U.S. Code of Federal Regulations in XML Format (1996-Present)

1996 to present bulk XML data contains the codified general and permanent rules from U.S. federal departments and agencies, organized into 50 titles representing broad regulatory areas. The data is updated quarterly and issued annually, though the XML format is not the official legal version.

Use Cases

• Extract and analyze regulatory text from XML-structured files to track rule changes across the 50 titles over time.
• Build a search index over the quarterly XML updates to enable semantic retrieval of specific regulations.
• Parse the SGML-derived XML tags to study the structure and hierarchy of federal rules published since 1996.
• Compare annual XML volumes to identify amendments or new rules added to specific regulatory titles.

Strengths

• Provides structured XML data for federal regulations spanning from 1996 to the present.
• Covers 50 broad titles representing the full scope of U.S. federal regulation.
• Updated on a quarterly basis with annual issuance, offering regular snapshots of regulatory changes.

Limitations

• The XML format is not official and lacks legal status; only PDF and Text versions are official.
• XML files are derived from SGML and printing codes, which may introduce display anomalies.
• Data does not include referenced image files, limiting completeness for some regulations.

Provenance

Source

National Archives and Records Administration, Office of the Federal Register.

Collection Method

Derived from SGML-tagged data and printing codes of the rules published in the Federal Register.

Time Range

1996 to present.

Freshness

Updated quarterly; last metadata update was 2024-11-07.

Geography

United States federal regulations.