Getting Started

For over eight decades, The United States Government Manual has been the "official handbook" of the Federal Government. This New Deal-era publication  was published initially as a loose-leaf notebook, its pages held in place by three metal rings. The Government Manual is a regularly updated special edition of the Federal Register. Its contents include leadership tables and descriptions of agency activities and programs of the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of Government, as well as activities and programs of quasi-official agencies and international organizations in which the United States participates as a member.

The 2022 Government Manual also has Sources of Information sections covering a host of topics and containing links to online resources. Here are examples to illustrate the range of topics covered in these sections: aircraft and ships, air quality monitoring data, America the Beautiful passes, answers to FAQs, artists, atmospheric carbon dioxide, ATV safety, auctions, bank regulators, birdwatchers, Bitcoin and other virtual currencies, blogs, bullying, bus travel safety, carbon monoxide, career and business opportunities, chemical exposure, Chief of Staff's reading list, climate adaptation and climate change, cooperative practices and cooperative principles, Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID–19), credit cards, credit unions, cruise vacations, datasets and statistics, debt collection, democracy, disease, earthquakes and landslides, election security and U.S. elections, Electoral College, endangered species and wildlife, flood insurance, Founding Fathers, Freedom of Information Act and Open Government, gardening and organic agriculture, glossaries, Green Card and naturalization, greenhouse gas emissions, green jobs, historic Federal courthouses, history and timelines, homelessness and homeless veterans, Landsat, landscaping, law enforcement, learning American English, lessons of the Holocaust, LGBT youth, maps, Marine Corps bands and tattoo policy, Medals of Honor, minimum wage, museums, news and announcements, organ donation and transplantation, organizational charts, over 9 billion records, payday loans, plain language, planets, publications, public debt, quagga and zebra mussels, quantitative easing and negative rates, recreation, renewable energy, savings bonds and Treasury bills, search tools, SECURE Water Act, seigniorage, sexual assault, shipwrecks and ship disposal, site maps and A–Z indices, snarge, social media, sport fish and tips for fishing, student loans, suicide prevention, sustainability, terrorism advisories, tobacco-free living, travel warnings and wait times, trees on Capitol Grounds, underage drinking, volcanic activity, water conservation and resources, weapons of mass destruction, whistle-blower disclosures, wild horses and burros, wood pellet production and trade, women in the labor force, and more.

Portable Document Format (PDF) files of the Government Manual are available for viewing and downloading on the Government Publishing Office's govinfo website.