inherent inaccuracies in bill classification. On these grounds, the use
of this search is not recommended for the general users.

ƒ TITLE

Select this query if you want to find all the measures containing a particular set of key words
in their title, short title, abstract, ra title or alias. Note that this search can have a maximum of
three(3) sets of search, each set is specified by a maximum of three(3) text boxes in a row,
and each text box can represent a key word.

For instance, to find all the measures relating to cheaper medicines or the UP Charter or the
National Budget for 2008,

a Select “Title/Short Title/Abstract/RA Title/Alias” option box.

b Type “cheap” and “medicine” in the first set of text boxes.
c Type “university” and “philippines” and “charter” in the second set of text boxes.
d Type “budget” and “2008” in the third set of text boxes.
 There are no clear-cut rules in specifying key words under the title search. Normally, a prior
knowledge of how the titles are specified and worded helps a lot in key words specifications.
However, the following guidelines are deemed essential in keywords construction:

a Use key words in their simplest, avoid using plurals, past tenses and comparatives.
For instance, in searching for “cheaper medicines”, it would be better to specify
“cheap” instead of “cheaper” and “medicine” instead of “medicines”

b The adage “Less is More” aptly applies in title search: the less keywords you specify,
the more likely you will find the desired bills.

c Do not use abbreviations since bill titles are normally spelled out completely. For
instance in the previous search, “University” and “Philippines” were specified
instead of “UP”.

d Do not include periods, commas, hyphens, quotes and other special characters in
your search keywords. The system does not have the capability to trim keywords of
such special characters.

ƒ OTHER LISTINGS

This query contains some instant report listings which cannot be generated by the other query
types.

Simply select from one of the special listings as shown above and click the Submit button to
execute the query. The special listings include the following:

a House Concurrent Resolutions

b House Joint Resolutions
c Administration Bills
d Urgent House Bills
e House Bills with Urgent Counterpart
f Recommitted Bills/Resolution
g Reconsidered Bills/Resolutions
h Archived Bills/Resolutions
i Bills/Resolutions Transmitted to the Archives
j RPT Bills
C. STEP 2. DEFINE QUERY SCOPE

The second step is to define your scope. This step would only be necessary if there is a need to
filter or refine further the query you have selected in step one. It involves filtering by type,
significance, status and dates.

Type choices are “Bill”, “Resolution”, “Privilege Speech” and “Bills and Resolutions”.
Significance choices are “National”, “Local” or “Both”. Status choices are numbered as shown
below: Date Ranges can be specified through beginning and ending dates, the basis of which can
be chosen from the Dates Applied To list box. Finally, the order of the output display may also be
chosen from the Output Order List box. The default is by bill number.

Assume for instance that in the previous authorship query example, we are interested to find only
the national bills authored/co-authored by Speaker Nograles which have been enacted into laws in
the year 2008. Furthermore, we want the output arranged by bill number. This revised query
would then have required you to pass through Step 2 as follows:

a. Click on “Bill” option button under Type.

b. Click on “National” option button under Significance.
c. Click on the check boxes corresponding to status numbers 31.0 to 34.0 to indicate
Republic Act status.
d. Begin Date: Select “January”, Type “1”, Type “2008” in the appropriate box.
e. End Date: Select “December”, Type “31”, Type “2008” in the appropriate box.
f. Dates Applied To: Select “Enactment Date” from the list box.
g. Output Order: Select “Bill Number” (default).= from the list box.
h. Click Submit button to execute the query.

The Include Reference checkbox is checked by default, which means that the journal number of
the source of co-authorship information will be specified. Simply uncheck the box to turn off his
feature.
D. STEP 3. SELECT OUTPUT DATA

The third step is to select output data. Output data are specific information pertaining to bills and
resolutions, such as the bill number, title , date approved on third reading, etc, which you want
generated for certain bills. They are also collectively known as structured data.

Shown above are some of the structured data you may want to generate for certain bills and
resolutions. Data corresponding to checked boxes are the default output data, which you might
want to change.

If you want all the available data generated, simply click the Check All button. Notice that all the
boxes will be checked indicating that all data will be outputted.

However, if you only want specific information outputted other than the default as shown, the
quickest way is to first click the “Check All” button and then to click again the same button, which
was already labeled “Uncheck All”. Notice that all the boxes will be cleared of check marks,
which now gives you a start-from-scratch flexibility to recheck only those you want generated.

For instance, assume that in the Nograles bills in the previous example, if you want to see only
the bill number, principal author, senate bill counterpart, republic act number, date enacted into
law and republic act title, do the following steps:

a. Click on “Check All” button

b. Click on “Uncheck All” button
c. Click on the boxes corresponding to Bill Number, Principal Author, Counterpart Senate
Bill, Republic Act No., Date Signed into Law and Republic Act Title
d. Click Go button to submit the query
E. STEP 4. CHOOSE DISPLAY/SAVE FORMAT.

The last step is choosing the display/save format. There are six(6) display/save formats to choose
from, as shown below:

Shown below is the resulting screen output of House Representative Biazon, Rodolfo Gaspar laws
used in the previous example, which uses the HTML format, the default.

The HMTL format, or more descriptively known as the link-enabled format, allows you to browse
available links such as the bill history, full text of bills as filed and engrossed bills and text of
republic acts. Notice that in the output screen shown previously, underlined links such as Print
History, Save History and Text of Engrossed bills are present. You can click on these links if you
want to see their contents.
Select Printer-friendly format when you want to print and Saving to a Text File format when you
want to save the output. Both formats are basically identical in appearance except that the co-
authors in the Printer-friendly format are arranged in a three-column table which saves printing
space while the co-authors in the Saving to a Text File format are arranged horizontally, one co-
author for each row.

In both Printer-friendly and Saving to a Text File formats however, you can still have the output
either printed or saved. You can print the output by using the File>Print feature of your browser
while you can have it saved by either using the File>Save As feature of your browser or simply
copy-pasting the output to your Word Processing Application, MS Word or Open Office Write.

To save the output in Text file format, do the following steps:

a. Click File>Save As from the browser

b. In the Save Web Page Dialog box,
a Save in: browse for the folder or drive you want the file saved
b File name: type the file name you want for the output
c Save as type: select Text File(*.txt) from the list box
d Click on the Save button
The History format is a convenient way of consolidating structured data pertaining to bills and
resolutions since it allows for generating the Bill History of each bill or resolution in the query
output one by one in the specified order. Choose this format if you want to view the complete
details of the bills and resolutions, as shown below.
In the previous formats that we have discussed, notice that the output data are displayed row by
row. However, in most cases, we want the output displayed in a columnar format, that is, one data
occupies a single column. For example, in the previous example, using the columnar format would
have generated a six(6) column table where each bill occupies a row and each output data occupies
a column.

The advantage of using a columnar format is that your output can be exported not only to a word
processing/text application but into structured applications such as a database (DBASE or
ACCESS) and a spreadsheet (EXCEL) as well. An incidental benefit of this format would be the
potential reduction in clerical effort of typing repetitive letters or mailings which involves data that
can be extracted from LEGIS. This can be automated by having the required data outputted in
columnar format, copy pasting to EXCEL and using it as an input file to a mail-merge application.
A typical example of this would be generating transmittal letters of bill referrals to the different
committees.

Shown below is a columnar format output of the previous example using only the bill number,
republic act title, date enacted into law and republic act title. Notice that in certain columns, such
as the date of enactment, the data did not fit in. This should be ignored however since this is just
an intermediate output, the final output will have to be when the data is copy pasted to EXCEL,
where the width for the date can easily be resized and the title
To illustrate, to convert the above output to an EXCEL file, do the following steps:
c. Select the data output. You may exclude the heading if you wish.
d. Click Edit>Copy on the menu bar of the browser
e. Open your Excel application.
f. At the EXCEL screen, starting from the row where you want the output pasted, highlight
four columns corresponding to the number of data outputs.
g. Click Edit>Paste on the menu bar to paste the output.

Notice that each data is pasted separately in a column. However, the title column width
appears too short for its actual size. Resize the column width to your desired size. After
resizing, notice that the text did not wrap. To wrap the text, select the title column and click
Format>Cells on the menu bar. In the Dialogue Box, under the Alignment Tab, check Wrap
text option box and select “Top” for vertical alignment. The resulting output appears as shown
below:
 You may now insert the appropriate heading and any other formatting desired to further
improve its appearance. Save the file.

The OB format is intended for the use of Bills and Index to facilitate the preparation of the Order
of Business (OB). A calendaring staff generates the desired bills through the Online Query by
checking the desired status (0.0 Filed for First Reading), filters using date filed and chooses OB
format.

V. SENATE BILLS ONLINE QUERY

The Senate Bills Online Query is exactly similar to the House Bills Online Query except that instead of
House bills, resolutions and privilege speeches, the database contains Senate bills and resolutions
transmitted to the House for concurrence since the 10th Congress.

It has the exactly the same interface as with the House Bills Online Query because both utilize the
same application. Thus, Senate bills can also be searched by number, author, committee referrals,
subject and key words which can be filtered and outputted in various formats.
VI. BIS STATISTICAL REPORTS

BIS Statistical Reports is a LEGIS module which consists of predefined statistical summary of bills
and resolutions as well as floor deliberations classified as to author, referral and status.

Shown below is the screen snapshot of the menu when the BIS Statistical Reports Module is clicked
from the LEGIS Opening Screen:

As in the House Bills Online Query, this module has the capability to filter outputs as to type, to
specify date ranges and whether you want to output in plain (text) format or with embedded links.

The date ranges specified will be interpreted based on the type of report to be generated, as follows:

ƒ Authorships – date of filing

ƒ Referrals – date read on first reading
ƒ Approval on Third Reading – date approved on third reading
ƒ Enactment into Law – enactment date or date signed by the President
ƒ Floor Deliberation History – date of deliberation
Shown below are sample outputs of Measures Authored/Co-authored Per Member, Measures
Primarily/Secondarily Referred Per Committee and Floor Deliberation History:

Plain format will simply display the output as plain text. With Link to Details format will embed
appropriate links to the output. For example, had you chosen With Link to Details format in generating
the Measures Authored/Co-Authored Per Member, each number/count in the report would have been
underlined to indicate it is a link, which you can click if you want to view the details/breakdown of the
number. The same mechanism also applies to the other statistical reports.
VII. DISCLAIMER

The data contained in the LEGIS database are the responsibility of the information center which
provides the specific information. Structured data pertaining to bills and resolutions are inputted by the
Bills and Index and thus any question as to their accuracy should be directed to the Monitoring and
Indexing Group of the Bills and Index Service, Plenary Affairs Bureau at local 7515.

Bills information from the 8th to 12th congress were downloaded from the VAX legacy system and
uploaded to the LEGIS. Since conversion was only done programmatically in the absence of a tried
and tested utility, there might be some errors in conversion which could have affected the integrity of
the contents.

LEGIS maintenance is done by the ICTS Applications Development Team. Any comments and
suggestions should be directed to the ICTS at locals 7444,7615 or 7616 or at our Direct Line, 9320536.